| Can you believe this picture? Pretty silly isn't it? A guy wearing a plastic bag on his head. Imagine if someone actually wears a platic bag on their entire body and even silier still, wears it while exercising! Couldn't believe people were still doing this until one of my facebook friends mentioned how she saw a lady at her gym doing this exact thing. Crazy!!! Can't believe people still think sweating will help fat burning. Go Figure! |
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| Sweating has absolutely nothing to do with fat burning, and there is no relationship between how much you sweat and how much fat you burn. If sweating meant losing fat, we would all be looking skinny as we 'sweat' off the fat in this amazing hot summer. Sweat occurs when our body excretes water and dissolved salts from our sweat glands along with a small amount of urea. Sweating is the way in which our bodies regulate our body temperature so we don't overheat as the evaporation of sweat from the skin's surface has a significant cooling effect on the body. During exercise, when your muscles heat up from exertion, you will tend to sweat more, however the amount of sweat has nothing to do with how much fat you burn, or how effective your workout was. Some people naturally seem to sweat less than others while training, but this is not always an indication of how hard they were training. A study conducted at Osaka International and Kobe Universities, in Japan, found that men being perspiring faster than women and tend to sweat twice as much as women do while exercising but that has no bearing on fat loss or levels of exercise intensity. |
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The idea that wearing a plastic bag or using the sauna to help 'loose weight' came from the boxing and racing arenas where the athletes have to make weight for their event. To get to their desired weight, athletes often spend hours in saunas and steam rooms or try to sweat out extra kgs by running or doing aerobic exercises while wearing layers upon layers of clothing. The human body is composed of almost 75% water, so it makes sense if you need to shed a few kgs to try and sweat as much as possible- but you are only losing fluids-not fat. |
| The downside is that very often athletes suffer hyperthermia- heat exhaustion or heat stroke; when the body produces more heat than it can evaporate and our heat regulating sweat mechanisms are overwhelmed by the amount of heat generated. Also, by wearing too many layers while exercising, or wearing plastic type materials that interfere with the water evaporation process that cools us down, you run a real risk of ending up in an emergency room.
Any weight loss through sweating is just a quick fix. Sure these people might lose a few kgs from sweating but weight loss is temporary, these athletes regain the weight after drinking a few glasses of water and no extra fat is lost in the process. So as you probably already know, sweating doesn't increase your metabolism or help you do anything but cool down and lose water, but what can you do to lose fat? You already know the answer.Consistency in diet and exercise is the key to long term weight loss success. While most of us will work up a sweat more than others, the quantity of sweat no means reflects the amount of fat we're burning! Go forth and sweat my friends and burn calories the good honest way, with hard work and discipline.  Lisa, Go Figure 13 February 11 |
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