To decrease your percentage of body fat, you need to increase lean mass while burning excess calories. Lean mass is muscle, which can only be increased through exercise -- mainly resistance training. You also can burn fat by engaging in cardio while reducing calories. Dropping body fat with workouts is the right idea, because relying on calorie deficits alone could lead to as much as 25 percent of your weight loss coming from muscle, according to the American Council on Exercise.
Burn fat with cardio. You can engage in cardio workouts every day. To maintain your current weight, the Mayo Clinic recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate cardio -- which is defined as working at 50 to 75 percent of your maximum heart rate -- per week. To lose weight, you would need to do twice that much or work out more vigorously at 70 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. Examples of cardio workouts include brisk walking, running or working out on an elliptical or step machine.
Engage in resistance training at least two to three times per week. Use gym machines, free weights, bands or tubes, or body-weight exercises, such as pullups or pushups. Doing more than three days a week doesn't provide much more benefit. Work against a weight with which you can do at least eight repetitions but at which 12 are difficult. Complete one set of eight to 15 reps, rest for 30 to 60 seconds and do at least one more set.
Increase the weight and change your routine to continue building muscle. Working with a weight that you can easily lift for 15 or more reps will no longer build muscle, nor will doing the same exercise for months at a time. When 12 to 15 reps become easy, increase the weight by 2 to 5 pounds. Change the exercise you do for each muscle group every four to six weeks or when you get bored.
Work all of the major muscles, starting with the large muscle groups. Work the pecs, the posterior deltoids, the lats and anterior and medial deltoids of the shoulder and the glutes. Next work the legs, including the quads and hamstrings at the fronts and backs of your thighs, the calf muscles and the hip abductors and adductors, along with the triceps and biceps of the upper arms.
Include abdominal workouts. Fat tends to accumulate in the mid-region of the body, so abdominal strengthening is particularly important. Do situps and crunches to work the rectus abdominis and twisting crunches to work the obliques. Do core exercises such as planks, holding the position for at least 30 seconds and working toward 60.
Challenge yourself by progressing to more difficult exercises or positions. Add the weight of dumbbells or barbells to squats and lunges for the legs. Do arm exercises while balanced on a stability ball or on one leg. Do situps and crunches on a stability ball and then a declined bench.
- Have a trained professional calculate your body-fat percentage. Your lean body-weight percentage equals 1.00 minus your fat percentage expressed as a decimal.
- Once you are engaged in a cardio and strengthening program, use the following formula provided by ACE Fitness to determine how much weight to lose from fat alone: Desired body weight equals lean body weight divided by one minus your desired body-fat percentage.
- Safe weight loss of between 1 and 2 pounds per week requires a calorie deficit of approximately 3,500 calories per week.
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