People who want to lose weight often try to sweat as much as possible. They think that if they work out in a sweat suit, go to a sauna after working out or do Hot Yoga, they can sweat the fat off. But really, can they? Let’s find out.
What is Sweat?
When your body gets too hot, it cools down by sweating. Water is the central part of sweat. The other aspects depend on which gland is responsible for sweating. Most of the effort comes from glands called eccrine glands. It comprises water, urea, salt, ammonia, and protein, among other things.
This mix of things is what makes sweat taste salty. Apocrine glands are the sweat glands in your armpits, groin, and breasts. Body odor is more likely to be linked to this kind of a sweat. This is because these sweat glands release a type of bacteria that can turn work into fatty acids.
Does Sweat Promote Weight Loss?
From a technical point of view, sweat does help you lose weight. For example, if you sweat away 10 ounces, you have lost 10 ounces. You haven’t lost 10 ounces of fat, though. You have lost 10 kgs of something that is mostly water. This weight will come back on when you drink 10 ounces of water.
Does Sweat Mean a Better Workout?
Most people think that someone who comes out of a workout drenched in sweat did a better job than someone who doesn’t. Even though sweating can be a general sign of how hard you’re working out, many other things are at play.
People sweat at varying rates. Thus the fact that another person is sweating more than you is not particularly revealing. Of course, how much you sweat will also depend on how hot it is where you are working. In a humid place, you also will sweat more because your sweat won’t be able to dry out.
It is also possible to get used to training in a hotter place. Because of these things, how much you sweat doesn’t tell you much about how well your workout is going. It would help if you relied more on increasing the weight, training faster, and doing more sets and reps.
What about those things that make you sweat?
There is also a market for things that make people sweat. Many of them claim to help you lose weight more quickly. We already know that sweating won’t help, but that doesn’t mean that these things are useless. Products like Sports Study Sweet Sweat Gel do more than help you lose weight.
The body gets rid of toxins when you sweat. Regular sweating will help eliminate things like alcohol, mercury, and other pollutants from your body. Urea is also released when you sweat, which allows the kidneys to work better. But it should be said that losing too much water through sweating without replacing it can hurt the kidneys.
Researchers have also found that sweating can help keep germs away. Scientists have found that the antibiotic dermcidin is in sweat. This fantastic thing makes a coating on the skin that keeps germs from getting in.
The act of sweating itself is a kind of exercise for the skin. It opens up the pores, making it easier to clean the skin and make it look and feel better. Along with training, sweating also produces the body’s release of endorphins, chemicals that make us feel good.
How to Lose Weight While Sweating: Two Tips
You won’t lose a lot of weight just by sweating, and there are things you can do while you sweat that will help you lose fat. The first is to select the right kind of exercise. High-intensity interval training is the best thing you can do to help you lose weight (HIIT).
You do short bursts of intense cardio exercise in HIIT workouts followed by even shorter rest periods. When you do these kinds of activities, you burn a lot of fat as you do them. They also cause an “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption” (EPOC), which raises your metabolism for at least 24 hours.
One common way to do HITT is eight rounds of 20-second sprints followed by 10-second breaks. With this plan, you can do all kinds of exercises, like running on a treadmill or riding an exercise bike. HIIT is hard work. Eat bananas before you work out to give yourself more energy.
You can lose even more fat if you do your HIIT workouts first thing this morning when you’re not hungry. When they wake up in the morning, most of us won’t have eaten in at least a year. This means that their glycogen stores will be very low or even gone. Because of this, your skin will have to use stored fat to get the energy it needs to train.