Does Sweating More Burn More Calories?
Q: I like riding. I like hopping on and riding to the point I’m dripping wet. You know, so wet that my bodily juices are splish-splashing all over the place! I’m clearly talking about the stationary bike but the same applies for sex. Anyway, does sweating as much as I do while working out mean that I’m burning more calories?
A: In the bedroom, the wetter the better is a dictum I live by, as should all of my present and future players out there! There’s nothing — NOTHING!!! — like the *squish squish* sound when plunging deep into the abyss.
…
Oh, excuse me there, I got lost in thought for a moment.
What was the question again?
Ahhhhh, yes…the question at hand is do you burn more calories if you sweat more!
A lot of people are under the impression that they’re getting even greater benefit from exercise by the amount of sweat they produce. Unfortunately, however, wetness and more of it doesn’t mean anything worthwhile, like the burning of more calories, for instance.
The reason why sweat isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things can be explained by understanding what sweat is. In regard to that, the body generates heat during the performance of physical activity. In the case of intense exercise performed with variables such as a warm environment or the wearing of fabrics that aren’t breathable, for example, the body’s internal temperature can rise. To avoid overheating, the hypothalamus in the brain triggers the sweat glands to release beads of water and other substances onto the skin, which in turn evaporate and draw heat away from the body to cool it down. This thermoregulatory work of the body to return itself to a stable temperature requires the burning of additional calories but it’s not a significant amount that’s enough to melt fat and contribute to weight loss no matter how much sweat is produced.
All of that is to say that when you’re working out, it’s the activity that you’re doing that burns calories, not necessarily the act of sweating itself because the energy expenditure of evaporative cooling is barely measurable. So basically, your moisture level isn’t an indication of how effective your workout is and isn’t something that you should go out of your way to ratchet up to make your workout more effective if you’re trying to burn calories. Instead, that attention should go to increasing the duration or the intensity of your workout, if not both.
Now, does anyone else have a fitness or nutrition question of their own that they want to ask?
Glossary: calories, exercise, fat, fitness, intensity, work out, workout
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