How Do I Lose 2 Pounds A Week On A Treadmill? (Explained)

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Simon Gould

Choosing a treadmill to lose weight is a fantastic decision. No other fitness equipment can burn so many calories for each workout. Losing calories means losing weight and 2 pounds a week is ideal and doable. It’s ideal because that is a healthy amount of weight to lose in that period and doable because it’s just a case of getting on and exercising.

How many calories it takes to lose 1 pound of weight

There is an exact correlation to how many calories you burn to how much weight you lose. You need to burn 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound of weight. This may seem like a lot at first especially when you consider that 10 minutes of running burns about 150 calories. However, you burn more if you weigh more and run the same speed and distance.

While you may not burn many calories to start off with, after some time you’ll find you’re able to run or walk for longer distances after some practise. This is what all runners do and means you will burn many calories after some time and you’ll be able to achieve your weight loss goals much quicker. Here we’ll go through how to burn those extra calories and lose those pounds.

Measuring calories burned

You need to be able to measure how many calories you burn when you exercise. This way you know if you’re on plan for your 2 pounds a week of weight loss. This gives you something to aim for when you do your exercise. You will be wanting to burn calories on a regular basis, we mean 4 or 5 days a week. This represents a major lifestyle change and commitment.

If you have weight to lose then you will need to make a change to your regular daily routine and fit exercise into it. The best way to measure the amount of calories burned is by taking the numbers you’ll get from the treadmill console. This is speed, distance or time and how much you weigh. You enter these figures into the treadmill calorie burn calculator and you’re told how many calories you’ve burned.

Walking and running routines for weight loss

As we’ve mentioned you need to build your training or exercise up to where you can burn enough calories to lose 2 pounds of weight. We have devised these routines and they’re all made for treadmill running. The first one is the popular couch to 5k, this plan is to get you running 5k (3.1 miles) by walking and running over 9 weeks. It starts nice and slow.

Fist we’ll give you our walking routines. Yes, substantial calories can be burned by walking especially if you use the incline. Walking is good if you’re quite heavy to begin with or can’t run very far. If this is the case you will lose a lot of weight very quickly when you start. Here are those walking routines:

The running routines will burn a lot of calories as running tends to do. The second one assumes you can already run for about 20 minutes and increases that time for you. This is great to reaching your goal 2 pounds of weight loss per week. The first one is a hill running workout. You can still use the treadmill calorie burn calculator above to measure calories burned on inclines. Just enter the incline amount into the gradient space:

Treadmill walking incline workout

Using the incline burns more calories and so will get you toward the 2 pounds per week goal quicker. Feel free to change the amount of incline and speed to suit you. But make sure you feel your heart rate increase, then you know you’re burning calories. So we’re looking for a brisk walk ideally. This is the kind of workout you can do on multiple days of the week for the best results.

Speed: 3 mph
Weight: 180 lbs
Incline: 5%
Time: 30 minutes
Calories burned: 284

Treadmill jogging workout

This one is gentle jogging. Don’t set an incline as jogging for 30 minutes on one is bad for your joints. You may need to build up slowly until you can achieve 30 minutes in one workout. Try jogging for 10 minutes on your first week and increase the minutes by 5 every week until you reach 30. This is harder than my walking incline workout and therefore burns more calories.

Speed: 5 mph
Weight: 180 lbs
Incline: 0% (flat)
Time: 30 minutes
Calories burned: 371

Use a diet to further your weight loss

Losing 2 pounds per week on a treadmill is hard work so why not lose the weight in an easier way and more of it by watching what you eat as well. Make sure you eat enough to fuel you for your treadmill running. Don’t starve and make yourself ill to get to your desired weight. You will get there you just need to be patient. Dieting by eating 3 meals per day and 1 snack should get you losing weight especially if you’re exercising on top of that.

If you feel you need to eat more because of the exercise is making you hungry then that’s ok. We would recommend a protein shake. The protein shake helps repair your muscles and there’s usually about 200 calories in them which is just right for a post workout snack. Either way approaching your weight loss from 2 angles is a great way to achieving the weight loss.

Summary

By following the information above you will get more than 2 pounds per week weight loss at first if you’re particularly heavy. If not then you will still achieve the 2 pounds you want. As we said before 2 pounds per week is a good goal and a healthy goal as per the CDC who recommend this as a healthy weight loss amount.

If you make a mistake and go for a big meal for some celebration or you miss a scheduled run. Don’t worry and restart where you left off. You can enjoy yourself when you’re trying to lose weight. It’s not meant to be a punishment but the exercise is something you should start enjoying. Do it regularly and you’ll start getting that runners high. Either way you’ll start to lose weight successfully.

Thinking of buying a treadmill? Here’s my favorite, I always recommend it when asked.