So you’re ready to commit to working out on a consistent basis because you’re finally serious about losing weight, getting fit, and just changing your situation.
You are sick and tired of feeling this way, sluggish, boated, and just not excited about life anymore. You need a change. So you are excited and hyped up! But everybody is telling you that you need to go get a gym membership.
What? But I’m not ready to show my body in front of strangers.
So what’s the alternative? Exercising at home, of course! That’s the great news.
We get stuck wondering things like, are workouts more effective if I go to the gym? Or do I need to lift heavy weights or heavy duty exercise equipment? Because I have none of those things at home.
You don’t have to think you’re sacrificing the effectiveness of your results because you didn’t choose to work out at the gym.
You can exercise in an environment where you’re most comfortable and just focus on you and your fitness program.
When you’re unsure what to do, it’s hard to make a decision and move forward toward your goals.
So rest assured, there are many benefits to staying at home to lose weight and get in the best shape of your life.
How?
Because you get to surpass feeling self-conscious at the gym which can be a major reason to not exercise often enough and not consistently enough to get the results you need to reach your goals.
You get to do home workouts for women to lose weight without the chance of strangers watching you and judging your body and your every move.
In this post, I’ll give you some easy home workout ideas and provide a basic home workout for you to get started without overthinking it, so you can focus and take action. Because that’s what really needs to happen to get the results, ACTION!
I hope that this will give you a quick roadmap so you can get started with home workouts for women to lose weight and get fit, all while being healthy and avoiding being extreme.
No jumping or running here. . .
What are the perfect home workouts if you’re plus size?
So what are the perfect exercises for workouts at home if you’re a plus size woman?
Workouts that include cardiovascular work to help increase stamina and endurance by strengthening the heart. Especially when you’re beginning a workout program you don’t want to go extreme with a lot of bouncing and jumping.
So avoid running and start walking briskly instead. Instead of walking up flights of stairs start doing something you enjoy such as freestyle dancing with your favorite music.
You also want to include resistance training into your program. It doesn’t have to be heavy duty weights, like how you imagine in weight lifting.
When you’re doing home workouts it’s more convenient and less expensive to have resistance bands and dumbbells rather than heavy duty barbells and weight machines.
And the last component for a complete and perfect workout program to lose weight at home is adding core exercises to help with mobility, moving more quickly, and avoiding back injury.
Those three components will round out your workouts so you can skip the gym and lose weight at home and get fit!
Component #1 for home workouts – Include cardio/aerobic exercise into your program
What is cardiovascular exercise or cardio for short? Basically, it’s exercise for burning calories and make your heart and lungs stronger.
So, when you are walking briskly and you feel a little out of breath and you are doing that in a sustained period of time, then that’s an example of cardio exercise.
I would bypass the high intensity interval training. I know it’s popular, but it’s way too intense if you’re just beginning. Be patient and build your progress with me.
Activities, like walking briskly, swimming, running, stair climbing are all cardiovascular activities.
This is a crucial component to a well-rounded fitness program and great for fat-burning. It also helps increase stamina, endurance, and boosts your energy.
So many of us are new to building or designing an exercise program, especially a workout routine at home. I know that a lot of you struggle on how to start and you don’t realize that there’s a particular strategy on how to get weight loss efforts to start.
Truly, how would you really know how to design your own workouts week after week?
It’s not your profession and it may look completely random on what exercises you need to do, but there’s a complete strategy on how I design workouts for my plus size clients.
Starting with a solid cardiovascular routine is a great way to take action with exercise
Since you’ll be doing all of it at home, make sure to choose home-friendly cardio.
Some great examples would be walking in place, high knees, freestyle dancing, step ups on a low bench, and shadowboxing. Avoid doing jumping jacks, running in place, burpees, mountain climbers, and stair climbing for now.
The goal is to do something sustainable for 15-20 minutes. If 20 minutes seems too long then build up to it over a 3 week time period.
For the 1st week start with 10 minutes of cardio.
Add 5 minutes for the 2nd week, making it 15 minutes long.
And for the 3rd week, add another 5 minutes, making your cardio routine 20 minutes long.
Many of us approach workouts and exercise like how they see people on TV approach it. You’re not GI Jane . . . yet.
You don’t want to go too hard where you tire after 2 minutes and quit or even worse, injure yourself.
The key is going through a process of gradually making it more intense once you’ve gotten into the routine of actually moving your body consistently.
Walk before you run.
Freestyle dance before joining a hip hop class.
Choose step ups on a low bench before you bound up and down the stairs.
Component #2 for Home Workouts – Include resistance training
So what is resistance training? Resistance training is a form of exercise where the outcome is being stronger. You’re pulling or pushing the “weight”.
Think of when you were a kid and the game tug of war. You were pulling on a thick rope and you felt that resistance. That’s how resistance feels when you’re doing resistance exercises.
The resistance can come from barbells, kettlebells, weight machines, and for home workouts for women to lose weight, your ideal choices would be resistance bands, dumbbells, and even body weight all incorporating upper body and lower body muscle groups.
Now what kind of exercises would be perfect for resistance training?
They could be squats, sit downs and stand ups from a chair or couch if squats are too difficult and if you’ve never done a proper squat in your life.
Shoulder presses are great to help with over the head day-to-day tasks.
After training with me for a bit, one of my clients was able to bring her carry-on luggage onto the overhead compartment on a plane without asking for help. She’s 4’ 11” and 60 years old.
So resistance training is great for building strength that helps with day-to-day tasks and everyday function.
If you’re doing multi-planar functional training, then that helps with strengthening your core and increasing flexibility.
Most of us when starting a workout program will focus on cardio and bypass resistance training
And the reasons why are either we don’t know any better, meaning we don’t have that knowledge base and/or we think cardio is enough for weight loss.
Building strength through strength training or resistance workouts is crucial in a well-rounded fitness and weight loss program, preventing injuries, and reshaping our bodies while you’re losing weight in the process.
I also would like to add that weight training, not only helps you burn calories, but while you age you will see the beauty in maintaining muscle mass or even building muscle mass.
Component #3 – Don’t forget your core if you want a perfectly balanced home workout
Here’s where you’ll really start to design the perfect home workout when you’ve incorporated some core exercises into your workouts. And I’m not talking about sit-ups.
Core exercises help stabilize the torso and spine.
It protects the spine from movement. Once you’ve got strong stabilization core muscles you can whip back and forth all of sudden or bend forward or reach up without pulling your back out.
One misconception I need to point out is that core exercises will not help you burn belly fat. A proper diet and healthy eating will help you lose weight and the fat will melt from your entire body.
Some really good core exercises to start are plank on knees, hold for 30 seconds and reverse crunches. Bridges not only help with strengthening the hamstrings, but also the glutes which are part of the core.
Also what I call Supermans are a good back strengthener. Looks rather innocent, but packs a punch!
If you don’t want to get on your back on the ground you can sit on a chair and lift one knee up toward your chest without moving your torso.
While standing up you can do knee lifts that way. You’d incorporate more of a balance challenge also.
Putting it All Together for Your Perfect Home Workouts for Women to Lose Weight
So there you have it! The 3 components of your perfect home workout.
It may sound like a lot, a little overwhelming, but that’s what I’m here for. Make sure you ask your questions in the comments section and I will respond.
Remember, practice taking action, even if you don’t think it’s perfect. Taking action will get you very far.
Just focus on the easiest path of resistance in the beginning. Maybe 7 minute cardio warm-up. Pick 10 exercises, 7 resistance exercises and 3 core exercises.
So What’s Next . . . Do You Need More Help from a Personal Trainer?
If you need help with proper form, accountability, and consistency, a plus size personal trainer who has 23 years of experience and has given great results for clients I’m sure can help you.
