Is swimming an effective way to lose weight?

Catfriend25
Catfriend25 Posts: 95
in Fitness and Exercise
I'm wondering - is swimming an effective way to lose weight?

Share Your experience, thoughts, etc...cheers =)

Replies

  • MelonJMusic
    MelonJMusic Posts: 121 Member
    Sure! As long as youre burning enough calories to put you below your maintenance calories, it's great cardio to help out with weight loss! Heck, even walking can do that!
  • kimad
    kimad Posts: 3,010 Member
    I don't personally do it just because I don't enjoy it, but I know that when I bring my kids I am usually starving and exhausted when I am done. I would say it is great exercise!!!

    Anything that burns calories is exercise enough to lose weight if you have a good diet that puts you in a deficit.

    You are doing better than anyone sitting on the couch!
  • josephed
    josephed Posts: 4
    It sure is a way to improve your health.

    It's important to remember that you will also be building some muscle while doing it (like any exercise) so it's not the same as dieting for weight less. As long as your heart is pumping and your body is moving, it's a good way to lose some weight provided your calorie intake is appropriate.

    The more vigorous the moving and heart pumping, the better. I find a full speed, all out length every 3-4 lengths is a good way to keep my heart rate up. I prefer to do it at intervals like that. Not everyone does and any exercise is better than no exercise!

    Using the pace clock to push yourself on to go a little faster is also a great way to push yourself and increase the benefits of the swim.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Diet for weight control; exercise for fitness. Swimming is great for your fitness. I've been maintaining for 12 months and I swim regularly as well as cycling around 90 - 100 miles per week....while I MAINTAIN. Your fitness has little to do with your weight control goals other than it can help you to maintain a larger deficit (not always advisable) and in maintenance, regular exercise allows me to eat a **** load of food without getting fat.
  • josephed
    josephed Posts: 4
    Diet for weight control; exercise for fitness. Swimming is great for your fitness. I've been maintaining for 12 months and I swim regularly as well as cycling around 90 - 100 miles per week....while I MAINTAIN. Your fitness has little to do with your weight control goals other than it can help you to maintain a larger deficit (not always advisable) and in maintenance, regular exercise allows me to eat a **** load of food without getting fat.

    This is probably the best way to think of it.
    Exercise is a great way to cut your body fat percentage. Whether that means you actually weigh less or not is a slightly different matter.
  • Catfriend25
    Catfriend25 Posts: 95
    Thanks for the good responses, guys, yeah, I'm thinking of adding swimming to my exercise routine. At the moment it's

    morning: Insanity
    afternoon: walking/cycling
    evening: 30 day shred and Killer by Ewa Chodakowska

    I'm considering changing the afternoon exercise to swimming
    My weight has remained exactly the same after changing from a sedentary lifestyle to hours of intense exercise a day
    Yes I do have a calorie deficit, BUT as I understand it, the calories in calories out is an overly simplified calculation that is not backed by science
    Therefore I plan to exercise until I lose weight, or give up if I see that I will never lose weight - I could genetically be meant to weigh 126 pounds rather than 100
  • contingencyplan
    contingencyplan Posts: 3,639 Member
    OP: From what it sounds like, if you're stacking Insanity and 30DS, as well as walking/cycling, you're increasing your calorie needs (your basic fuel requirements) to something you're more than likely having trouble keeping up with I don't know how much you eat in a day, but it's very possible you might see better results from backing off some than adding more.
  • wilsoje74
    wilsoje74 Posts: 1,720 Member
    Thanks for the good responses, guys, yeah, I'm thinking of adding swimming to my exercise routine. At the moment it's

    morning: Insanity
    afternoon: walking/cycling
    evening: 30 day shred and Killer by Ewa Chodakowska

    I'm considering changing the afternoon exercise to swimming
    My weight has remained exactly the same after changing from a sedentary lifestyle to hours of intense exercise a day
    Yes I do have a calorie deficit, BUT as I understand it, the calories in calories out is an overly simplified calculation that is not backed by science
    Therefore I plan to exercise until I lose weight, or give up if I see that I will never lose weight - I could genetically be meant to weigh 126 pounds rather than 100
    why are you exercising so much? Weight loss is diet. If you aren't losing, you are eating too much or have a medical condition.
  • AllOutof_Bubblegum
    AllOutof_Bubblegum Posts: 3,646 Member
    Anything that facilitate a calorie deficit is an effective way to lose weight. So, yes.
  • AllOutof_Bubblegum
    AllOutof_Bubblegum Posts: 3,646 Member
    BUT as I understand it, the calories in calories out is an overly simplified calculation that is not backed by science

    Then you do not fully understand it. It is absolutely backed by science. Do your homework.
  • Athena53
    Athena53 Posts: 717 Member
    It depends on how you swim. I taught myself to swim couldn't process the directions of instructors because I was too darn un-co-ordinated) and I have a lazy breast stroke. According to my HRM, I, not working out as hard in the pool as I typically do on an elliptical. Just running across the pool in hip-length water helps bring up my heart rate, though.

    Better swimmers burn tons of calories. When my nephew was competing, his parents used to worry that he wasn't eating enough to stay at the top of his game. A friend who competer in HS once logged her calories for part of a nutrition class and found she was taking in 4,000-5,000 calories a day. He teacher thought she was making it up.
  • PJPrimrose
    PJPrimrose Posts: 916 Member
    It's a good exercise! You lose weight with less calories than you burn off.
  • Catfriend25
    Catfriend25 Posts: 95
    Thanks for the NICE responses of most people!

    Do YOUR homework: You will see this formula in government literature, in just about every diet book, in private health booklets and all over the internet. The next time you see it, or hear it, ask where it comes from. You will not get an answer. (I asked the following seven UK organisations: the National Health Service (NHS); the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE); the Department of Health; the National Obesity Forum; the Association for the Study of Obesity; the British Dietetic Association and Dieticians in Obesity Management and five of these have no idea where it even comes from. The two that tried to prove it failed by a factor of about ten.)

    The myth “To lose one pound of fat you need to create a deficit of 3,500 calories” is actually worse than a myth – it is one of the cruellest lies we have told desperate dieters. We have known since Benedict’s study in 1917 (Ref 3) that we don’t lose anywhere near this much weight and we regain any weight lost and more. The 1945 Keys Minnesota Starvation experiment (a 1,600 calorie a day diet was called starvation) was the most comprehensively documented ever. (Ref 4) He also showed that his 36 subjects, rigorously studied in confinement over a one year period, did not lose anywhere near what the 3,500 formula promises.

    Weight Watchers beautifully proved that this formula does not hold in a study published in July 2010: On July 12 2010, under the headline “Weight Watchers does work, say scientists”, Sarah Boseley, health editor for The Guardian wrote a wonderful endorsement for Weight Watchers following a study done by the Medical Research Council (MRC), funded by Weight Watchers (Ref 5). The original presentation of results from the MRC revealed that 772 people were studied: 395 people were simply given weight loss advice from their doctor (the GP group) and 377 were funded to attend Weight Watchers (419 of the 772 completed their respective programme). (Ref 6)

    The study was a year in length and the likely deficit was at least 1,000 calories per day (a typical Weight Watchers allowance is 18-20 points, which approximates to 900-1,000 calories vs. an average 2,000 calorie requirement for a woman). The article reported that the GP group lost an average of six pounds (we know from the Marion Franz 2007 (Ref 7) study that ‘advice alone’ people did well to lose anything) and the Weight Watchers group lost an average of 11 pounds. The Weight Watchers group should have lost 104 pounds in fat alone (2lbs a week for 52 weeks).

    This study provided irrefutable proof that the calorie theory is wrong, which should have been front page news in itself, but this was not the story of the article.

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