Does Sweating Help you Lose Weight?

Many believe that sweating helps them slim down, but is it true? In our post today, we'll fill you in on everything you need to know about this natural bodily function.

Sweating is a natural mechanism that your body uses to regulate its temperature. Your body sweats in order to cool off and eliminate excessive toxins. Many people believe that sweating helps with weight loss, which leads them to power through countless cardio sessions to reach their goals.

As we previously mentioned, sweating mainly serves to eliminate the body’s waste products. In addition, it can also hydrate, regulate, lubricate and protect the skin. But our bodies don’t produce sweat in order to lose weight.

When you move, you sweat, which allows the body to control its temperature. Your entire body sweats, from the top of your head, all the way down to the tips of your toes, so it’s normal to think that when you’re sweating, you’re burning calories.

But, most of the time, people sweat because it’s hot or after finishing a medium-intensity workout. Sweating might seem like a sign of weight loss, but it’s definitely not the cause.

Sweating: an indication of how many calories you burn

Sweating might show that you’re burning off calories during a workout, but unfortunately, it won’t burn any itself. How much you sweat won’t determine how intense a session was or how many calories you burned off. Even though you sweat liters, you could have only burned a few calories.

What really helps you to lose weight is the balance between the food you eat and the energy your body needs to function in addition to how often you exercise. As we said before, sweating isn’t the key for burning calories but it can be a sign that your body is doing so.

Also, remember that your body needs water to function correctly. When you work out, don’t forget to hydrate before, during and after your session.

Does sweating help you lose weight?

Sweating is a bodily function that helps the body cool down. Even though it’s an important– essential– mechanism, it won’t trigger weight loss.

What really happens is the harder you work out, the more stress you put on your muscles. As a result, they transpire more. Sweating will help the numbers on your scale go down, but it won’t mean much. The numbers reflect a temporary weight loss that will cancel out once you hydrate.

During an intense workout, your body temperature quickly rises as muscle contractions produce heat. Consequently, it needs to offset the heat by sweating.

Ways to stimulate sweat

Regular physical activity paired with a balanced diet is the key to weight loss. The most effective sports that really burn fat are endurance activities, such as running, swimming or cycling.

These sorts of cardiovascular sports help your body sweat by speeding up your heart rate. That means weightlifting won’t help you lose weight, but rather, transform your fat into muscle. All in all, ultimately it won’t help you to reduce your body mass.

Don’t forget that saunas and steam baths help raise your body temperature, making them great ways to stimulate sweat.

But, if you want to burn calories, working out in cold settings is one of the best ways to meet your goals. In a cold setting, your muscles contract more to warm up your body. In order to contract, they need more energy, which translates into more calories burned.

Lastly, there’s no relation between the volume of sweat resulting from a workout and the number of calories burned. If you want to lose weight, don’t focus solely on sweating it off through exercise.

Sure, working out has plenty of health benefits but calorie expenditure goes hand-in-hand with how much you’re taking in as well. That means in order to lose weight, your workout routine should be a part of a bigger effort that includes changing your dietary habits.