Losing a significant amount of weight can take time, and patience is golden. Your journey should be done at a safe and healthy pace that best suits your body. At the same time, you can give your weight-loss process a jumpstart by establishing a goal that you can work toward and a clear method regarding how you want to reach that point. With that in mind, you’ll want to check out the following four-week weight-loss challenge from certified personal trainer Alicia Jones.
Jones tells Eat This, Not That!, “When trying to lose weight, the name of the game is to enhance as much lean mass as possible in order to rev up your metabolic rate. (And no, ladies, this won’t bulk you up, for women we don’t have enough testosterone to bulk up.) This is because lean mass is highly metabolically active. It needs more calories in order to maintain its tone and strength.”
Jones stresses the importance of enhancing your lean muscle mass by targeting as many muscles as you can with every exercise you perform. To make every move count, she suggests jumping on the following exercises for a four-week weight-loss challenge that will lead to a slimmer and healthier you.
“Because these exercises are intense for full-body lean muscle growth, which will help you lose weight and tone from head to toe, you only need to do these exercises two to three days a week,” Jones points out. “Remember, it’s actually during rest that the body repairs stronger, and you work the fat-burning potential! So less is more!”
1. Lunge with Row
The lunge with a row targets every major muscle in your body. Jones recommends starting your four-week weight-loss challenge with this variation.
How To Do It:
- Hold a dumbbell in your left hand.
- Take a big step back with your left leg.
- Bend your right knee to lower into a lunge position.
- Hinge forward and extend your left arm toward the ground.
- Row the dumbbell up toward your torso.
- Lower the weight back toward the floor.
- Complete 1 to 3 sets of 15 reps per side.
2. Fast Squats
Next, gear up for fast squats. “Another trick when using exercise for weight loss is adding a HIIT component (high-intensity interval training) into your weight training workout,” Jones explains. “That way, not only do you enhance lean muscle and speed up your metabolic rate, but you burn more calories over the next 72 hours.” This exercise helps you accomplish exactly that.
How To Do It:
- Begin with your feet planted shoulder-width apart.
- Bend both knees and press your hips back to lower into a squat.
- Descend until your thighs become parallel to the floor.
- Press back up.
- As you feel more comfortable, begin to do this faster and continue for a full minute.
- Rest for one and a half minutes before completing the exercise again until you reach 3 to 5 sets.
3. Bridge with Chest Press
Next, you’ll want to tackle a bridge with a chest press. As Jones points out, “Again, working the big muscles of the body is the best way to lose weight and burn more calories because you’re hitting more muscles.”
How To Do It:
- Lie flat on your back on the floor, holding a dumbbell in each hand.
- Make sure your feet are planted on the ground and your knees are shoulder-width apart.
- Press through your heels to lift your hips until your body forms a bridge.
- Remain in the bridge as you perform a chest press with the dumbbells, pressing them over your chest.
- Aim for 3 sets of 15 reps.
4. Boxing Jab HIIT Exercise
“This HIIT exercise tones the arms and gets your abs and back involved in the exercise all at once,” says Jones. “What I especially love about this exercise is that everyone can do it. It’s low impact and easy on the joints, but it literally ‘packs a punch.’ Once again, you’re both engaging big muscles such as your back, abs, and legs, but you’re also getting the HIIT component for maximum fat burn.”
How To Do It:
- Begin standing in a boxing stance.
- Make fists with your hands, positioning them in front of your face.
- Twist your hips and torso to the left while taking a “punch” with your left hand. Keep your right hand by your face.
- Twist back and switch hands.
- Complete 2 minutes of punching and rest for 1 minute.
- Complete 2 rounds.
5. Burpees
Finally, to wrap up this productive four-week weight-loss challenge, you’ll want to do burpees. Jones says of this part of the workout, “This is another exercise that acts as both HIIT and full-body toning.”
How To Do It:
- Stand tall with your feet shoulder-width apart.
- Lower into a squat.
- Place your hands on the floor between your feet.
- Extend one leg back, then the other, to form a plank.
- Perform an optional pushup.
- Jump your feet back into a squat.
- Explosively jump up.
- Complete 3 sets of 15 reps.
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