How to Workout in a gym?

You’ve been going to the gym every week - several times a week, in fact. You’ve taken classes, lifted weights, and sweated more than Muhammad Ali. But every time you climb on that scale, your weight stays the same.

Not if you’re making the same exercise mistakes that many do in the gym.

“The lifestyle that is involved with maintaining a healthy body weight involves more than what you put in your mouth, ” says James A. Peterson, PhD, FACSM, the author of more than 80 books on health, nutrition, and exercise. “Many people think that if you go into the gym and bump up against a weight machine, you’re going to lose weight.”

Peterson, who oversaw the exercise program at West Point for nearly 20 years, says that misconceptions abound when it comes to maximizing weight loss through working out. One such example is confusing sweating with burning calories.

“Sweating just means you have a hyperactive internal system, ” he says. “It doesn’t have a single thing to do with losing weight, or with burning calories, which is how much work you do. Also, sweating is all water weight - which is all replaced once you take in liquid again. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“They don’t know how to use the machines. They don’t know how to design and follow a proper exercise regimen, so they get in there and go through the motions, and don’t achieve a lot, ” Peterson says. “Then, when they get discouraged, they go back to the lifestyle factors that caused the weight increase in the first place.”

So what else might you be doing wrong during your workout? Check out these frequent faux pas.

Exercise Mistake #1: Too much socializing, not enough exercising.

“I see a lot of individuals talking with each other in the gym, ” says Scott Lucett, director of education for the National Academy of Sports Medicine and a certified personal trainer for more than 15 years. “Next thing they know, an hour has passed and the amount of time they have actually spent exercising is relatively low.” So focus on your workout - and save the chit-chat for the juice bar.