This places considerable strain on physical and mental health, however, there is a solution — Exercise!
Exercise is a powerful equalizer, supporting weight loss, which can improve metabolic health, decrease inflammation, and strengthen bones and joints.
In this article, we discuss the best fat-burning exercises for women over 40. We cover exercise types, workouts, and tips for maximizing fat burn after 40.
Why Fat-Burning Changes After 40
Fat-burning changes after 40 for women due to the decline in estrogen. Research shows that this decline in estrogen can reduce energy expenditure.
Energy expenditure is also reduced during midlife, as daily movement decreases, and muscle mass experience declines, with sources illustrating a reduction of 3–8% per decade after 30. This leads to weakness and reduced function, further reducing movement and the decline of energy expenditure.
This can increase weight gain, leading to obesity which studies show is linked to conditions including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure.
Best Fat-Burning Exercises for Women Over 40
Long ago, we used to believe that burning fat strictly came from long cardio sessions. Thankfully, the past few decades have revealed that there are in fact several ways to burn fat, which are just as effective.
Below, we highlight the best fat-burning exercise for women over 40 to help you determine which is most suitable for your training.
Before we explore your options we must preface that you must be in a calorie deficit to burn fat. This is when you consume fewer calories than your daily energy expenditure. This creates a negative energy balance, which results in your body relying on stored energy to fuel workouts, leading to fat loss.
Strength Training for Fat Loss and Muscle Preservation
Strength training is a phenomenal form of exercise for fat loss. While other forms of exercise provide energy expenditure during your workout, strength training burns energy during sessions and boosts metabolism after your workout.
Research shows that even a short duration of strength training can increase resting energy expenditure post-workout for up to 24 hours. The article reveals that performing sessions on back-to-back sessions can provide a chronic increase in energy expenditure, boosting metabolism.
When this is combined with a calorie deficit, it will help you burn fat at rest, leading to incredible results.
Low-Impact Cardio That Burns Fat Without Stressing Joints
Low-impact cardio is incredible for burning fat. While many associate fat-burning with moderate to high-intensity cardio for long durations, low-impact cardio at a low to moderate intensity is just as effective.
Sources reveal that steady-state cardio performed at a low to moderate intensity achieved similar results as high-intensity interval training, however, it can take longer.
Further research shows that aerobic training (cardio) was effective in reducing total body mass and fat mass. While additional sources highlight its capacity for developing strength, and cardiovascular fitness and improving osteoarthritic pain and function.
Low-impact cardio such as walking, cycling, rowing, elliptical, and swimming means less pressure on joints, making it accessible to all ability and experience levels to burn fat.
Furthermore, low-impact training can be performed at a lower intensity, making it more enjoyable, which can improve adherence for long-term results.
HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) for Maximum Burn
HIIT is a powerful tool for maximizing fat loss. Characterized by short, repetitive bouts of high-intensity exercise with short periods of rest or low-intensity exercise, sources show that is excellent for inducing weight loss, reducing body fat, and improving cardiorespiratory fitness while rescuing cardiometabolic disorders.
HIIT sessions can consist of calisthenics, sprinting, and plyometrics, which can increase muscle mass, endurance, and explosiveness. Best of all, because of its high intensity it can get incredible results in a shorter amount of time compared to steady-state cardio.
This makes it favorable for anyone with limited time to train, or those who prefer high-intensity sessions.
How to Structure a Weekly Workout Routine
To create a weekly workout routine, first, your schedule and training preferences. Sure, we can program the most effective program for fat loss, however, if clashes with our lifestyle and training style, it can make adherence challenging.
Below we discuss how to structure a weekly routine, highlighting the key components that will safely get you incredible results.
Balancing Cardio, Strength, and Recovery
The key to creating a great workout routine is to balance your cardio, strength, and recovery. While many people believe training every day is the fastest way to incredible results, they soon find out that it is unsustainable, leading to injury, poor performance, fatigue, and poor performance, which derails their routine.
We now know that fat loss's biggest components come from a calorie deficit. Research shows that 65–75% of your total energy expenditure comes from your basal metabolic rate (BMR) which is the amount of calories you burn at rest. When you consume fewer calories than your BMR, you will be losing weight just through daily function.
What this means is that all the other components come secondary for burning fat and weight.
If your goal is weight loss, we recommend structuring your training around resistance training, programming a minimum of three sessions per week. From here, we suggest adding at least one cardio session (steady-state or HIIT), and at least one dedicated recovery day.
This may sound like a lot, especially if you are new to working out, however, training three to four days ensures you are keeping active, building muscle, and enhancing function, all while burning fat.
Sample 3-Day and 5-Day Workout Plans
To show you how this works we have created a sample three-day and five-day workout plan. Each program will contain strength training, cardio, and recovery components, and a weekly schedule to show you how they should be structured.
Sample 3-Day Workout Plan
The following three-day sample workout plan for beginners consists of full-body strength training and steady-state cardio workouts. This type of training is suitable for those who have limited time in their schedule, but still want to increase strength and muscle mass while boosting their fat-burning potential.
Weekly Schedule
Full-Body Workout
Steady State Cardio
Sample 5-Day Workout Plan
This is a five-day sample workout plan for intermediate gym goers. It contains three-day strength training sessions (push, pull, legs split) one steady-state cardio, and one recovery session. This creates a balance that can support muscle growth, fat loss, and recovery.
The push, pull, and leg workout routine is a split workout routine that categorizes workouts into movement patterns. This helps you build muscle mass, strength, and function while boosting your metabolism for fat loss.
Recovery sessions can consist of a walk outdoors, light stretching, meditation, massage, or time away from exercise. This will help you actively recover and form healthy habits away from the training.
Weekly Schedule
Push Workout
Pull Workout
Leg Workout
HIIT Workout
This HIIT workout is a circuit designed to increase cardiorespiratory fitness and burn fat. Each exercise is to be performed one after another for 20 seconds, followed by a 10-second rest. The circuit contains three to four rounds, with a short 60-second break between rounds.
Listening to Your Body and Preventing Burnout
The pursuit of weight and fat loss can often be so intense that we adopt an all-or-nothing mindset. At the beginning of training the improvement in energy levels and body composition provides a significant boost to motivation, leading to tunnel vision which can make it difficult to take time off.
However, this is unsustainable as soon after feelings of fatigue, poor performance, and negative mood begin to creep in, signaling the signs of burnout, which can ultimately stall and even derail your workout routine.
It is vital to listen to your body at all times, this can help you identify the signs of burnout, which include:
- Continuous muscle and joint soreness
- Poor sleep
- Poor training performance
- Depression
- Disinterest
- Impaired immune function
- Elevated stress level
We strongly recommend programming rest and recovery days. This will help your body recover from your intense training session, and allow your mind to decompress from the constant thoughts of dieting and weight loss.
Tips for Maximizing Fat Burn After 40
Eating healthy, lifting weights, and performing cardio workouts aren’t the only things you can do to burn fat. There are nuances, which can be modified to improve results. Below, we discuss tips to maximize fat burn to ensure you are getting the most out of each session.
Focus on Progressive Overload in Strength Training
Progressive overload is essential for continued growth with strength training. Sources show that incremental increasing sets, repetition, resistance, and intensity gradually increase stress on the body, leading to an increase in muscle mass and strength.
This does not mean that you should be hitting your personal bests each session, but rather that you are aiming for small consistent improvements each session.
Importance of Recovery, Sleep, and Cortisol Management
Sleep is the most important factor for optimal health and well-being, and it's not even close!
Studies show that sleep is important for cognitive function, mood, mental health, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and metabolic health.
Conversely, sources show that sleep deprivation negatively affects health, impairing metabolism, hormone regulation, and gene expression, with links to disorders including type 2 diabetes high blood pressure, impaired immune function, mood disorders, cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, and dementia.
How does this affect recovery and fat loss? Well, studies reveal that poor sleep increases the secretion of the hunger hormone ghrelin while reducing the satiety hormone leptin. This leads to an increased appetite. Further research shows that disturbed sleeping patterns lead to increased energy intake through high-fat and carbohydrate foods, making it challenging to lose weight.
Meanwhile, scientific evidence.) shows that sleep deprivation impairs recovery after exercise. When sleep is insufficient can increase inflammation, affecting the immune system which impairs recovery and repair of muscle tissue.
To avoid this, seven to nine hours is recommended for adults aged 18-60 years for optimal health.
Nutrition Tips to Support Your Workout Goals
Correct nutrition is vital for weight loss. It allows you to modify calorie intake to form a calorie deficit and prioritize nutrient intake to build muscle, maintain fullness, and boost metabolism.
As we know, forming a calorie deficit allows us to burn fat at rest. However, when calories are cut without considering nutrient intake, it can lead to feelings of hunger, and fatigue, which can impact adherence.
To remedy this, we have listed tips to support your workout and weight loss goals.
Track Your Nutrition
When setting out to burn body fat, you must track your nutrition. As mentioned, cutting calories isn’t enough. Sure, you will lose weight, but can come from fat, muscle mass, and water weight.
Alternatively, when nutrition is tracked, you can manipulate your calorie and nutrient intake to ensure you are losing fat while retaining your muscle mass, and energy levels.
To track your nutrition, we recommend using an online calorie calculator or app such as Reverse Health to identify your daily calorie intake and macronutrient intake. This will help you stay in control of your nutrition, increasing your chances of success.
Prioritize Protein Intake
Whether you are aiming to build muscle, lose weight, or burn fat, you must prioritize protein intake. Protein has many roles in training. Sources show that protein intake helps build muscle mass and recovery. The recommended daily intake for active individuals is 1.4–1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. However, when there is a calorie deficit and training is focused on weight loss, these requirements increase to 2.3–3.1g/kg/day to preserve muscle mass.
Additionally, studies show that protein can increase satiety and increase thermogenesis, which research defines as the process by which the body increases energy expenditure in response to a meal. This leads to reduced appetite, while slightly elevating energy expenditure, contributing to weight loss.
To capitalize on these benefits, we recommend adding 25–30 grams of protein to each meal. This helps boost your metabolism and reduce hunger, helping you maintain your calorie deficit.
Add Complex Carbs and Fiber
Adding complex carbohydrates and fiber to meals is a powerful way to boost energy levels, improve fullness, and promote gut health. Sources show that complex carbohydrates contain three or more sugars, meaning they take longer to digest, leading to a gradual increase in blood sugar.
Meanwhile, fiber has been shown to promote healthy gut bacteria, and improve regularity, and satiety. Foods such as whole grain, quinoa, brown rice, vegetables, legumes, and fruit are all excellent sources of complex carbohydrates and fiber. Adding these foods to each meal will give you a healthy boost of sustainable energy.
Plan Your Meals
Once you have determined your calorie and macronutrient intake you can begin planning and preparing your meal. Planning your meals enables you to plan nutrient-dense meals that fit into your daily calorie limit and contain the correct balance of carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats.
Additionally, having meals prepped and ready removes the decision-making process at meal time during the week. This can be a game-changer, stopping you from reaching from eating snacks and unhealthy meal options, leading to greater adherence to your nutrition plan.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The goal of fat loss can come with several pitfalls which not only derail your progress, but negatively impact your health. Below, we highlight these common mistakes and share our solution to help you achieve your goals.
Training Without Recovery
There is no doubt about it, exercise is incredible for our health. However, when performed without recovery it can lead to overtraining which negatively impacts your health. As mentioned, training without allowing for rest days can impact recovery, leading to prolonged soreness, fatigue, depression, and a compromised immune system.
We recommend programming regular recovery days and rest days to allow your body to replenish energy and repair damaged muscle tissue. Studies recommend resting 48–72 hours between training muscle groups for adequate recovery, however, this can be modified with the right programming.
For example, if you are performing a full-body workout plan, a day's rest between sessions is required for recovery. However, you can work around this by performing a split program such as the push, pull, and leg split. This program allows you to target opposing muscle groups each session, allowing you to train on back-to-back days.
Sticking to Only Cardio Without Lifting Weights
We understand some people prefer cardio over weights, but the truth is that avoiding resistance training means you are leaving a lot on the table when it comes to fat loss. As mentioned, resistance training burns energy during session and elevates resting energy expenditure post-workout. While cardio burns energy, it only does so during your workout.
Now, we aren’t saying ditch the cardio for weight, but rather that you should add resistance training to your programming. Adding two sessions a week alongside your cardio routine can not only help you burn fat, but it will improve your function and strength.
In fact, one study showed that performing resistance training improved running economy by up to 8%, leading to greater performance. These benefits combined with its ability to boost metabolism make it an invaluable component to the weight loss cardio routine.
Ignoring Hormonal Changes and Stress Management
At times weight loss can be stressful as we agonize over exercise, nutrition, and planning for the best results. Sadly, when we become hyper-focused on the bottom line (scale weight) it makes it easy to overlook stress levels and hormonal changes.
During the fat loss and fitness process, you must continually remind yourself that this is about your health, which not only encompasses your weight and progress in the gym, but also your energy levels, hormones, and mental health.
Several things can contribute to stress, including jobs, life events, and sleep. A 2018 study found that stressful periods can increase cortisol by 9 times compared to relaxed periods.
This is echoed by further research which suggests that when this continues and becomes chronic it can lead to physiological and psychological effects such as chronic illness, anxiety, depression, and seeking comfort in food.
While it can be challenging to completely eliminate stress, we can actively work toward reducing it. This can be achieved by reducing exposure to stressors, improving sleeping habits, practicing mindfulness, and through exercise.
Fat-Burning Workouts You Can Do at Home
Fat-burning workouts aren’t exclusively for the gym, they can be performed at home, and almost anywhere. Below, we present full-body strength, low-impact cardio, and core and balance workouts to help you burn fat.
20-Minute Full Body Strength Workout
This full-body strength workout can be performed anywhere. It contains exercises that can be performed with equipment of body weight, enabling you to fit in an effective strength training session even when you don’t have access to a gym or equipment.
Each exercise will be listed with a weighted and unweighted version, making it easy to adjust the session to meet your needs.
Joint-Friendly Low-Impact Cardio Routine
This low-impact cardio routine is to perform as a circuit at a moderate intensity, with as little impact as possible. This circuit contains calisthenics movements and gentle plyometrics which makes it possible to perform at home.
The exercises in the circuit are to be performed one after another with no rest, with a 60-second rest at the end of the round. This is to be performed three times.
Modification
For individuals battling joint pain, we recommend performing exercises such as jogging on the spot and mountain as a march. This will still increase your heart rate without impacting your joints.
Core and Balance Exercises for Stability and Strength
The following workout is designed to enhance your core stability, balance, and functional strength. Like the strength routine above, this will contain exercises that can be performed with and without equipment.
Recap: Building a Fat-Burning Fitness Routine That Works After 40
Building a fat-burning fitness routine isn’t about choosing the best exercise for the job. While strength training, low-impact cardio and HIIT individually are great fat-burners, it’s when they are combined that you really see results.
This means that when you build your routine, find a way to include:
- 3 x Strength Training Session Per Week
- 1 x Low-Impact Cardio Session
- 1 x HIIT session
When this volume of exercise is combined with a calorie deficit, you will see incredible fat loss results.
Sustainable Exercise for Hormonal and Metabolic Health
Creating a sustainable exercise routine for hormonal and metabolic health comes from setting a realistic and achievable schedule and programs. While creating the ultimate program can be fun, it may not be sustainable, leading to poor adherence.
To remedy this, optimize your programs based on preferred exercise, comfortable scheduling, and what you can do without adding stress to your life. This will help you control stress, decreasing its impact on your physical and psychological health.
Long-Term Mindset: Progress Over Perfection
Setting out to burn fat is about progress, not perfection. Too often people get caught up in perfect calorie intake, macro ratios, and workouts, and sadly when they see one of these components fall out of alignment, it derails their focus.
Fat loss like all progress is rarely linear. During your quest to lose weight, you will gain some, and lose it again. But instead of freaking out, understand that weight fluctuates due to water, increase muscle mass, going to the bathroom, and fat loss.
When it does fluctuate, remain calm, step back, and evaluate the situation and the things that may be contributing to these changes. If it's small, it's probably just bodily functions. And if it is small but stalls your progress, keep calm and adjust.
Remember, think progress over perfection.
Adapting Your Routine as Your Body Changes
As you progress and your body changes, certain adjustments to exercise and nutrition can be made to continue fat loss or sustain a healthy weight.
This is because, when you lose weight, the body's daily energy requirement decreases. For example, in the beginning, your daily allowance is 1,800 calories per day. To lose weight, you create a calorie deficit, bringing your allowance down to 1,600 kcal/day.
Now, after months of training, you have successfully burned fat and lost weight. However, your weight loss has stalled. This is because your weight loss has reduced your daily allowance. For example, say it comes down to 1,650. Now, this only creates a deficit of 50 calories. To continue losing fat, you need to decrease calories further.
However, let’s say you love your current weight and want to maintain it. Here you should match your calorie intake with your daily allowance, helping you maintain your weight.
Now, if you were performing a cardio routine multiple steady-state cardio sessions per week. Here you could reduce the number of sessions or the duration.
Fat loss and weight loss is about observing the changes and listening to your body, then adjusting your nutrition and exercise accordingly. Paying close attention to not only your results, but your energy levels, hormones, and overall health will help you lose weight, and optimize your health.
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FAQs
What are the most effective fat-burning exercises for women over 40?
Compound strength moves, walking, HIIT, and resistance circuits are best to burn fat and protect lean muscle.
Can I still burn fat efficiently after 40?
Yes—with a focus on strength training, metabolic workouts, and hormone-friendly recovery, fat loss is absolutely achievable.
How does menopause affect fat-burning workouts?
Menopause can slow metabolism, but strength-based routines and smart intervals help restore fat-burning efficiency.
How many times a week should I do fat-burning workouts?
Aim for 3–4 focused fat-burning sessions weekly, with active recovery or walking on alternate days.
Do I need to do cardio to lose fat after 40?
Not necessarily—strength training often outperforms cardio for fat loss and hormonal health in women 40+.
