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Calories To Lose Weight – Is Swimming A Good Sport To Lose Weight?

Have you taken up swimming as a sport to help you to get rid of weight? If you are, you are not the only one simply because most people believe that swimming is an effective method to tone muscles and shed weight. This is why the public swimming pools everywhere are always loaded in the evenings and on weekends.

Nevertheless, some research might seem to recommend that swimming is not an effective way to lose weight and in fact, one can even gain weight with swimming. Becoming much more bewildering eh?

Swimming is regarded by numerous as one of the greatest exercises or sport to get rid of weight and to tone muscles simply because when you swim, most of your muscles are called into action and you’re actually having a full body workout. Furthermore, swimming too has an aerobic result and therefore the heart and lungs are getting their dose of exercise as well.

Nevertheless, a study posted in the American Journal of Sports Medicine demostrated that in the lack of a controlled diet, swimming has little or no effect on weight loss.

Professor Grant Gwinup performed an experiment correlating swimming with weight loss and came up with shocking results.

a) Test subjects put in a cycling plan lost 19 pounds in a 90 days study.

b) Those following a walking program shed 17 pounds in the same period.

c) Now, brace yourself for this! Subjects in the swimming program actually added additional 5 pounds!

Did the findings surprise you? I could not fully understand what I was reading when I first discovered the report.

Professor Gwinup then assumes that swimming in cold water induces the appetite to boost caloric consumption. Do you really feel hungry after a swimming session? If you do, then professor could be correct.

Professor Louise Burke, Head of Nutrition at the Australian Institute of Sport pointed out that competitive swimmers usually have body fat levels that are higher than those of runners or cyclists who spend a similar quantity of energy when they train.

Why is that so? This is simply because swimmers really feel hungry after swimming and may simply replace all the calories they’ve burned with a big meal and a sugar laden drink following their swim.

On top of that, they might even consume much more calories than they’veutilized.

“Some research suggests that this really is due to the cool temperatures in which swimmers frequently train in and by comparison, runners and cyclists generally experience a rise in body temperature throughout their training sessions, which may assist to hold back appetite.” Professor Burke mentioned.

Professor Burke also observed that competitive swimmers are less active when not in training sessions. The swimmers are so tired from the hours of intensive training that they sleep, relax or avoid any active physical activities outside their training sessions. Deja vu? Do you feel fatigued and sleepy following a swim?

Now, let us talk about toning muscles. Do note that the majority of of the work your body does when swimming involves positive muscle actions and no negative action and we all know that the negative stage, that is, when decreasing the weights during weight training is really important in developing muscles.

So can your muscles expand properly when solely the positive muscles are worked on? Mind you, before you state that competitive swimmers have wonderful muscle tone, that’s because they lift weights to preserve muscle balance as well as to gain strength for more powerful strokes.

Please, do not quit swimming if you enjoy the sport. Performing any exercise or sport is much better than not exercising at all. Just make certain that you do not eat more or become much more less active following your invigorating swim.

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