If you are desperate to build muscle mass and lose body fat but have found nothing but disappointments even after cutting calories and dieting, then you are not alone. Moreover, keeping up with one strict diet for a lifetime is extremely hard, if not impossible.
We all know that we need to eat less, exercise more, and keep away from junk. Yet keeping off that fat is really hard to do, and it is even more difficult for women.
So, it is true that women benefit more from specific workout programs designed just for their biological needs and weight loss. They experience hormonal changes throughout their lifetime, making a different workout program necessary.
A great fitness and weight loss program will get you fitter, stronger, and healthier than ever. But it’ll still take some dedication and effort on your part to make it work for the long term.
In this article, we will discuss some tips and tricks on how you can start working out, followed by the benefits of exercise for women. You will also find a 7-day workout plan to control your body weight.
How to Actually Start Working Out?
It is natural to be confused about where exactly to start with the weight loss program. However, you needn’t worry; this guide will help you solve this problem.
You could try some crazy diet like eating just lettuce or a weird workout program where all you do is sit on the couch and fail. However, if you are willing to do something different, you need to be aware of some basics of exercise.
When you want to burn calories and build lean muscles, there are two training regimens that you can incorporate into your weight loss program. Strength training is helpful since it helps in lowering your body-fat percentage. Strength training is also a great way to aim for lean muscles, and you can also modify it for all levels.
The second training style you can follow for losing weight is a cardio workout. We recommend kick-starting a weight loss journey with cardio as it shows proven results. Also, it makes your workout routine versatile.
Whether you like running or prefer to pass it, you have multiple options for pursuing your weight loss journey with cardio. Riding a bike, swimming, and skating are some other ways that are perfect for a cardio workout.
So, if you aim to burn fat, lose weight, and build muscle mass, you must be consistent with your workout plan. Therefore, we have created a 7-day weight loss workout plan for females at the end of this article.
All you need to do is to stick to your workout routine and perform the mentioned workouts for four weeks. Repeating each workout four times over one month will help you master the movement patterns. Thus, you will be able to observe improvements in your body physique.
Benefits of Regular Exercise
Being active has been shown to induce greater physical and mental health benefits. So, before you jump on the workout plan, let us motivate you with the benefits females can reap with regular exercise.
Men and women need to hit the gym regularly to experience these benefits. Still, we know how busy the modern world can make an individual. Therefore, sparing just 30-minutes every morning would be enough for you to keep your body active even with mild weight training.
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Exercise Can Release Happy Hormones
Our routine isn’t in tune with the beauty of a nature walk; we are distracted by the screens of our cell phones and laptops, and these routines often stress us out.
One effective solution to your depression, stress, and anxiety is exercise. There is a reason why exercising makes you feel great right after your workout.
When you engage your muscles during exercise, changes occur in different parts of your brain. All these simulations help your body in stress and anxiety regulation.
Also, exercise can increase your brain’s sensitivity to serotonin and norepinephrine. These hormones lower depressive and anxious feelings and make you feel relieved within minutes.
Besides, a workout boosts the production of endorphins that are the inducers of positive feelings and killers of pain and inflammation. What’s more interesting is that the production of happy hormones is not linked to the intensity of your workout.
Exercising can benefit your mental focus and mood regardless of how intense you physically perform. It is evident from a study that women with depression have found relief after exercising, regardless of the intensity.
Your choice of doing a workout or refraining from it can greatly influence your health over a short period. Therefore, women can regulate and control their stress and anxiety through exercise.
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Exercise Can Help You Shed Body Fat
According to some studies, people are gaining weight and becoming obese largely due to inactivity. One must understand the link between energy expenditure and exercise when learning the workout’s efficacy in weight reduction.
In simpler terms, your body spends energy in three main ways: digesting food, body function maintenance, and exercising. So, when you are dieting, a low-calorie intake reaches your body, slowing down your metabolic rate. This calorie deficit system can sometimes temporarily block your weight loss.
In contrast, regular exercise increases your metabolism, so your body burns more calories to assist a faster weight loss. Furthermore, it has been proven from the studies that the combination of resistance training and aerobic exercise can heighten muscle mass and fat loss. To shred extra body fat, you can always switch to some fat burner supplements with your workout schedule.
Combining these training styles allows you to keep extra weight off your body while maintaining lean muscle mass.
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Exercise Can Keep Your Muscles and Bones Healthy
Exercise is beneficial for the growth and maintenance of your bones and muscles. If you engage in activities such as weightlifting and consume adequate amounts of protein, you can actively stimulate the muscle-building process.
It is all because of the hormones that get into your bloodstream when you exercise. The hormones your brain releases while you are training increase your muscles’ ability to absorb amino acids from food.
So, when your muscles have a high supply of amino acids, the muscle fibers break less and grow more. As you age, your body’s chances of losing strength increase, resulting in loss of muscle mass and function. As a result, you are at risk of having an injury.
Therefore, you should practice physical activity regularly to keep the muscle loss in control and maintain your strength as you grow old. Furthermore, various studies have shown exercise’s role in improving bone density at a younger age. When you have a higher bone density, your odds of osteoporosis in later life decrease.
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Exercise Can Boost Your Energy Levels
Even if you have various ailments, exercise can be an energy booster. Researchers have found that six weeks of regular physical activity has helped alleviate fatigue for 36 people with persistent lethargy.
People diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) can benefit from exercise to maximize their energy levels. Science has shown that exercise is far more effective than any other treatment to combat CFS.
Apart from that, exercise is a great source of improving lung and heart health. Notably, aerobic exercise helps your cardiovascular system as a whole. The overall benefit of this is you get a significantly high amount of energy to spend your day peacefully.
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Exercise Can Lower Your Risk of Chronic Disease
When you move less and eat more, your body becomes sluggish and more susceptible to chronic diseases. It has been seen that regular physical activity boosts insulin sensitivity, body composition, and cardiovascular health.
Moreover, exercise decreases your blood pressure and cholesterol levels, which helps you have a toned physique and a healthy body. If you want to be free from type-2 diabetes, heart diseases, different cancers, and hypertension, you should work out regularly.
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Exercise Is Good for Healthy Skin
Oxidative stress can have a toll on your skin health as well. Oxidative stress refers to the situation when your body is unable to repair the cell damage completely.
This harm to the body cells can be caused by harmful compounds called free radicals. Free radicals can damage cell structures that can ultimately harm your skin.
Although exercise is helpful for a sound body and mind, excessive exercise can add to your body’s oxidative stress levels. However, exercise can boost your body’s natural antioxidant production if you do moderate and regular workouts. Antioxidants are compounds that help avoid cell damage, repair damaged structures, and keep oxidative stress under control.
Similarly, exercise increases blood flow to the whole body, which induces skin cells to renovate themselves, delaying the symptoms of aging.
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Exercise Can Help With Relaxation and Sleep Quality
Regular physical activity can help you relax while improving your sleep quality. Regarding sleep quality, the energy you lose during your training sessions induces a restorative process while you are asleep.
Furthermore, when you exercise, your body’s temperature increases, which is hypothesized to improve your sleep quality. Many studies have proven this hypothesis by experimenting with training program effects on multiple participants. All of them reported an improvement in sleep quality and a reduction in sleep latency.
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Exercise Can Reduce Inflammation and Pain
Although chronic pain and inflammation can drain your health, you can reduce it if you work out regularly. Contrary to the recommended treatment for chronic pain, inactivity and rest, studies showed that exercise could alleviate pain.
In addition, several studies contribute to the fact that exercise can help manage pain associated with various diseases. Therefore, regular exercise can also combat chronic low back pain, chronic soft tissue disorder, and fibromyalgia.
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Exercise Can Uplift Sex Life
Another interesting fact about exercise is it can boost your libido. By engaging in regular physical activity, you can support your heart and tone body muscles. Not only that, you can achieve enhanced body flexibility and improved blood circulation, guaranteeing a better sex life.
That’s why when you engage in workout plans and follow a healthy diet, you will experience better sexual performance. When your diet is good and the nutrients reach your system, you can enjoy sexual activity frequently.
One study even proved that regular exercise could help increase sexual activity and libido in postmenopausal women. This experiment was carried out on 405 participants, most of whom reported strong sexual desire.
Can You Lose Weight With Exercise?
Most women usually have common regular exercise goals: Look better, feel better, be more confident, prevent illness and enjoy a longer life.
However, most women quit their exercise plans due to not knowing what to do daily, being bored, feeling uncomfortable in clothes, or not wanting to change.
Yet it is easy for women to lose weight if they remember and follow a few factors that influence the weight loss process. Some of them are as follows:
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80% of Your Diet Matters
Losing weight is easier if you work in a dieting state and spend the non-exercise time on your diet correctly. This calls for you to take care of the food you consume besides the time you spend while exercising.
Undoubtedly exercise is great for your health, but if you want to shed fat, it affects no more than 20% of it. The rest of the 80% of your successful weight loss depends on what you eat and how much your portion size is.
As a general rule, you should completely avoid processed and sugary foods. Instead, you can add whole foods to your meal while drinking lots of water. Drinking more water will also stop you from overeating, aiding your weight loss.
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Females Don’t Have as Much Lean Muscle Mass
Compared to men, women have higher body fat percentages. Therefore, females do not carry as much lean muscle mass as males.
The few reasons to quote here are that women do not have high testosterone levels. This hormone is essential for the growth and maintenance of muscle mass. That’s why you find it in almost all bodybuilding supplements.
Generally, men have four to five times more testosterone hormone than women. On the contrary, women tend to have more fat as a requirement for their biological functioning, including breastfeeding and childbearing.
Furthermore, a higher body fat percentage is vital for us to have consistent menstrual cycles.
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Women Face More Hormonal Fluctuations
Women experience more hormonal fluctuations, thanks to the menstrual cycle. Your body hormones constantly fluctuate depending on where you are in your menstrual cycle.
It is all due to these hormones that some days during your cycle, you feel hungrier or more exhausted than normal. Therefore, it can lead you to eat more without keeping the count of calories you are consuming. When you are oblivious to calorie intake, you will find it more difficult than usual to stick to a workout plan and lose weight.
Hormonal fluctuations in pregnancy and menopause are other causes that impact women’s metabolic rates. Also, certain health conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) can result in a significant imbalance in hormone levels. Thus, such women find it even harder to eliminate the extra body weight or keep themselves from becoming overweight.
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Women Are Emotional Eaters
No doubt that men can also be emotional eaters. However, according to some studies, women are more likely to be emotional eaters than men. This is a stress-coping mechanism in females, unlike men who experience a loss of appetite.
Besides, hormonal fluctuations have a hand in females’ emotional eating mechanisms. Some researchers have hypothesized that women, more possibly, have a genetic trait that obstructs serotonin functioning.
Since this hormone is responsible for happy feelings and mood stability, due to its blockage, women experience mood swings. Therefore, women who engage in emotional eating have more weight. Furthermore, their overeating results in lowering the odds of losing weight with exercise.
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Women Have a Lot on Their Plate
Women don’t have time, work, or kids to look after. Let’s be honest; there’s a lot on a woman’s plate. Therefore, it’s easy for women to start feeling discouraged by the low amount of success they have in the weight room.
Just like men, not achieving your goals is frustrating for women. Maybe even more depressing if you are tipping the scales around your waist.
Females aren’t built the same way as males and therefore need special programming to ensure they correctly hit their protein and calorie numbers. However, you can still get lean and build muscle to be proud of.
The solution is not to slow down or burn out in the gym but to increase your workout’s intensity to achieve your goal. Your physical trainer should be helping you hit this number. However, they are usually too busy focusing on strongman tactics such as carrying boulders and pushing trucks up hills. This slows down results, puts women off training, and reduces the overall effectiveness of their approach.
The Weight Loss Workout Plan
According to the weight loss workout plan we have mentioned, females need to do 20-30 minutes of exercise regularly. You can spare some time in the morning or evening as you see fit.
This one-week workout plan is beginner-friendly, and you will be doing Pilates, barre, cardio, and Yoga. In addition, there will be six days of workouts and one day of active rest. Nevertheless, you can continue your active rest day with a yoga routine.
The female weight loss workout plan is low-impact cardio suitable for every woman, starting with her weight loss regimen. You can carry out the exercises even if you have been active before but stopped and desire to boost your strength again. Additionally consume some organic and effective weight loss pills with your workout schedule for better results.
After the First Week of Strength Training
You can follow this workout plan for one week and then proceed depending on how your body feels. If your body says yes to an exercise and you enjoy it regardless of the challenge, you should keep doing it for one more week.
However, if your body dislikes any workout in this routine, feel free to drop that exercise and keep doing the remaining ones.
It’s important to know that doing the same strength training routine weekly can be boring and tiresome. The body quickly adapts to the same workout, causing weight loss to a standstill.
This is often when people quit their fitness programs because they have seen no effect after several weeks. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Another option is to start training your body with some new exercises instead of those you dislike.
Still, starting a new strength training program can be hard. However, following the plan from the beginning is much easier – especially if you have a good coach or follow the right exercises.
Things to Keep In Mind:
- Don’t Go Crazy
If you ever feel you are being harsh on your body, don’t hesitate to take breaks from exercise. You can skip the moves if your body does not feel like following them. Otherwise, you can modify the workout to go at your own pace.
- Stay Hydrated
You should ensure that you are drinking enough fluids after your weight loss workout. It is the time when your body absorbs fluid efficiently. The intake of fluids is essential for thermoregulation and the prevention of cramps, heat stroke, and heat exhaustion.
Therefore, you should drink about one and a half times more fluids than you lose during exercise. However, you should not do this all in one go. Instead, spread it over the next two to four hours after your workout session.
- Have Fun
While it’s quite intimidating to stick to a workout routine, you should not burden your body more than it can handle. Therefore, you must keep it light for yourself to endure the training.
What You’ll Need?
The things you will need during your workout training sessions include:
- A chair, barre, table, or sturdy furniture
- Comfortable sport shoes
- A good and thick yoga mat
One Week Beginner Workout Plan for Women to Lose Weight
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Day One
You can start your weight loss journey strong by doing pilates. Pilates is a great exercise for a leaner, longer, and stronger body.
Not only is this workout challenging, but it is fun at the same time. When doing pilates, you are training your whole body muscles, including the butt, legs, neck, arm, abs, and upper body.
You can execute this exercise for about 20 minutes. To keep track of the number of pilates you have done, you can use workout training apps.
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Day Two
On day two, you need to do a 15-minutes beginner’s cardio workout. After you are done with the first session, you can take a break of two to five minutes and then carry on with the second session.
Thus, you need to complete this exercise in two consecutive sessions for better results. By doing so, you will use 30 minutes of your day to carry out this low-intensity cardio.
Since this is a low-impact cardio workout, it won’t require you to jump around too much. However, this exercise will make you sweaty, which is an indication of your muscles’ working.
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Day Three
You will start day three with an energizing yoga workout. This is a 30 minutes morning yoga session for beginners and is perfect for waking you up in the morning.
It is great for stretching your neck and shoulders, hamstrings, and lower back. You can repeat this yoga workout in two sessions of 15 minutes each for a flexible and energized body.
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Day Four
On day four, we recommend this pilates routine for beginners. This workout will help you to strengthen your core.
Pilates does not call for additional weight lifting other than your body weight. So, you can easily build strong and lean muscles with no equipment at your home.
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Day Five
Day five is about sweating with a HIIT workout for beginners. This higher-intensity interval training is a cardio-focused exercise that is designed for beginners.
Therefore, you can control the intervals of your movements how you want and choose not to go crazy about them. The video has both high and low-impact cardio options, making it easier for you to make your move.
HIIT has multiple health benefits that support your cardiovascular health and boost the natural fat-burning process.
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Day Six
Once you have trained your abs and burned some fats and calories, you are ready to tone your legs and butt. You can start your exercise regimen on day six with this awesome barre workout.
In this exercise, you will need a barre, table, or chair that you can hold onto while doing movements. This workout targets multiple muscle groups. As a result, you will get lean legs and a toned butt.
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Day Seven
Day seven is all about active rest, and it means you do not need to follow any exercise for the day. Instead, you can go for a walk in the park or on a hike to fully enjoy your rest day.
Conclusion: Is This 7-Day Workout Plan For You?
Most weight loss programs fail because women find them too difficult to follow or require a lot of time and money. The innovative and results-driven exercises we have mentioned are so easy to follow that you won’t even notice you have been exercising.
You can start your weight loss journey today with a unique 7-day workout plan and notice results within four weeks. During the journey, do not lose hope and be consistent in your workout to achieve greater results. Only three hours a week and 30 minutes a day will help you reach your goal in no time with a healthy lifestyle.
