Can you lose weight by dancing in your room? When it comes to exercises for weight loss, cardio workouts remain arguably the most popular exercises out there. In fact, research has shown that cardio exercises alone can help with significant weight loss (1), but the best results come from a combination of exercise and a better diet (12).
When most people think about cardio for weight loss, they think about exercises such as jumping rope, running, and hiking, rarely considering dancing every day to lose weight. While dancing appears on many cardio weight loss lists as a way to shed those extra pounds, people generally don’t find themselves opting to reduce weight by dancing.
However, if you enjoy this activity and want to know if it can be more for you than a hobby or you’re simply looking for a fun and cheap way to shed those extra pounds, then you’re in the right place. Read on to find out if you can lose weight by dancing at home, how many calories this activity can burn, if dancing is better than walking, and much more.
Based on the definitions published in Public Health Reports in 1985, dancing in your room counts as exercise. The authors in this report stated the following (9):
These physical activities can include anything ranging from sports to household activities (chores), conditioning, and any other venture that leads to the burning of calories.
From these two definitions, it can be seen that dancing in your room counts as exercise. Not only do your muscles need to work in order for you to dance, the action will burn calories in your body.
If you decide to take it a step further and schedule dancing into your day, such as dancing every day for 30 minutes and structuring what dance to try and what moves to make, then it becomes a structured exercise program that can help you with weight loss.
The NHS also recommends dancing as a type of moderate physical activity that adults aged 19 to 64 years old should add to their daily routine (10).
Yes, dancing in your room can help you lose weight. As shown above, dancing helps burn calories and can lead to weight loss when it’s combined with appropriate calorie intake. In addition, research has shown that engaging in this activity can help you get rid of those extra pounds.
At the end of the study, the researchers found that dancing led to significant changes in the weight, BMI, body composition parameters, waist-hip ratio, waist circumference, fat percentage, lean body mass, and basal metabolic rate (BMR) of the subjects. These changes were not seen in the control group (14).
An important fact to note here is that dancing in general can lead to weight loss. The location doesn’t matter, just as long as you’re dancing.
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This is one of those questions that is deceptively easy to answer. While you may want a straightforward answer to this, the truth is that the facts are anything but straightforward.
To determine how many calories you can burn doing any activity, we must look at factors that influence body weight. These factors include your genetic makeup, gender, age, level of physical activity, diet, and some environmental and social factors, all of which are unique to every individual (6).
This means that what you weigh right now is not just due to your exercise routine (or lack thereof) and dietary habits, it’s also due to many other intangible factors that we have little to no control over.
So, how does this affect calorie burn?
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In the same way as your weight is affected by the aforementioned factors, these factors also affect how many calories you burn when working out. For example (7, 5, 18):
Even in people who choose to follow the same routine, the person who does the routine for longer (say 45 minutes) will likely burn more calories than the one who does the routine for a shorter period (i.e. 20 or 30 minutes).
Due to all of these varying factors, it’s difficult to tell how many calories you can lose dancing in your room.
The answer to this question and the question of how long it takes to get in shape is the same as above. As factors that influence calorie burn and weight loss are dependent on an individual, it’s difficult to say how long you need to participate in an exercise to achieve your goals.
However, the CDC states that gradual weight loss of 1 to 2 pounds a week is a sustainable pace that can help you reach your fat and weight loss goal in time (13).
To get a rough idea of how long it will take you to lose weight while dancing, take the number of pounds you want to lose and divide it by the above numbers. This will give you a rough estimate of how long this process may take. But remember, your diet is the most important aspect of this dancing routine. If you eat poorly and consume more calories than you burn each day, you will most likely not lose any weight.
Many sources will try to determine this by mentioning the dance style that burns the most calories. While this is not a bad way to answer this question, we believe that the best dance for weight loss is the kind of dance you enjoy the most.
The reasoning behind this is quite simple – the more you enjoy something, the more likely you are to keep up with it even when it gets hard. Failure to enjoy a workout routine is one of the main reasons why most people give up on their fitness journeys.
So, if you have a dance style you enjoy, you should do it. Dance in your room using said style and you could see the weight loss results you’re hoping for. Our only suggestion is to practice progressive overload with your dancing. This simply means gradually increasing the intensity of your dance routine – this could mean dancing more vigorously or for longer.
Progressive overload ensures you’re always stressing your muscles during a workout routine, which helps with calorie burning, muscle strengthening, and endurance while also helping prevent a weight loss plateau, which is a frustrating situation where you fail to lose weight despite working out and eating well.
Here are some types of dances and the number of calories they burn in a 125-, 155-, and 185-pound person in 30 minutes (2):
| Type of dance | 125 lb person (in cal) | 155 lb person (in cal) | 185 lb person (in cal) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slow dancing, waltz, or foxtrot | 90 | 108 | 125 |
| Disco, ballroom, or square | 165 | 198 | 231 |
| Dancing fast, ballet, or twist | 180 | 216 | 252 |
From the above table, it can be seen that the more intense dances burn more calories, regardless of weight group. Therefore, if you’re looking to lose weight faster, doing higher-intensity dances in your room may produce better results than slower dances.
Pro tip: You can use weight loss accessories such as weighted vests or ankle and wrist weights to add weight and increase the intensity of your workout. This can also help further your ability to progressively overload your workout.
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Yes, it is. In addition to helping with weight loss, this activity can also improve (11, 15, 16):
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According to the results of a randomized controlled trial that was published in the Experimental Gerontology journal, dancing and walking produced similar results in increasing the VO2peak, lower-body muscle power, and static balance in female subjects (3).
Yes, you can. As demonstrated above, dancing is an activity that burns calories and also leads to weight and fat loss. If you’ve been wondering how to get rid of stomach overhang or any other type of belly fat, you should consider adding this activity to your daily routine. But remember, you can’t target a specific area of fat on your body and to lose body fat, you’ll need to be in a calorie deficit. There is no workout that can make you lose fat in a specific area and you can only lose overall body fat when you combine exercise with a calorie deficit. Over time, this can reduce the appearance of body fat in any given region of the body.
This depends on the type of dance you’re comparing it to. Running is a high-intensity exercise, so it might beat out slower dances in terms of calorie burning. However, some faster and more vigorous dances may be on a par with running as a form of calorie burning cardio workout.
Please note that if you have knee or joint issues, dancing, particularly low-impact dancing, can be considered better than running for weight loss. Running is a high-impact exercise that can be hard on people with knee and other joint issues.
As previously stated, it’s impossible to predict how much weight anyone can lose by doing a specific workout. However, the longer you work out and the higher the intensity of the exercise, the more calories you’re likely to burn, so the more weight you can end up losing in the long term.
Yes, you can. Quite a number of Kpop dances require a lot of energy, stamina, and coordination to perform and could be beneficial for weight loss.
One study published in 2019 found that women who participated in Kpop dances three times a week for 36 months (3 years) lost weight, increased their muscle mass, and reduced their BMI. Researchers concluded that Kpop dancing has exercise-mimicking effects in terms of decreasing fat and enhancing muscle mass (4).
Yes, weight loss by dancing in your room is absolutely possible. As long as you ensure your routine is intense or challenging to you, add progressive overload over the weeks, and remain consistent. These three factors combined with eating at a calorie deficit can lead to weight loss.
It’s important to remember that the place where you work out doesn’t matter, whether this is in your room or in a dance class. What matters most is effort, consistency, and diet.
As you can’t out-exercise a bad diet, make sure you clean up your diet to make it as healthy as possible. Eat at a calorie deficit, but don’t undereat as this will hinder your efforts. Finally, make sure you drink a lot of water and get enough sleep. This will all increase the chances of your dancing working for you in the way you hope it will.
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