Swimming all that and a bag of chips?????

Curvygalslim

S people have been telling me how great swimming is.is it really what does swimming really do?can I do underwater exercises?
I keyed in swimming and it had burned so many of calories..More than all other exercises I have ever done...

AleciaG724

I lost my first 50# swimming a very basic freestyle & modified breast stroke for 30-45 minutes/day... it's a total body resistance exercise, it's easy on the joints, and it's cool - no sweating! I'm taking a break just to change things up, but I will go back to it when I hit the next plateau!

Curvygalslim

Thank you.am inspired????

melissamarah

I'm a swim instructor. Swimming is fabulous! It works your entire body, but it's easy on your joints.

LeroyAnderson

Swimming is a wonderful cardio exercise for freshness and fitness. I think everyone should try to do swimming everyday. For getting swimming training and many training programs just join my boot camp because i am a personal trainer and i have my own training institute.

MissySpring

I love swimming! It's my go to exercise. I try to do it 2 to 3 times a week. Our local physical therapy place has a resistance pool where they offer water zumba and other classes. So, there are options if you're not a good freestyle/breast/backstroke swimmer. Being a former swimmer, I prefer to do intervals and long swims. I swam and walked for my first 50 lbs lost.

PoesyP

I love swimming - I usually do about 10k a week. Some people find doing lots of laps boring, but I love the sort of meditation of just going back and forth. And it's great for my heart and my blood pressue and my muscle tone, and I get to use the showers at the pool so I don't have to pay for heating all that water at home :-)

Cortelli

OK - to get this right out front ('cause I sometimes feel me posting this is perceived as being negative on swimming) -- I really enjoy the water and swim when I can -- but really only for fun and exploration, not real big on laps in a pool, though that is admittedly quite a workout. Love playing in the ocean or rivers / lakes etc. And I love snorkeling and scuba diving. So, I'm a big swim fan generally. Also totally agree with the previous points that it basically eliminates certain joint stresses, and with naturally cooling from being in water (even really warm water) it reduces both sweating and therefore hydration and heat stresses on the body.

All of which made this recent (December) snippet in the NYT pretty interesting to me:

Recent blog item in the NYT: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/ask-well-benefits-of-swimming/?_r=0

Text:

In some ways, the health effects of swimming are similar to those of land-based aerobic activities, such as jogging, walking or bicycling, said Hirofumi Tanaka, the director of the Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. Like them, swimming is a “rhythmical aerobic exercise that you can maintain continuously” to improve cardiovascular and muscular health, he said. Experiments by Dr. Tanaka and others have found that swimming “is very effective at reducing blood pressure and improving vascular function,” just as walking and other land-based endurance exercises are.

The unique advantage of swimming is that it is done in water, which provides buoyancy and cooling, Dr. Tanaka said. “So the incidence of orthopedic injury as well as the rate of heat-related illnesses are both low,” he said.

But swimming has a notable drawback. “It seems to stimulate appetite,” Dr. Tanaka said, more so than do vigorous land-based exercises like running. As a result, swimming is not particularly effective at promoting weight loss or maintenance. In a 2005 study of exercise habits and body weight involving more than 15,000 adults ages 53 to 57, those who briskly walked, jogged or cycled gained little weight over the course of a decade. Those who swam tended to pack on pounds.

Still, “there is no doubt that swimming is a beneficial activity for other factors,” particularly cardiovascular health, Dr. Tanaka said. Just skip the celebratory cupcakes after your laps.

Curious if other swimmers have noticed this effect themselves? Do you see an increased appetite? Do NOT let this snippet deter you from pursuing swimming as exercise -- not the point of my post. Just curious about others' experiences.

m0nster2

Yes, most definitely find my appetite's increased by swimming. So I try to mix it up - a few days a week, I run a couple of miles and then swim.

arwacky

Swimming is awesomeeeee!!! I got so much muscles from it and got to be in water. I love water! Hahaha

It's great...and yes, you can sweat in the pool and still feel that the water is cool. I was dumbfounded when this happened to me during a tough swim team workout.

Polygontus

Swimming is my life!
Full-body workout! I've now been through 4 seasons of water sports ((water polo and swim team)) and it has done wonders. I've learned how to pace myself better. My own interpretation of a swimming "session" is probably a LOT different than others. I swim after school for 2 1/2 hours, 5 days a week going all out.
I swear that I'd die from chlorine withdrawal.

No joke, I sweat chlorine.
We'll be in PE running and then the smell of chlorine just fills the room.

Swimming is amazing, fun, challenging and purely awesome.

I actually just got home from practice hahah 202 laps today ((5050 yards))

princessmommy122

Swimming is my go to exercise when I need to lose weight, like now. . I go two to three times a week, an hour a session. I'm not a terribly good swimmer. I just have fun and keep my pace up. But it does make you extra hungry so just factor that in and keep your diet on track. Eventually, you adjust.

3dogsrunning

I love swimming. It is definitely a great workout. And to answer the person above, yes, it does tend to increase my appetite.

That said, I am very, very, leary about the calorie burns listed here. They seem to be very generous. When logging, I always choose one intensity level down and underestimate my time.

catti41

it does seem to make me hungry after a long swim, however I just factor that into my overall day. If I don't eat something after a swim then that "bag of chips" comes calling later in the day which is not a good outcome!!

soldiergrl_101

I lost my first 40 pounds swimming because i was too fat to run without hurting and i had exercised indused ashma, i have become such a fan. I bought a underwater IPOD and a swimmovate pool mate wrist watch to do all the calculations for me. Usually I swim 45min to an hr 3x a week, my abs feel great

gina_nz_

OK - to get this right out front ('cause I sometimes feel me posting this is perceived as being negative on swimming) -- I really enjoy the water and swim when I can -- but really only for fun and exploration, not real big on laps in a pool, though that is admittedly quite a workout. Love playing in the ocean or rivers / lakes etc. And I love snorkeling and scuba diving. So, I'm a big swim fan generally. Also totally agree with the previous points that it basically eliminates certain joint stresses, and with naturally cooling from being in water (even really warm water) it reduces both sweating and therefore hydration and heat stresses on the body.

All of which made this recent (December) snippet in the NYT pretty interesting to me:

Recent blog item in the NYT: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/ask-well-benefits-of-swimming/?_r=0

Text:

In some ways, the health effects of swimming are similar to those of land-based aerobic activities, such as jogging, walking or bicycling, said Hirofumi Tanaka, the director of the Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. Like them, swimming is a “rhythmical aerobic exercise that you can maintain continuously” to improve cardiovascular and muscular health, he said. Experiments by Dr. Tanaka and others have found that swimming “is very effective at reducing blood pressure and improving vascular function,” just as walking and other land-based endurance exercises are.

The unique advantage of swimming is that it is done in water, which provides buoyancy and cooling, Dr. Tanaka said. “So the incidence of orthopedic injury as well as the rate of heat-related illnesses are both low,” he said.

But swimming has a notable drawback. “It seems to stimulate appetite,” Dr. Tanaka said, more so than do vigorous land-based exercises like running. As a result, swimming is not particularly effective at promoting weight loss or maintenance. In a 2005 study of exercise habits and body weight involving more than 15,000 adults ages 53 to 57, those who briskly walked, jogged or cycled gained little weight over the course of a decade. Those who swam tended to pack on pounds.

Still, “there is no doubt that swimming is a beneficial activity for other factors,” particularly cardiovascular health, Dr. Tanaka said. Just skip the celebratory cupcakes after your laps.

Curious if other swimmers have noticed this effect themselves? Do you see an increased appetite? Do NOT let this snippet deter you from pursuing swimming as exercise -- not the point of my post. Just curious about others' experiences.

Nope it does not increase my appetite. But in general I think any exercise increases appetite.

This study may apply to some people but definitely not me. I am losing weight doing it

MeanderingMammal

Curious if other swimmers have noticed this effect themselves? Do you see an increased appetite? Do NOT let this snippet deter you from pursuing swimming as exercise -- not the point of my post. Just curious about others' experiences.

Well that's the same effect as a good session of running, or cycling, or rowing. It's not unusual that burning a lot of energy is going to lead to being hungry.

Eat to train.

tk2222

I read somewhere the hunger pangs after swimming have to do with temperature as well - you chill down while swimming in the cold water, and that stimulates the appetite. (For me at least, running does tend to kill any desire to eat for a while.) Since i'm tracking what I eat anyway, it doesn't really make much of a difference to me. Daily calories are daily calories and that's that.