Pilates is a popular fitness trend. People who participate in this activity know it can help them strengthen and elongate their muscles, but there are many who also wonder if it is an effective way to lose weight. While the right combination of diet and exercise will help you shed pounds, will Pilates be as effective as a cardio workout when it comes to weight loss?

Keep reading to learn more about Pilates, how to combine it with diet, other exercises, and fat burners for women, to achieve weight loss success.  

Burning Calories with Pilates

One of the simple reasons that Pilates helps you burn calories comes down to simple math. If you are somewhat sedentary in your day-to-day life, or just not very active, a Pilates workout is going to increase the number of calories you expend from your baseline.

For example, if you usually burn 1200 calories per day and you add a 300 calorie workout to your routine, you can burn a total of 1500 calories or up to 25 percent more than what you burned before you added this new workout.

This is true for any exercise you add to your current regimen, not just a Pilates workout. However, you need to understand that an uptick in your activity is also an uptick in how many calories you burn, which will lead directly to weight loss.

Increase Your Metabolic Rate

Another way you can use Pilates for weight loss is because it will impact your total body composition. There are some people who want to lose weight who do not want to look any smaller. Instead, they want a redistribution of weight.

If you were the same weight you are right now, but toned and sculpted, would you want to weigh any less? There is a good chance the answer to this is “no.” For most people, when they look in the mirror, what they want to see is a minimum excess of flex and taut and toned muscles. What this means is more lean muscle mass and much less fat. To change the fat to muscle ratio, you must engage in resistance training.

You can choose from weight training to bodyweight training to help you accomplish this. Pilates will use both. When you engage in Pilates properly, you will master a series of bodyweight exercises that are known as the Pilates mat, along with several routines on different devices. Take note that Pilates routines will use large and heavy springs, rather than weights, which means you will be using different resistance levels that are customized to your capacity and strength.

When you change the composition of your body by adding muscle and reducing your fat, it will positively impact your basal metabolic rate. The more muscles that you can add, the more calories you can burn while you are at rest. You can burn more calories while you are at rest just by adding a larger amount of lean muscle to your body.

The Effect of Pilates

Even the above reasons are not enough to sell you on engaging in a Pilates workout for weight loss, there is another reason to consider. This reason is referred to as the Pilates effect. When you engage in a Pilates workout, you will be forced to lift your abdominal muscles up and in, to lengthen your neck, and retract your shoulders. By the end of your class or workout session, your spine is going to elongate, your waste will narrow, and your chest is going to lift. You will also see a complete change in your posture, which will leave you feeling taller, longer, and feeling better.

As you can see, Pilates has a lot to offer, including weight loss. If you want to improve your body and how you feel, this is a great workout routine to consider. It will provide you an array of benefits that are going to pay off in the long run