any one else reluctant to add swimming in exercise?

Swimming burns alot of calories for two reasons: Resistance is the first. It makes swimming that much more effective, almost like stretching, cardio and weight training all in one. Even more so if you are using paddles and fins. The second reason is temperature. Your body has to burn extra calories to keep itself in homeostasis (98.6 degrees) and pool water is usually in the 50-60 degree range so that is alot of work. I, however, do not accept the calorie counts MFP gives because they are always too high for me and I have a HRM I use for walking and jogging. MFP is never right. I swim an hour straight of breaststroke laps and do 15 minutes of water aerobic exercises and it suggests that I burned like 3000 some odd calories. It could be right but I really don't want to risk it so I log 728 for the swimming which is the lowest estimate I got from a different calculator and 160 for the aerobics because that is a little more than I burn doing land aerobics for 15 minutes. If I were you I would use a rough estimate about half of what it gives you or less and eat back the calories from it. you could try using a HRM in the water as well but I have gotten poor results with my Polar FT7 which is supposed to be waterproof. Something about the chlorine messing with the signal. Just realize that you definitely burn more calories swimming than you think you would. Hope this helps.

Lol, when I saw this topic, my first thought was "well, yeah. I want to lose weight to look better, and right now NO ONE wants to see me in a bathing suit!" lol. Totally not what I thought this would be.

In any case, I can see both sides of the argument. Swimming (if you're really working at it, not just kinda lounging in the pool) is a great cal burner because of the water resistance, but in my experience MFP's numbers are way off. The problem is, you don't want to not eat any of those calories back at all (especially if MFP's db is even close to right) because you'll be depriving your body too much. I'd go with the half time thing. Even if the db is closer to correct than you think, eating back half the cals will give your body enough to not freak itself out, but if the db is really high, eating back half should still keep you under what the actual burn is.

My daughter is a swimmer and when they start their season the coaches tell them are burning between 1000-2000 calories per practice session (some days are more intense than other and they practice about 2 hours) Granted this is competition swimming and it all depends on how hard you work.

Someone commented on gardening...I wear my hrm when I mow the lawn and I burn between 500-800 calories in the 1-1.5 hours it takes me to mow. It is all based on your weight and how hard you work.