Sweating During Light Activity - Will It Stop?

stefct2006

Ive recently read some conflicting information on sweating vs. fitness and I'd like to hear some first-hand feedback on the matter.

I'm not quite overweight, but I'm definitely out of shape. I've just stared working out again after a very long, sedentary break. I've also moved to a new city where I can walk most places from my house. I don't mind sweating during workouts, but when I take a 15-20 minute walk (in 50-65F temps) to the store and arrive gross and sweaty with my hair and makeup a complete dripping mess, it makes me regret walking.

As I get more fit through excercise, and as my body gets used to walking everywhere, will I sweat less during light physical activity such as walking? Or should I continue my excercise regimen but resign myself to driving/public transport when I want to go out in public? Some of the information I read said that my body should be able to get used to the lighter excercise as I get stronger, limiting sweating, while other information I read seemed to say that people in better shape/with better muscle definition actually sweat more.

NorthCascades

Try walking more slowly, see if you sweat less?

AnnPT77

It's possible that you may sweat less when you weigh less, and/or become more fit, as the walking becomes easier for you (less exertion). People do sweat more, in general, when they exert themselves more.

It's also possible that you (like me) are simply a person who tends to sweat a lot.

I'm a rower. I row in a double sometimes with a friend who's about my size, about my fitness level, and about equally skilled as a rower, and we row approximately equally hard. I sweat copiously - more as the weather is hotter and what-not, but always plenty. She almost never sweats, unless it's extremely, extremely hot.

So, I'm thinking you may simply have to wait and find out. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news (or maybe bad predictions)!

TimothyFish

I may be remembering wrong, but isn't sweating when you don't need to a symptom of having had heat stroke?

LAT1963

It should decrease as you become fitter because you will be generating less heat and possibly become a bit more efficient at opening capillaries near your skin to radiate heat. Sweat chemistry should change so that when you do sweat it will be more watery and less prone to stinking once bacteria have time to chew on it (fresh sweat doesn't have much odor). Also when you have less fat you have less insulation between the heat generated in your muscles and your skin, so you'll be able to dump heat more efficiently.

AmyOutOfControl

I sweat like a pig when I exercise. At first, I thought it was just because I was fat and out of shape. That was a year and 36 pounds ago. I ran 10 miles this morning - I was not dry. My husband jokes I should just take a shower with my running clothes on. LOL

Embrace the sweatiness. It means you worked hard enough to be a bad**s.

deputy_randolph

I've been unfit and very fit. I can sweat excessively either way. I sweat much less while lifting; I sweat profusely while doing cardio. Weight loss hasn't affected the sweating situation for me.

zdyb23456

I don't sweat much outside of exercising, but I do know the fitter I've gotten the sweatier I've gotten. I'm a gross sweaty mess after a run and it seems to have gotten worse now that I've been running for several years.

ehimass

The more in shape I get the more I sweat. At 250 pounds I'd lose 1-3 pounds after a workout. At 195 I lose 4-6. Not sure if it's because I can workout harder, I'm hydrating more, or something else. The only thing I've unscientifically noticed is that if I have a really salty diet for a day or two I won't sweat as much.

jennybearlv

Is your new city more humid? I recently moved to a high desert climate and I come home bone dry no matter how hard I work because the air is so dry. I visited the south once and felt soaked just standing still.

stefct2006

Thanks for all of the feedback! The responses seem pretty split. I guess I'll just have to suck it up for a while and see if my situation improves. Now I guess the question is, how long do I give it before I either say "Hey, I think I'm sweating a lot less!" or "Hey, maybe driving isn't so bad!"?

NorthCascades wrote: »

Try walking more slowly, see if you sweat less?

Do you think that whether or not I sweat while walking at a slower walking pace would be indicative of whether or not I will sweat at a normal walking pace once I get in better shape?

AnnPT77 wrote: »

It's possible that you may sweat less when you weigh less, and/or become more fit, as the walking becomes easier for you (less exertion). People do sweat more, in general, when they exert themselves more.

It's also possible that you (like me) are simply a person who tends to sweat a lot.

I'm a rower. I row in a double sometimes with a friend who's about my size, about my fitness level, and about equally skilled as a rower, and we row approximately equally hard. I sweat copiously - more as the weather is hotter and what-not, but always plenty. She almost never sweats, unless it's extremely, extremely hot.

So, I'm thinking you may simply have to wait and find out. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news (or maybe bad predictions)!

Thanks. I hope it's the former, but I guess I'll have to spend some time roaming around in order to figure out which camp I'm in!

LAT1963 wrote: »

It should decrease as you become fitter because you will be generating less heat and possibly become a bit more efficient at opening capillaries near your skin to radiate heat. Sweat chemistry should change so that when you do sweat it will be more watery and less prone to stinking once bacteria have time to chew on it (fresh sweat doesn't have much odor). Also when you have less fat you have less insulation between the heat generated in your muscles and your skin, so you'll be able to dump heat more efficiently.

I hope you're right. I don't *think* my sweat has much of an odor to it right now, but perhaps I would need a second opinion to determine that! The sweat pouring from my face, head, and neck is the deal-breaker right now.

jennybearlv wrote: »

Is your new city more humid? I recently moved to a high desert climate and I come home bone dry no matter how hard I work because the air is so dry. I visited the south once and felt soaked just standing still.

It's the Pacific Northwest so technically the air this time of year is pretty humid, but it's cool. I came here from the Mid-Atlantic and the suffocating humidity of east coast summers certainly feels different to me than the drizzly cool air of my current location.

AnnPT77

(Contextual quotes snipped by reply-er, for length)

stefct2006 wrote: »

I hope you're right. I don't *think* my sweat has much of an odor to it right now, but perhaps I would need a second opinion to determine that! The sweat pouring from my face, head, and neck is the deal-breaker right now.

When I row, I have a small piece of ultra-absorbent backpacker's towel that I take with me to wipe off sweat. A quite-small piece holds a lot of moisture, and fits in a pocket. It's not the regular woven microfiber towel that's velvet-like, but a non-woven fabric (so you can cut a towel into small pieces and it doesn't ravel).

I'm not 100% positive, but I think it's this one (at Campmor, a company I've ordered from that's reliable): https://campmor.com/b/packtowl-msr-personal-towel

WickAndArtoo

Humidity definitely affects this!

Also I have noticed I sweat wayyyy less when I ride my bike places than walking, even in the heat so maybe try that as transport if you haven't?

When I was in better shape I absolutely sweat less than I do now, even in humid temperatures. I used to walk 2 miles to work with full make up and hair done summer and winter and at a fast pace without breaking a sweat, now I walk a mile with the dogs and come home drenched. And I haven't changed weight by more than about 5/10 pounds since then, so it's mostly just my incactive lifestyle.

Some people just plain sweat more than others, so pretty much you just have to keep doing you and see where it goes, but there is definitely hope.

MeanderingMammal

stefct2006 wrote: »

Some of the information I read said that my body should be able to get used to the lighter excercise as I get stronger, limiting sweating, while other information I read seemed to say that people in better shape/with better muscle definition actually sweat more.

So I'd suggest stepping back to understand the purpose of sweating. It's a cooling mechanism, so a function of your body increasing temperature as a result of activity. Essentially the energy conversion from chemical to kinetic also has a degree of heating, due to process inefficiency.

AS you improve your fitness you can do more work in the same amount of time, but you've still got inefficiency. As a result you'll expend more energy, hence heat up more, hence sweat more. As you improve your cardiovascular efficiency you'll see a small improvement in process efficiency.

The suggestion from NorthCascades is quite a good one. If you slow down then while you're still doing the same amount of work to cover the distance, your thermal increase is lower as the work is spread over a longer period.

The observations about humidity also play in. The sweat cools by evaporating off. If it's not evaporating off then it remains on the skin, so not driving the cooling effect.

fwiw I'm an ultrarunner, yet I'll sweat like a Royal Marine in a spelling test at every opportunity.