This 5-Question Test Reveals If Your Running Routine Is Helping You Lose Weight
Running works best for weight loss when it’s one of many tools in your toolbox. “Mix in other modalities of exercise such as swimming or cycling,” Matheny says. That will help prevent burnout and keep your progress from stalling.
And don’t forget strength training. It’s vital to keeping up your levels of lean muscle, which is in charge of setting your metabolic rate and allowing you to burn more calories on every run. While bodyweight exercises like pushups and lunges will score you a ton of benefits, picking up dumbbells or barbells can also promote healthier levels of weight-slashing hormones, he says.
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Your Results
If you said yes to one or more of these questions: At the end of the day, losing weight comes down to caloric balance: You have to burn more calories than you take in each day, Matheny says. If you’re having trouble pinpointing what’s keeping you from achieving the caloric deficit you need—whether it’s overfueling, undertraining, or some combination of both—try tracking your workouts and calories consumed over the course of the next week. Sometimes, looking at everything all laid out can help you see where extra calories are coming in and how your workouts could be improved, he says.
For healthy weight loss, aim to consume between 500 and 1,000 fewer calories than you burn in an entire day (as in the number of calories you burn by being alive, in addition to working out). To find this number, experts recommend taking your current weight times 12, if you’re mostly sedentary, 15 if you do moderate exercise almost every day, or a number in between if you fall somewhere in the middle. If you’re under 30, that’s roughly the number of calories you burn per day. If you’re between 30 and 40 years old, subtract 200 to account for a slowing metabolism. Then use an exercise tracking app or a wearable to record extra calories burned through running or other exercise.
If you answered no to all of the above: You’re on the right track! But to keep your running routine successful, you have to make sure it changes as you do. The two main ways to do that are by playing with time and intensity. “Keeping all other factors the same, but increasing your number of runs per week, or length of some runs, should increase caloric expenditure and help with losing weight quicker,” Giackette says.
However, if you don’t have more time to give, then simply picking up the pace during your runs will ensure your body keeps adapting, he says. Once you get comfortable with a certain pace, you can increase your speed by up to 10 percent per week.