Any swimmers out there?

I drink water (24 oz ice water) in the hour before I swim. I swim, usually, first thing in the morning. I swim and then I have one of my homemade smoothies. I do 2.5 miles a day - one hour. I don't find myself hungry after my swim. I do drink more water before my smoothie.

The secret to fat metabolism lies in oxygenation and hydration. Without oxygen, fat is not liberated from fat cells. So your breathing is critical. If you're struggling for air, you're in the anaerobic state, not aerobic.

Water is required as well for fat burning. Be well hydrated and not just during the swim, but all day long. I drink about 9 twenty our oz cups of ice water through the day.

The same is true for building muscle. So, eat well, sleep well and don't forget to breathe and drink water.

Here's my smoothie recipe. Make it in a bullet type blender.

5 ice cubes
Water
Banana
2 tbsp pb2
2 tbsp Metamucil original course unflavored (don't be a pu$$y -it's not yucky!)
Top with water
Blend

Me too - absolutely starving after swimming. I think it's due partly to swimming being a full body workout. Also pro swimmers are notorious for their 10,000+ calorie diets while not having a problem with weight gain or fat. I read recently in Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Body that "Water is 24 times more thermally conductive than air." So it seems that in water our heat loss goes up significantly and our bodies have to expend a lot more calories trying to maintain our body temperature. Michael Phelps, according to the book, eats 12,0000 calories and spends 3 or 4 hours in the water. During that time he's expending about 9,000 calories, assuming his metabolic rate is around 3,000 calories per day.

To be honest,I swim because I love too. I never even knew the calorie burn was so high until a few weeks ago and will be looking into making it a regular routine.So I haven't really thought much about the calorie intake part of it.

I grew up on the beach and am in the water every moment I can be in the summer.

remember and drink while swimming too, some of the hunger may be thirst.

I also find that swimming makes me hungry even if i know there is no way i am (had meal not long before) i think it's due to swallowing some of the pool water and it's just my stomach reacting to that. So take that into account too.

try something like a banana after the swim, rather than an apple, i find apples make me hungrier if i eat one post swim, i'm assuming due to it's wateryness or acidity, while nana's and similar fill me up enough. if i'm still hungry 30 mins later i'll have another snack (or dinner depending on the time).

also, are you measuring yourself? weight is not the best gauge for fitness or fat loss.

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.

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! :-)

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.

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/

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.