How Zumba Helps you to Lose Weight? Zumba is a fun, high-energy aerobic workout to Latin-inspired dance music. The choreographed dance moves are designed to get your body moving and your blood pumping.
With the emphasis on the hip-swaying and mid-section movements, it will work your core muscles, and the jumping and lunging working your glutes and leg muscles.
The dance moves will also help your flexibility and coordination – over time. The classes are usually 60 minutes long. You should be exercising for at least 60 minutes a day and eating a healthy balanced diet with the appropriate calorie intake to lose weight.
You can use my calorie calculator to work out how many calories you will require to lose weight.
How Zumba Helps you to Lose Weight? Zumba offers a chance to burn off up to 369 calories. Attending a Zumba class that also uses light weights will burn off more calories as your body has to work harder with the weights and is strengthening and toning the muscles.
A regular Zumba class will get your heart rate into the calorie and fat burning zone as it is aerobic exercise, working the core muscles, leg muscles, and glute muscles will not only burn calories but strengthen and tone these muscles.
The more muscle you have the more calories you will burn. Incorporating a Zumba class into your week is a really fun way to add exercise to your life.
You will be dancing your way to burning off those calories and unwanted body fat, toning the muscles in your body, increasing your stamina, and reducing your stress levels.
Is Zumba a Good Way to Lose Belly Fat?
Zumba is aerobic exercise and aerobic exercise is a great way to burn calories and fat. In fact, a 60 minute Zumba class burns around 369 calories.
As the dance movements to Latin style music concentrate on the hips and midsection. You will be mainly working your core muscles, and with the jumping and lunging dance movements, you will also be working on your leg muscles and your glutes.
Since a lot of excess fat goes to the stomach area, eating a healthy balanced diet with the correct number of calories for you coupled with a high-energy Zumba workout will definitely help lose that unwanted belly fat.
Professor Michael Jensen of the Mayo Clinic says that intense aerobic exercise, coupled with a healthy balanced diet will result in a far leaner core.
If you have a good diet but don’t exercise you may lose weight, but as well as losing fat you will also lose muscle which will mean that you also lose strength.
Maintaining muscle is the important factor of healthy weight loss; it is the fat you want to lose and not your muscles.
Muscles burn calories where fat does not, so the more you tone the more you burn, the more muscle you have the faster your metabolism works.
If you need to work out how many calories you should be consuming daily, you can use this BMR calculator.
Does Zumba Help Tone Your Body?
Regular Zumba concentrates mainly on your core muscles, legs, and glutes, so it won’t tone up your arms or your back.
However, there are Zumba classes that do offer the Zumba workout using light weights, which will not only increase your calorie burn but will also help tone your arms and back muscles.
Toning muscles is really beneficial to losing weight, as muscles burn up more calories and fat and increase your metabolism, so the more muscle you have the more calories and fat you will burn.
If you do Zumba with light weights you get a great aerobic workout that burns those calories and fat PLUS the added bonus of toning your arms and back muscles along with your core, leg, and glute muscles, a full aerobic workout that will tone your entire body.
You will be looking and feeling great as well as increasing your stamina and energy levels as your metabolism will be running higher and you will have more energy throughout the day.
A healthy balanced, calorie-controlled diet is absolutely necessary when you are exercising and toning your muscles.
It is essential that you work out how many calories you should be consuming each day; you can use a BMR calculator to work this out.
I have successfully used the BMR calculator on this page If you are taking in too many calories then your progress for toning and losing weight will be very slow, and if you are not taking in enough calories while exercising your body will go into starvation mode and you will start to lose muscle.
How Often Should you Do Zumba to See Results?
To lose weight, you should be eating a healthy balanced diet with the right number of calories for you, as well as getting at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times a week – this is what health professionals advise.
Nutrition Professor Christine Rosenbloom states that a calorie-controlled diet and 60 minutes a day of moderate exercise will help weight loss and weight maintenance.
Zumba classes tend to run 60 minutes per class and are of high intensity as they are aerobic exercise.
The aerobic exercise helps increase your heart rate to the fat and calorie burning zone; the Zumba movements are designed to work your core muscles, leg, and glute muscles.
The core muscles, leg, and glute muscles will start to tone, which increases the muscle strength of these areas, as muscle burns more calories and fat, the more you tone the more calories and fat you will burn.
So, if you really want to see results then attending 2 to 3 classes a week will really get your metabolism working!
To lose 1lb of fat you need to reduce your calories by 3500 a week. So if you can do 3 x 60 minutes Zumba session a week you could expect to lose ½ lbs of fat a week.
If you are unable to attend 2 or 3 classes a week, because of time, money, or class availability, then once a week is definitely better than sitting in front of the tv.
You can always add to your Zumba exercise at home, playing some music, and dancing around using the moves you have learned in class. You may not get the same sweat on at home but you will still be using and strengthening those all-important muscles!
As with any type of exercise the more effort you put in the better the results you will get from it.
Is Zumba Really a Good Workout?
Not everyone is happy to go into a gym alone and go on the running machine for an hour or lift weights for an hour to get the desired aerobic exercise and muscle toning; this is where Zumba is different.
Zumba is a really good workout because it is less like an exercise class and more like an hour in a nightclub dancing around with your friends having fun.
It is fun, really fun, you are learning dance moves and jumping around using your whole body, working your core muscles, legs, and glute muscles.
The music is upbeat and really gets your heart pumping -it gets your heart rate into the calorie fat burning zone; the dance moves not only to strengthen your core, glutes, and leg muscles but also to improve your flexibility and coordination.
If you don’t have any coordination, to begin with, well that’s ok, not many of us do.
I know that in my Zumba class there was always giggling as it takes time to learn the moves and get them right.
Is Zumba Safe for People Over 40?
Zumba is a high-intensity aerobic workout, and it is also high impact on joints such as ankles, knees, and hips as there is a lot of twisting, jumping, and lunging around in the dance moves. Because of the high-intensity, Zumba helps you to lose weight and you have loads of fun at the same time.
Before beginning any new form of exercise, you should speak to your doctor if you have pre-existing medical conditions and/or injuries. Once the doctor has given the go-ahead then you should speak to the instructor and discuss any injuries or pre-existing medical conditions that you may have.
It is always a good idea to speak to a new instructor to let them know of any adjustments that you may have to make to the routines because of medical conditions or injuries. Most forms of exercise can be modified to accommodate people – after all, we are all different.
If you are over 40 years old and are in reasonably good health then Zumba is a great way to burn off excess calories and start toning those core, leg, and glute muscles.
Even if you are not in great shape, Zumba offers different levels of exercise classes. Start slowly and work your way up – beginners, intermediate, and advanced.
Have fun dancing away those calories and toning your muscles!
