First of all, it should be noted that men, when it comes to losing weight, are much luckier than women. Specifically, males tend to have more lean muscle tissue, which consumes more calories than body fat, even at rest. Namely, their metabolism works faster than that of females.
This ‘body gap’ means that when men and women aim to lose weight, men do so much faster than women. And the same thing happens with exercise. males tend to lose up to three times more body fat making the same exercise and the same diet as women, as has been verified It is study, published in the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism.
To reach such conclusions, 2,000 adults with overweight and pre-diabetes Europe, Australia and New Zealand underwent, for two months, a 800 calorie dietmainly liquid (soups, smoothies and cereals) with low calorie vegetables and greens. At the end of eight weeks, men had managed to lose weight more and faster than women. And this advantage, so to speak, is due to the high level of testosterone and at the low level of estrogen addition of men.
So, if you are a man and want slim downyou can take advantage of the fact that your body is more predisposed to it, but you must not trip yourself along the way, such as doing one of the training that we tell you in THE OBJECTIVE below.
Workouts with abdominal machines
Mike Bohl, certified personal trainer and member of the board of medical experts of Eatthis, claims that abdominal machine workouts are not as productive for building a ‘six-pack’ as people think. In fact, “although it is true that these devices can help strengthen the abdominal area, the abs that we want to show have more to do with the amount of subcutaneous fat covering the muscle than with the size of the muscle”.
That is to say, if you kill yourself with abs, you will only be able to put on the ‘hard’ area, but not even a square will be marked and you will not be able to lose weight at the rate you want.
Hip abductor and adductor exercises
Performing hip abductor and adductor exercises isn’t the best way to lose weight, as they “work the muscles through a relatively limited range of motion and likely won’t burn enough calories to make it worth your while.”
yoga and pilates
Although these exercises are ideal for maintaining mental well-being, emotional balance and flexibility, they are not especially good for losing weight, since they burn much fewer calories than others.
Play tennis, run or swim
Aerobic exercises (playing tennis, running, walking, swimming…) are ideal for improving our cardiovascular health, increasing our general well-being and burning calories, but to really help us lose weight, we have to add a session of strength exercises, since the more muscle mass we have, the more we will lose weight.
A good idea would be to alternate aerobic exercises with, for example, calisteniafrom which we already talked to you in this medium, and which has many benefits:
- improves stamina and has a similar effect to cardiovascular training, promoting better heart health.
- Lose weight: Like any other type of exercise, calisthenics adds to your total energy expenditure, which promotes weight loss. And because this type of training engages multiple muscle groups, it typically burns more calories than regular cardio training. It is estimated that practicing calisthenics for half an hour consumes about 140 calories.
- Work the whole body: Although calisthenics can be divided into upper body and lower body exercises, many of them engage, though not to the same extent, the entire body as a whole.
- It has a low impact on the jointscompared to weight training or other cardio, so it is recommended for all ages.
- Build muscle strength: Calisthenics is extremely efficient in building muscle, especially for beginners.
- increases flexibility of who does it.
What exercises should men do to lose weight?
We have already seen what not to do in the gym, and on the street, when you want to lose weight and you are a man, but what should we do then? Bohl recommends exercises that activate multiple muscle groups at once, such as push-ups, squats, pull-ups, and lunges. Come on, what is calisthenics. Here are some ideas:
- squats. They are the queens of training lower train We don’t have to lower our butts to the ground nor do we need to weigh them down. In fact, there are very kind options to work them. The easiest is to do it against the wall. To do this, it is enough to support your back and lower slowly, without forcing, until we reach our top.
- glute bridge. This exercise is a reinforcement for the pelvic floorTherefore, its performance is also indicated to improve sexual quality. In any case, it is a very kind practice that only requires lie on your back on a mat and lift your hips. The key is to contract the buttocks and lift the hips off the ground, looking for a straight line from shoulders to knees. Holding the position for a couple of seconds and then lowering in a controlled manner will be enough. So in a series of between eight and ten repetitions.
- Burpees. The mechanics are simple, since we mix two jumps, a squat and a push-up. The most complex part is the recovery of the flexion after the jump, since it does not consist of letting yourself fall, but in putting your arms with enough force to do the next flexion.
- Planks or push-ups. Baptized as “planks” more or less recently, we really mean the push-ups of a lifetime. This is a basic exercise to strengthen the upper body, especially arms, an area in which biceps and triceps have a lot to saybut also to work the pectoral muscles with some depth.