I need to drop 150 lbs.

Many men have success losing weight by swimming. I think the putting on body fat thing is a problem some females such as myself have encountered. When my husband swims and does interval work, the pounds just melt right off.

You might want to search the forum as, if my poor memory serves me well, this has been discussed before. Here is a recent thread I could find. I am no sports scientist but I do know if you want to lose weight while swimming you need to keep your heart rate up ( near the 80% of its maximum range) for about 30 mins a day to get any noticeable benefit. Be warned this is not as easy as it seems (even for a regular swimmer). A few of the really good swimmers on the forum focus on sprinting while training and get their aerobic exercise from spinning, running or other forms of exercise.

My brother lost a lot of weight after swimming for about 8 months (60 pounds or so). He was very out of shape and at the first swim practice told the coach that 800 yards was all he could do, and he wanted to want to come back. He impressed everyone by going three times a week and working his way up to 3800 yards in those 8 months. He lost a lot of weight and he was never swimming fast. I think you can lose weight initially if you are out of shape and fairly overweight. Later, as you get acclimated to interval training, I think your body gets more and more efficient and it is harder to lose weight unless you keep upping your training and, as previous posts have said, add something else heinous in, like the elliptical machine, or something nonheinous, like football scrimmages with buddies. I did not change my eating habits, increased my training by about double, and did not lose any weight. But I was already in very good shape. It still baffled me, but I got very strong, so perhaps my gain was muscle. Alas, the smallest things can keep you from losing weight. I worked with a nutritionist, first to gain weight, then, when I kept gaining, to keep from overgaining. My treats of 3 rice cakes, for example, on a daily basis, at 105 calories a day, could allow me to gain 1+ pounds a month. And at a job I had, because I was too nervous to drink my usual IV of tea with lots of sugar, I dropped 17 pounds in 8 months. Just because I was too nervous to drink the tea with sugar. Quit the job, regained the pounds. I say focus on getting in good shape, don't worry so much about pounds. It's always a combination of food and exercise and your own metabolism, but I am sure you will lose weight if you swim three or more times a week and build up to a good amount of yardage. Then you can retune your goals. Easy to say. Hard to do. Again, focus on the fun of swimming and see what happens. Awesome that you are tackling this. If ever you need pep talks, shoot me an e-mail. I also would say you should work out with a masters group to help motivate and push yourself to swim hard.

Isobel has some great advice. Work on getting into shape as you work on losing the weight. When I started back swimming, I didn't do it to lose weight. I did it because I loved and missed swimming after a 10 year break. My coach had me eat nothing but fresh fruit for the first 4 hours I was awake. In 8 months I dropped 30 lbs and I wasn't swimming fast. I was swimming 3 times a week for an hour, doing about 2500 yds each time plus working out at the gym with weights and eliptical for an hour 3 times a week. I have maintained that weight loss for 7 years now. Good luck!

I was able to lose about 50lbs in 12 months by swimming about 10-12000m a week, 3x 90minute workouts. the first 25-30 lbs was solely swimming, the rest was also due to me changing my diet, not dieting, just watching what I eat. I've been roughly the same weight (83.7-85.2 kg) for for the past 13 weeks, but I have gone down in pants size from 33 to 31 since July.

I am a former football player, power lifter, who has put on 150+ lbs since I graduated High School 10 years ago. I had just joined 24 hour fitness to undo my 10 year repeat of the freshman 15. I did so because they have a pool and I'm hoping that can turn swimming into a hobby that will help me do so. Now, I've been doing some reading on the internet and from what I've been reading, it appears as if some put on body fat?????????? I need your thoughts por favor. Just for curiosity, you're a former football player so even if you're a former CB/S, plus 150lbs, we're talking about a weight of 330lbs? can I ask you why do want to swim just out the bat to start loose weight? I think that a change of your eating habits with works on treadmill/elliptic, stretching & agility works will improve your shape and help you to shed weight better that anythings else. Swimming is one of most technical sport/hobby out of there, with a lot of "baggage" to move it'll not be easy at all. You'll ramp up the time that you can exercise more easy running/walking hard that swimming in the same timeframe; burning more calories in less time. Your "baggage" will limit what you can do in the pool, even more if you're not a good swimmer already. I don't know for you, but for me to see a lot of beginners passing me easy all the time, and I unable to do anythings to stop it for a while, drive me crazy. This is a swimming forum so you'll find a lot that recommend swimming over anything else. But if you main goal is only to shed pounds and your knees/back are in good conditions, and obviously swimming isn't relevant in your life now IMO swimming isn't the highway to your dream. If you like to start swimmings for the pleasure to do it, this is another story and you just go for it without any other reason. The key is changing eating habits, eating whatever you want all the time will limit heavy your quest to drop that much. Be disciplined, workout 3-4 times for week and you'll get result, just not overnight. Last year a friend of mine, way out shape, 5'10 - 250lbs, jump into the pool and loose nothing in 7 months, swimming in very pathetic way, his weak core drag him down too much. he put effort into it, but his eating habits wasn't changed.

I disagree with Mazzy- When you are carrying that much extra weight, moving in water is probably the best way to start. Who says it has to look pretty or even efficient - I have seen some pretty heavy people at my pool and they would spend an hour plus either jogging in the deep water or slowly swimming up and down the pool, several times a week.Some have lost a significant amount of weight and still have not gotten faster but I'm sure that by taking it easy on their joints they will have an easier time going to land exercises such as running or the elliptical.

As with any sport it will take time to lose the weight so be patient. It took me 4 years to go from 220 lbs to 158 lbs and yes I did it swimming. Now I am maintaining at around 165 lbs. I started swimming 4 days a week for 1 1/4 hour for 2 years, then I moved to 6 days a week for about a year, then I started doing doubles with a kids team and lost the last 20 lbs. Now I am back to 6 days a week 5 of them for 1.5 hours and Saturdays for 3 hours. Begin with building up your endurance but as you get better start doing some sprinting, that was the missing piece for me. I found that when I do more sprinting I take more weight off and have to actually add calories to maintain my weight.

An ex football player with an extra 150 may have joint trouble, and swimming is a good low impact high cardio way to go. You need to MOVE while swimming though, track your heart rate to see if you're going fast enough. Drag rises as the quadruple of speed, or something like that, so a little additional speed makes a big difference.

when I was biggest at 238lbs, it was not the best thing in the world for me to run. I would get pain in my knees. and my lower back hurt and my stomache muscle hurt because of how much my belly was going up and down. so if you want to compliment your swimming with running, try running in place in the pool. lots of track people do it when they have chinsplints.