Can You Really Lose Weight With Bowflex?

Bowflex is a product line owned by fitness giant Nautilus that includes home gyms, treadmills and dumbbells. Most people are referring to the home gym line when they use the term "Bowflex." Whether or not you can lose weight using this aggressively marketed home gym is a matter of several factors.

How Losing Weight Works

Your body takes in energy in the form of calories when you eat. As you go through your day, your body burns those calories to provide the energy you need for your various activities. If you eat more than you burn, your body stores the excess as fat. If you burn more than you eat, your body burns the stored energy in your fat and you lose weight. Exercise is one way to help keep your calories out higher than your calories in.

How Bowflex Works

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The Bowflex home gym uses a variant on resistance bands to provide resistance exercises for all of your body parts. As you pull against the resistance of the tension rods, it overloads the muscles and stimulates toning and growth. Resistance exercise doesn't burn as many calories as cardiovascular exercise. However, bodies with more lean muscle burn more calories in all activities - even watching television.

Can You Lose Weight With Bowflex?

Working out on a Bowflex machine will burn calories both directly during your workout and indirectly through boosting your metabolism. This extra calorie loss may help you lose weight. Because it is a resistance exercise machine, you aren't likely to lose weight as quickly as if you used a cardiovascular exercise machine. The Bowflex treadmill line is an example of that kind of machine.

Other Factors

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Many factors play into whether or not you'll lose weight with any given program. Your weight-loss success may depend on your diet, how often you work out, whether or not you commit to regular sessions and how long you stick with the program 2. In fact, these factors are often more important than your choice of exercise equipment or workout routine. In a very real sense, only your decisions can answer the question of whether or not you can lose weight with Bowflex.