Can Swimming Help You Lose Weight?
Have you taken up swimming as an exercise to help you to lose weight? In the event you are, you are not alone because most people think that swimming is effective way to tone muscles & lose weight. This is why the public swimming pools in every single place are always packed in the evenings & on weekends.
Before I disappoint you, I must first declare that I am not against swimming. the opposite, I swim regularly for the sake of my cardiovascular health.
However, some research appear to recommend that swimming is not an effective way to lose weight & in point of fact, may even gain weight with swimming. Getting more bewildering eh?
However, a research published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine demostrated that without a controlled diet, swimming has tiny or no effect on weight loss.
Swimming is thought about by lots of as of the best exercises to lose weight & to tone muscles because when you swim, most of your muscles are called in to action & you are actually having a full body workout. Furthermore, swimming also has an aerobic effect & so the heart & lungs are getting their dose of exercise as well.
a) Check subjects put in a walking program lost 19 pounds in a 90 days study.
Professor Grant Gwinup conducted an experiment correlating swimming with weight loss & came up with surprising results.
c) Now, brace yourself for this! Subjects in the swimming program actually gained additional five pounds!
b) Those following a walking program lost 17 pounds in the same period.
Professor Gwinup then assumes that swimming in icy water stimulates the appetite to increase caloric consumption. Do you feel hungry after a swimming session? In case you do, then professor could be right.
Did the findings shock you? I could not think what I was reading when I first came across the document.
Professor Louise Burke, Head of Nutrition at the Australian Institute of Sport pointed out that competitive swimmers usually have body overweight levels that are higher than those of runners or cyclists who expend a similar amount of energy when they train.
On top of that, they may even consume more calories than they have used up.
Why is that so? This is because swimmers feel hungry after swimming & may basically replace all the calories they have burned with a giant meal as well as a sugar loaded drink after their swim.
Professor Burke also noted that competitive swimmers are less active when not in training sessions. The swimmers are so worn out from the hours of intensive training that they sleep, relax or avoid any active physical activities outside their training sessions. Deja vu? Do you feel worn out & sleepy after a swim?
"Some research suggests that this is due to the icy temperatures in which swimmers often train in & by contrast, runners & cyclists usually experience an increase in body temperature in the work of their training sessions, which may help to suppress appetite." Professor Burke said.
Now, let's discuss toning muscles. Do note that most of the work your body does when swimming involves positive muscle actions & no negative action & they know all know that the negative phase, that is, when lowering the weights in the work of weight training is important in building muscles.
So can your muscles create properly when only the positive muscles are worked on? Incidentally, before you say that competitive swimmers have lovely muscle tone, that is because they lift weights to maintain muscle balance as well as to gain strength for more powerful strokes.
, do not give up swimming in case you enjoy the sport. Doing any exercise is better than not exercising at all. make definite that you don't eat more or become more less active after your invigorating swim.
