Fat Burning Workout?

Originally posted by Scansy I don't have any scientific proof, but I would guess that walking alone without improved eating habits would not allow people to loose weight either. Same for running, biking, etc. Walking a mile instead of sitting in a chair for that same period will surely burn more calories and therefore contribute to weight loss. But I like the wholistic approach you took in the rest of your post. No single factor alone will not be the silver bullet. Personally I swim a ton. (4000+ yards in about an hour, 6 days/week.) By and large I don't have to watch my weight. I am sure that I burn my share of calories in the pool each morning. (The summer of 2003 I sustained a bad injury that required surgery and several months of off-my-feet convalescence. I ballooned without my swimming, and took it all back off by the time I returned to pre-injury shape once I got back into the pool.) Yet through the years I have still had some overall weight gain, and some growth in my middle-aged paunch. Over the course of the last few months I have worked at shedding a few spare-tire pounds. One of the simplest things I have done is cut out my two-cans-a-day habit of pepsi. To keep up my admitted addiction to caffiene, I have switched to drinking tea throughout the day. Some caffinated, some decaf, some herbal. Most have sufficient flavor that they are adequate/satisfying replacements for soda, but sometimes I'll add a half teaspoon of sugar to certain types of tea. I maintain my fluids, yet I have cut out perhaps 1500 or more calories per week with this simple change. (And dropped about 15 lbs in the process these last few months.)

I talked with a dietitian over the wek end. She said that exercise alone won't cause weight loss in many people. She said that peole begin almost naturally take in more calories than befoe the began working out. It is somewhat of a survival mechaism. I think that is truly interesting. She said that weight loss is so individual that things that work for one person don't usually work for another. Also, I watched the CNN special again this weekend. I think that it is very interesting that most people think that heavy people don't know what to do to loss weight. Most who I know are experts. In this show there is a woman who says that peole cant yell at her into being thin. I have just the opposite problem. I am always very skinny. I try to gain but nothing hapens. I probably eat around 5,000 calories a day. Also, when it comes to raising your heart rate, if you get in to water & swim , your rate will increase. However, after many workouts, your heart rate won't increase as much. that's why you need ot do intervals whenre your rate will drop between intervals-or so I've been told.

I don't have any scientific proof, but I would guess that walking alone without improved eating habits would not allow people to loose weight either. Same for running, biking, etc. There is no doubt that the two go hand in hand. And as we get older, it becomes more important to eat properly with the exercise. Our metabolism slows down naturally. We burn less calories doing everyday stuff. As for the google report, I know that for me at least if I was to swim a mile 5 or more times a week, while limiting calories to 1800 I would drop weight quickly. I don't know about anyone else. I do intervals when I swim (90% of my workouts). I'm able to get my heart rate up and keep it up above 120. Sometimes it goes as high as 170.

Maybe we're on to something. Perhaps swimming somehow violates the law of conservation of energy--calories are expended for a net loss but body weight remains unchanged. Or maybe those swimmers who don't lose weight are still consuming more calories than they burn in the pool.

I started back swimming about 3 months ago after a 15 year layoff. I've lost about 15 lbs, mainly due to swimming. I had been running about 20 miles/week until injuries in May of 2003 forced me off the roads. I gained about 20 lbs by Labor Day 2004. I started swimming at 1000 yds and added 100 yds per workout til I got to 2500. Then I began interval training, getting a lot of the workouts from Kipp. I now do about 10 - 12,000 yds per week in 4 workouts ranging from 2500 to 4000 yds. I wanted to know how many calories I was burning, so I could make changes to diet and continue to lose weight. The 2 variables are size and speed. Most references to swimming for calorie use *underestimate* the amount of calories burned during workout swimming--you burn more swimming 100yds in 1:30 than in swimming 100yds in 3:00. A good rule of thumb I use is 20 calories/minute for swimming at a good workout pace (between 1:20 and 1:50 per 100yds). So if you swim 1700 yds (1 mile) in 30 minutes, this burns 600 calories. If you don't increase your food consumption, you will lose a pound for every 6 miles you swim. Some data from the web: www.fitresource.com/.../CalBurn.htm www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist4.htm home.judson.edu/.../fitness7.html