How to Lose Weight on a Treadmill in a Month

Shedding a considerable amount of weight in a month isn’t something unworldly, especially if it’s with the help of a great fat-burning machine like the treadmill. 

A treadmill doesn’t only promote weight loss but also increases your aerobic fitness, boosts your mood, improves your sleep, and enhances your immune system. There are many benefits you can get from a treadmill, and best of all, it helps get that stubborn belly fat to walk, run or take a hike from the comfort of your home gym.

But we understand where you’re coming from. You want that “lean shape” as fast as possible, preferably in just a month. Well, it’s not completely impossible. 

In this blog post, we’ll give you an idea about the results you should expect after one month of exercising on a treadmill. Then, we’ll discuss some tips to boost these results. And finally, we have an easy yet effective workout plan that can help you lose weight in just a month. So shall we start? 

Losing Weight on a Treadmill in a Month: Expectations vs. Reality

Setting a realistic goal is the most crucial step in your weight loss journey to stay focused and motivated till the end – emphasis on “realistic.”

If you expect to lose 20 pounds or more after exercising on a treadmill for a month, you’re going to be disappointed by what the scale reads by the end of your plan. And this disappointment might result in you ditching the training all together. 

So what are the realistic treadmill weight loss results you should expect? You can generally lose up to 10 pounds in a month by regularly training on the treadmill and following a calorie-deficit diet. But the exact weight loss depends on many personal factors, including:

• Your starting weight 
• Your calorie intake
• The speed by which you walk, jog, or run on the treadmill
• The number of days per week you workout
• Whether you swing your arms and engage your upper body in the exercise

To give you some numbers you can work with, one pound of fat equals 3,500 calories. That means you need to burn this number of calories to lose a pound of weight. Now, you need to know how many calories you burn by working out on a treadmill. 

According to Harvard Health Publishing, when you exercise on a treadmill for 30 minutes, you burn:

• 167 calories walking at 4 mph
• 372 calories running at 6 mph
• 465 calories running at 7.5 mph

Suppose you run at 6 mph and therefore lose about 372 calories during each workout. That means you’ll create a 3,500-calorie deficit and lose one pound every 9 sessions. As a result, you have the potential to slim down 3-4 pounds in a month. 

If you combine this treadmill routine with a calorie-deficit diet, you’ll be able to increase your fat loss to up to 10 pounds in the same period. 

How to Speed Up Weight Loss Using a Treadmill for a Month

The body’s response to cardio exercise is unpredictable. It might reach a plateau in the middle of the month and stop burning calories, bringing all your fitness goals to a halt. The following tips will help you burn more calories and therefore speed up your weight loss process.

Stay in the Fat-Burning Zone

Don’t you sometimes finish a workout and feel like you haven’t exerted any energy? That’s because you were doing a very high-intensity training or exercising at a very low one and were generally out of your fat-burning zone. 

According to peer-reviewed studies by the Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise (MSSE), the rate by which your body burns fats becomes at its maximum when you’re at about 70% of your maximum heart rate. That’s because, at this point, your body resorts to fat stores for energy instead of basic sugars and carbohydrates, which leads to more calorie burn. 

So for optimal weight loss, you need to exercise on the treadmill while you’re in your fat-burning zone. And to determine it, you must first calculate your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220 and then multiplying it by 70%.

For example, if you’re 30 years old, your max heart rate will be 190 bpm, and the zone where you burn the most calories will be at a heart rate of 133 bpm. This is the number you should be seeing on the heart rate monitor while running to achieve the best results. 

HIIT Is the Key

Walking regularly at a moderate pace won’t do you any good after a couple of weeks. At some point, your metabolism will just adapt to this activity level and stop burning calories.

High-intensity interval training exercises, on the other hand, burn calories like no other. It doesn’t give your body the chance to adapt and turns it into a calorie-burning furnace that keeps working for hours even after finishing the workout. 

There are many ways you can do intervals on the treadmill, the easiest of which is the 2:1 exercise. To do this workout:

1. Warm up at a brisk walk pace for 5 minutes.
2. Run for 2 minutes at 7 mph.
3. Follow it with a one-minute walk at 4 mph.
4. Repeat these intervals 5 times.
5. Cool down by walking for 5 minutes.

Spice up Your Routine 

One of the best things about the treadmill is that it’s very versatile, allowing you to choose from multiple workouts and alternate between strength training and cardio. 

Apart from HIIT workouts, you can just use the treadmill’s multiple exercise options to vary your routine and boost your calorie-burning potential. 

You can use the incline feature to add hills, which will work more muscles, or alternate the speed and shift between brisk walking and vigorous running. Just don’t keep your treadmill on the same settings for more than a week. If you play with different ranges of motion like that, you’ll definitely burn more calories. 

Go Longer Durations

Try to go longer with your treadmill workouts. Even if you’re scheduling the day’s session for 30 minutes only, consider going for another 5-10 minutes at a higher intensity. These extra minutes can help you lose weight more than the rest of the workout. How so? 

After such a grueling workout, your body will need to replenish its energy stores, replace oxygen consumption, and regulate your temperature and heart rate, all of which will require more energy. So it’ll enter the “after-burn” phase, where it’ll burn calories while you’re at rest to perform these functions.

Just beware that this isn’t a technique that you can do regularly, like HIIT exercises. Your body can get used to the extra effort here too. So Just do it from time to time when you feel like it so that you can reap its benefits. 

Watch Your Food Intake

All the above workouts and tips won’t be of any use if you’re not watching your diet, especially after training sessions. Of course, trimming around 1,500 calories per week from your diet is essential, but the type of food you eat is of great significance as well. 

Instead of relying on carbs, beef up your intake of lean proteins, and focus more on healthy fats than saturated fats. Healthy fats are like olive oil, butter, and those found in fish and nuts. Also, lower your consumption of beverages with added sugars and replace them with water and sugar-free coffee. 

1-Month Treadmill Weight Loss Plan

Stephanie Mansour, the certified personal trainer, weight-loss coach, and host of “Step It Up with Steph,” designed this 1-month treadmill plan for beginners and advanced runners at the same time. The routine is based on interval training where there will be changes in speed and incline throughout the plan to keep the heart rate elevated and the fat-burning switch ON. 

The plan consists of three workouts and two rest days that you’re going to rotate between throughout the week as follows:

• Day 1: Walking
• Day 2: Speed Training
• Day 3: Climbing
• Day 4: Rest day
• Day 5: Speed Training
• Day 6: Walking 
• Day 7: Rest day

Then, you’ll repeat it all again for the rest of the month. Here’s how you can do each workout:

Treadmill Walking

This is the easiest part of the plan. All you have to do is choose a speed you can walk briskly to and maintain it for 15-20 minutes. The pace could be anything from 2.5 to 4 mph. Just make sure you’re challenging yourself a bit. 

Speed Training

In this workout, we’re speeding things up. But first, you’ll have to determine your “sprinting pace.” For beginners, this is the speed that you can’t maintain for more than one minute, while for experienced runners, it’s their usual fast running pace.

To do this exercise, you need to warm up for 3-5 minutes first. Then, go for a one-minute sprint followed by a one-minute walk. Continue alternating between the two speeds for 15 minutes, then cool down for another 5 minutes. 

Climbing 

To add some strength training to the mix, we’re adding a steep incline in this part of the workout plan. 

Choose a slope that you find tough to climb (again, don’t go easy on yourself to benefit from the exercise). It could be anything from 5-10%. Then, after warming up by walking for 3-5 minutes, alternate between a one-minute climb and a one-minute walk for 15 minutes. After that, finish with a 5-minute slow walk to cool down. 

Ready, Set, Go Burn Some Body Fat!

So this was how to lose weight on a treadmill in a month. 

When it comes to losing weight quickly, the treadmill is the best fitness equipment you can choose. But you have to keep in mind that even this fantastic calorie-burner doesn’t work magic. It all depends on the efforts you’re willing to throw into the equation to make it work, from following a healthy diet to keeping up with your exercise plan.