Any swimmers out there?

WaterBunnie

It's more about how you feel and your health rather than what a pesky measuring device tells you, surely? Some of us are never destined to be skinny but we can out-fit our skinny counterparts and be in much better proportion making our clothes look better. Calorie counting will stop you overeating and you can't fail to lose if you keep it up. Most important thing is to grow to enjoy the process.

SarahBJane

The gym I go to does have aqua aerobics but the hours I work does not permit me to take them. I like swimming laps anyway. If swimming laps could be my job, I would be in heaven bc it never gets old. I could swim for hours, it's like therapy. It's just funny to me the way I like to swim, people would think I should be thin and that's what my family tells me. That is why I joined here bc I knew I was probably just eating too much. If I let myself, I would eat over 3,000 calories a day from swimming but I don't think I would lose much weight. MFP says I should eat 1550 a day to lose but I like to exercise and I want to exercise so that I can eat more too.

PaintedAlice

I love swimming; like OP used to swim competitively as a kid, but not so fast these days! Firstly, I tend to have a low calorie instant hot chocolate after a swim, as I find that warms me up (especially in winter) and I feel like a lot if hunger is a sort of coldness/emptiness thing. Secondly, I invested a Polar heart rate monitor a month or so ago which has changed my life as I can wear it underwater while I swim and it tracks my calorie burn. It's then easier to know if how much I can afford to eat back accurately.

Hope that helps, and happy swimming everyone! :-)

SarahBJane

@WaterBunnie, love the name by the way. I am just trying to get to a healthy weight by doing what I love. It just seems that swimming is making it harder to achieve my goals. The scale doesn't show much of a loss so I get discouraged. I just want to be thin and healthy again. I am not at a healthy weight at all but would love to get there. So far, I have no major health problems except being overweight. My main objective is to be athletic and healthy. I definitely want to look better and feel better. I just hope swimming gets me there bc it is the one exercise I love.

analilua

Maybe swim and eat more foods that don't make you spend the rest of the day craving high calorie foods, but cure the hunger quickly. I haven't done a lot of research on that. I find that carbs from bread or sugar take away the hunger for an hour or so, but then I crave them the rest of the day. So I'm playing with things that have more protein and fat - like nuts and legumes and so far it's working. I also don't crave sugar stuff when I eat a lot of protein.

andysport1

Maybe try and eat before your swim see if that helps
Drink more
For better results mix up your swim

Do interval sessions, different strokes

Let us all know how you get on

Good luck

lithezebra

According to this article, swimming makes you hungry because you get cold. They suggest taking a brisk, short walk after swimming, to warm you up.
http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/workout/tips/expert-advice/why-am-i-always-hungry-after-swimming/

This is a more scientific article, which suggests that hunger after swimming is a real phenomenon. It also lends some support to the idea that getting cold has something to do with it. From the conclusion section: "Collectively, these findings suggest that water temperature and possibly subsequent core body temperature are important determinants of feeding responses after exercise in water." So that brisk walk might be worth a try!
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobes/2011/351628/abs/

Hearts_2015

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/onwarddownward/view/tips-for-swimmers-550966

kcaffee1

Another swimmer here. Most times, probably because I swim for so long, I wind up going past the hungry stage into what ever it is when you don't remember your hungry until the smell of food hits you in the face. Especially when I put in one of my "marathon" swims - 1600 m split into 400 m medleys followed by 800 m in each stroke except butterfly and side stroke.

I have finally "trained" MFP to give me back almost accurate calorie burns according to this site:

http://caloriesburnedhq.com/calories-burned-swimming/

I've asked in other threads about how accurate it is from people who have HRMs, and it's been a pretty positive response.

When my calorie goals were set for MFP plus exercise calories to eat, I wouldn't feel the hunger the day I swam. But, the day AFTER I swam, I could not stay out of the fridge. Mostly because I was still netting negative numbers by the end of the day. Finally had to change the way I approached the calorie goal, which helped. Now, if I'm not throwing a snit fit over the gym management being sharks, I'm swimming every other day for at least an hour alternated with every other day "marathon swims", and I rarely get the day-after-ravenous-munchies.

K2ofCU

Hope this helps,
when you swim in a heated pool (27 degrees normally) the heat dehydrates you and the chlorine washes off the salts on your body so your internals send out more salts to the skin causing even greater dehydration.

As a competitive older swimmer I need to drink at least 1 litre of water 2 hours before then 10ml of sports drink (salted squash) per minute so a 300ml bottle for half hour swim have it on pool side stop and take a gulp every 10 minutes or so.

So appreciate this post! - thanks!
I find that I'm far more dehydrated than famished .
(Our pool does not allow us to bring in water bottles for lap swim, since someone during the daytime session (non-lap-swimmer) brought in liquor -eyeroll.
Given the hedonistic nature of lap swimmers-joke- we're talking to pool management about this nonsense....)

Another good tip I was given when I went back to swimming but was overweight was;
Pull in your stomach muscles before you get in the water don't release them until you get out
It is a brilliant workout I can be on the brink of being sick after 1 hour swim because I've worked so hard.

WILL try the stomach toning exercise- brilliant!
Thanks again!