Swimming? And hair dye...

Calorie deficit is for weight loss. Swimming is a great activity though and can help you increase your deficit/eat more.

The pool can do a number on dyed hair. You could just wear a swimming cap.

^Agreed on the swimming cap.

Also, wet your hair with fresh water prior to applying the swimming cap. This will decrease the amount of chlorinated water absorbed by the hair. I know some ladies that apply coconut oil to their hair prior to swimming, but I am not sure how much of that oil gets washed off into the pool. Wetting the hair with tap water and applying a swimming cap definitely works wonders.

If you are currently blonde, there is no need to dye back to brown. Even freshly dyed brown hair can react the the chemicals in the pool. There are shampoos out there specifically for swimmers that will take out any color casts caused by the reaction between the dye and chlorine.

After swimming, use the swimmers shampoo immediately, then apply a deep treatment or use a conditioner and leave in the hair for 30 minutes.

I swim regularly for fitness - minimum 3 days a week and am a highlighted blonde in the summer, and a dyed strawberry/golden blonde in the winter with natural dirty blonde hair. A swim cap won't keep chlorine or water out of your hair (they make a small handful that claim to keep your hair dry, I use a cap to keep my hair out of the way and for speed)

Buy some malibu shampoo and use it once a week or after you swim if you're swimming just every once in a while. Right now I swim MWF for 1-2 hours and use the Malibu shampoo and conditioner on Mondays, and my color protect shampoo and conditioner ThFri. I also use a malibu leave in conditioner spray after on damp hair.

I don't because I'm lazy, but you can do your best to keep as much chlorine out of your hair by getting it wet before you get in the pool, and also by coating it with a conditioner (just something cheap, before I was lazy I would buy the .99 conditioner and put it on before putting my cap on). This way your hair has mostly absorbed the non-pool water and conditioner before getting in and won't soak up as much of the chlorinated pool water.

Edited to add: With both hair colors (highlighted vs darker all over blonde) I don't have issues with any green tint as long as I wash with the malibu at least 1x a week, and I'm in the pool regularly without getting my hair wet or putting conditioner in before hand.

I added in swimming so that I could eat more. I had to buy a new suit after a few months. I pushed off the edge and nearly lost the bottoms of my suit. It was an awesome moment, because that was one of the first times I realized how far I had come along.

As for the hair, mine isn't colored, but because I was swimming so much it was getting trashed (even the saline pools have some chlorine in them). Some of my friends here recommended putting on hair conditioner and then the swim cap over top. It helped from the first use.

As mentioned, washing immediately after helps too! Enjoy the swimming

sjbuescher wrote: »

I swim regularly for fitness - minimum 3 days a week and am a highlighted blonde in the summer, and a dyed strawberry/golden blonde in the winter with natural dirty blonde hair. A swim cap won't keep chlorine or water out of your hair (they make a small handful that claim to keep your hair dry, I use a cap to keep my hair out of the way and for speed)

Buy some malibu shampoo and use it once a week or after you swim if you're swimming just every once in a while. Right now I swim MWF for 1-2 hours and use the Malibu shampoo and conditioner on Mondays, and my color protect shampoo and conditioner ThFri. I also use a malibu leave in conditioner spray after on damp hair.

I don't because I'm lazy, but you can do your best to keep as much chlorine out of your hair by getting it wet before you get in the pool, and also by coating it with a conditioner (just something cheap, before I was lazy I would buy the .99 conditioner and put it on before putting my cap on). This way your hair has mostly absorbed the non-pool water and conditioner before getting in and won't soak up as much of the chlorinated pool water.

Edited to add: With both hair colors (highlighted vs darker all over blonde) I don't have issues with any green tint as long as I wash with the malibu at least 1x a week, and I'm in the pool regularly without getting my hair wet or putting conditioner in before hand.

^^ All of this. Thanks for suggesting a new brand of chlorine removal shampoo! I looked it up online and seems to be a better price than Ultraswim or TriSwim.

OP, I swim three days a week, usually between 3.5-4km per swim. I've lost almost 20 pounds along with calorie restriction (key). You can do a lot in the pool as long as you don't eat back all the calorie burns that MFP gives you (slow to medium freestyle pace is clocked at 500 cal/hour but assumes you swim 50m in under one min). There is a thread about this in the swimmers group (someone did the math). So be careful!

As for hair, I have coloured brown hair- (my hair underneath is grey/white). Despite my always wetting my hair and putting conditioner on first before the cap, then shampoo/conditioner and leave in spray conditioner after, the colour is still being stripped from my hair at much faster rate compared to when I wasn't swimming.

So I get grayer faster, but it's the choice I've made. I got the body and fitness level I wanted in exchange for the hair. I do need to do a colour soon, but it means that I shouldn't go in the pool for a week to "let it set" better before I start swimming again. I'm not quite ready to stay out yet, so I'm swimming grey!

Have fun! Kudos to all the fellow swimmers out there!!