Calories burned in a Saunas

reading through threads like this just reinforces my decision to not frequent the MFP message boards too often....:noway: thanks for reminding me of that yet again!

I just went to Bikram Yoga yesterday and wore my heart rate monitor. I burned on 571 calories in the 90 minute session. I have been doing bikram for about two months and trust me when I say that its one hell of a workout. I don't do it by itself for weight loss, but it has helped to tone my muscles and increase my flexibility.

Thanks for sharing that info; I was really curious about what a HRM would say. The numbers I've seen on various fitness websites have been closer to 800, which seemed too high. 571 is still great though!

Yep. I have actually burned over 700 during a session. Just depends really on how long you can hold the poses, and put up with the burning muscles. Yesterday my shoulders and quads were on fire! Believe me, it gets your heart rate up there. I've actually hit about 160. Its not as cardiovascularly demanding as a 2 mile run or doing insanity, but its something!

to be honest, i think very little... it helps you detox and lose some water weight.. it's a good relaxation.. but i wouldn't rely on it to burn calories.

EXACTLY. We used to use the sauna to do quick weight loss before weigh ins for wrestling tournaments. Wrestling coaches can give you lots of methods for losing 5 pounds overnight. My coach's favorite was to chew gum and spit. Over and over and over and over and over. 5 or 6 of us tried it and, yep, we could spit away 4 or 5 pounds in 8 or 10 hours of gum chewing and spitting. Our jaws hurt from spitting 25,000 times. But soon as you drink some fluids, you gain the weight back.

I just went to Bikram Yoga yesterday and wore my heart rate monitor. I burned on 571 calories in the 90 minute session. I have been doing bikram for about two months and trust me when I say that its one hell of a workout. I don't do it by itself for weight loss, but it has helped to tone my muscles and increase my flexibility.

I have to keep bringing this up because too many people see this information and think it is correct.

HRMs CANNOT be used to estimate calorie burn in a thermal stress environment. (HRMs are only rough estimates to begin with --even during aerobic exercise, but that is a different topic). In this type of situation, they are useless and the numbers are meaningless.

HRMs do not measure calories burned. They measure heart rate. HRMs are programmed so that, under a limited set of conditions (steady-state aerobic exercise in a normal environment of heat/humidity), their algorithms can use heart rate to estimate calorie expenditure to within about 80% accuracy.

That's it.

During other conditions -- e.g. like during Bikram Yoga -- the HRM senses the elevated heart rate that occurs due to thermal stress. It reflexively spits out a "calorie" number, as it is programmed to do. However, the HRM does not know that you are exercising under a set of conditions that render its calculations meaningless. Just because an HRM displays a calorie number, that does not mean you are actually burning that many calories. An increase in heart rate that occurs during thermal stress is not associated with an increased calorie burn.

I could strap an HRM to a fence post, use a pulse-signal simulator, and would tell me that the fence post was burning 800 calories in an hour. That would be just as accurate as the number one gets wearing a heart rate monitor during something like a bikram yoga class.

For some reason, people insist on treating this information as though it was an attack on Bikram Yoga --or saunas, or weight training, or whatever.

It is not. The intention is to make people view their HRM numbers with caution; to understand what they can and cannot do; and to not use HRMs as some type of mythical "gold standard" for estimating calories--which they most certainly are not.

Thank you for this information. What I will ask is if you are arguing the limits of measuring calories burned during workouts... is there something else that can be better used to estimate this? If no... then what else do you suggest we use? Im not trying to give you a hard time.. my military thinking is if you say something doesn't work, or has its faults, then what does the job better? I dont think anyone in here expects the HRM to be some kind of miracle worker or give false hopes....at some point common sense does have to come into play.....

GUYS PLEASE CHILL OUT! this place is supposed to be a helping community! if you don't like a question or it's beneath you or you take offense to it, then DO NOT TAKE THE TIME TO REPLY. And there is no law against posting a question twice and wanting more responses to make a judgement. If we were all smart and had all the answers, we wouldnt need a site like this!!! I remember many years they said Carbs, then no carbs, then cardio, then no cardio, the run then don;t run it's bad for your knees, then have sweet and low, then dont have sweet and low, so all you very smart people who want to take the time to answer a question and help, please leave the degrading comments to yourself and be happy for yourself that you are so advanced that you are above asking such questions...BUT KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. I am disgusted by this thread. GEEZ.

SAME HERE...WELL SAID!

It's ridiculous the denial and justification that lazy people will utilize to continue being lazy. I would have to RUN 7-8 miles to burn 900 calories. You REALLY think you could burn that SITTING in a sauna? C'mon...get real. You could maybe burn that much if you sat in a sauna for a full day and didn't ingest ANY calories. Have fun with that.

REALLY? WOW.

It can assist with fluid retention however anything lost in a sauna tends to come straight back in with a glass of water...great for the skin though.

My old coach used to make us do exercises like sit ups in the sauna...but very gently and slowly and in small amounts.

I've been told the sauna doesn't burn any calories it's just good for your skin because it opens up your pores and it helps get rid of water weight.

This was the first post I read this morning. Guess I should have gotten popcorn ~ I never thought it would still be going.

I just went to Bikram Yoga yesterday and wore my heart rate monitor. I burned on 571 calories in the 90 minute session. I have been doing bikram for about two months and trust me when I say that its one hell of a workout. I don't do it by itself for weight loss, but it has helped to tone my muscles and increase my flexibility.

I have to keep bringing this up because too many people see this information and think it is correct.

HRMs CANNOT be used to estimate calorie burn in a thermal stress environment. (HRMs are only rough estimates to begin with --even during aerobic exercise, but that is a different topic). In this type of situation, they are useless and the numbers are meaningless.

HRMs do not measure calories burned. They measure heart rate. HRMs are programmed so that, under a limited set of conditions (steady-state aerobic exercise in a normal environment of heat/humidity), their algorithms can use heart rate to estimate calorie expenditure to within about 80% accuracy.

That's it.

During other conditions -- e.g. like during Bikram Yoga -- the HRM senses the elevated heart rate that occurs due to thermal stress. It reflexively spits out a "calorie" number, as it is programmed to do. However, the HRM does not know that you are exercising under a set of conditions that render its calculations meaningless. Just because an HRM displays a calorie number, that does not mean you are actually burning that many calories. An increase in heart rate that occurs during thermal stress is not associated with an increased calorie burn.

I could strap an HRM to a fence post, use a pulse-signal simulator, and would tell me that the fence post was burning 800 calories in an hour. That would be just as accurate as the number one gets wearing a heart rate monitor during something like a bikram yoga class.

For some reason, people insist on treating this information as though it was an attack on Bikram Yoga --or saunas, or weight training, or whatever.

It is not. The intention is to make people view their HRM numbers with caution; to understand what they can and cannot do; and to not use HRMs as some type of mythical "gold standard" for estimating calories--which they most certainly are not.

Thank you for this information. What I will ask is if you are arguing the limits of measuring calories burned during workouts... is there something else that can be better used to estimate this? If no... then what else do you suggest we use? Im not trying to give you a hard time.. my military thinking is if you say something doesn't work, or has its faults, then what does the job better? I dont think anyone in here expects the HRM to be some kind of miracle worker or give false hopes....at some point common sense does have to come into play.....

Yes, there are limits. The most reliable way of measuring calories is not practical. That would be spending $10K or so for a metabolic cart that analyzes your expired oxygen during each workout (which I would do it I could, not because I care about calories that much, but because I love data ;-)

Every common method that we use is just an estimate--whether it is an HRM or a BodyBugg device. They are trying to measure other physical responses and then finding patterns in those responses that match changes in oxygen uptake. They detect the patterns, develop mathematical algorithms, and then test those algorithms against a sample of exercisers whose actual effort is measured using a metabolic cart.

If the correlation is high enough, they say, "yay, we have a valid algorithm--go out and sell a million of these". I'm not a mathematician, but if you have ever seen the raw data from a validation test like this, you will see data points scattered all around a mean that is the "line of best fit".

To complicate things even more (in the case of HR vs calories) the relationship between changes in heart rate and rate of calorie burn only exists under certain circumstances -- as I described earlier.

To complicate things even more, the reliability of the algorithms is completely dependent on the accuracy of the setup information provided by the user. So if the HRM assumes your maximum heart rate is "X" but your true maximum HR is "X + 20" then all your numbers will be off. Same thing with oxygen uptake.

HRMs are most useful during exercises where either the scale/calibration of the machine is way off (example: most elliptical cross trainers), or where the exercise involves changing movements/intensities (example: most exercise classes/DVDs), or when there are variable conditions or terrain (example: mountain hiking, outdoor cycling).

They are useless for any activity in which HR is artificially elevated due to some external factor--basically when heart rate increases without a corresponding increase in cardiac output/oxygen uptake. At that point the "scale" is completely thrown off.
These conditions include: thermal stress, psychological stress, illness, strength training.

What's the solution? Just be cautious with your numbers. Don't look for precision. The "risk" of "starvation mode" has been so overstated that people are worrying too much about "eating back" every exercise calorie. Also, way too many people are using 1200 cal/day eating plans under the mistaken assumption that will promote the fastest rate of weight loss.

People who are starting out, who have a high percentage of body fat, and whose starting weight is 190 or higher would likely do better at first be setting their base intake higher (1400-1600 minimum), eating a "replenishing snack" of 150-200 cals after a 600+ calorie workout and not routinely eating back exercise calories at all.

Check out these two articles from livestrong... They are on weightloss and calorie burning in a sauna :-)

http://www.livestrong.com/article/317216-calories-burned-while-in-a-dry-sauna/

http://www.livestrong.com/article/383056-weight-loss-with-a-dry-sauna/