Hello friends,
My friends weighs 97 kg at the age of 21 years. He wants to lose his weight.
I had a thought in mind that swimming can help in decreasing his weight without any diets.How much quickly can we lose weight in swimming??

Swimming isn't the most efficient way to lose weight. A combination of proper diet, cardio, and weight lifting has been found to be the most effective way to lose weight.

The reason swimming isn't the most efficient is because it burns 3-4 times less calories than running. Part of this is because of physics and the fact that the water will keep your body overall cooler than running and also because when you swim you are not carrying all of your own body weight. That is why running is a better fat burner and calorie burner than swimming.

That doesn't mean that swimming shouldn't be part of an exercise program. For me, swimming isn't about the cardio or even the strength benefits, it's about active recovery. Instead of taking a day off from working out I swim to keep my muscles moving and blood flowing without putting undue stress on them that could cause injury.

Actually, swimming is in my opinion just as good as running. Studies show that running burns less calories - but that is not very active swimming (I believe it was based on a 1mph swimming rate).

Depending on how much you swim, it is an entirely different story. I swim around 5 miles during my two hour practices, so I am already burning twice the calories as shown by those studies).

Of course, I think the biggest benefit of swimming is like what you said: there is much less stress on any 1 particular muscle, since you are in a lay-down position (compared to running, where your knees and ankles can get stressed out).

Zash makes a fair point. The reason most people would probably burn a LOT more calories running is that because EVERY weekend warrior knows how to run as fast as they can for as long as they can until their legs fall off, because everyone has been running since they were a kid, in all kind of sports.

However, most of the population, especially those who have never done swim training, do not know how to (either technique wise, or exhertion wise) swim at top speed in a way that would burn calories more similarly to those who run.

I would concede that a person who is running at the same level of intensity/skillfullness as someone who is swimming would probably burn more calories, but this has more to do with the nature of swim training, which is lots of intervals. If it were compared more to how a 200m or 400m runner would train over an hour period, versus how a swimmer would, it would probably even out the caloric burning playing field.

I have a really hard time believing that it's 3-4 times less. By that math, walking 20 minute miles for an hour would burn roughly 50% more calories (1.5 times as many) than vigorously swimming for an hour. A 20 minute mile is a fairly leisurely walking pace. I don't buy that.

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Zash, you do make a good point about swimming being easier on the joints. One thing that swimmers have to make sure of, though, (especially females) is to mix in some impact exercises (the simplest being running/jogging/walking) for the long term health of their bones. Osteoporosis can become a big problem for people whose sole exercise in life has been swimming, because it doesn't provide the compaction of bone that helps stave off bone weakness.

Hi there,well i was gain 102 kg weight on 26 year of my age and i will go to the swimming class regularly on start i feel to much tied ness in my body but i will never left swimming and now i m in 28 year and my weight is 85 and i m still losing my weight don't worry swimming is good excise do tire it.

You'll weight quickly, at least at first, and then you'll get very sick...and then when you start eating normally again, you'll gain it all back, maybe more, and your body composition will be worse than when you started, think more fat, less muscle, so you'll look worse

(Aug 18, 2010 1:53am)Alok Wrote:  You'll weight quickly, at least at first, and then you'll get very sick

Why would you get sick? Aside maybe a little pain from the workouts, but that's normal for all sports. I can't imagine getting actually ill.

Then again, your immune system is down after hard workouts...

In my opinion you're not going to lose weight through swimming alone.
To loose weight you need a well designed diet as well as an exercise plan.

(Sep 7, 2010 2:43pm)Christinaxx Wrote:  In my opinion you're not going to lose weight through swimming alone.
To loose weight you need a well designed diet as well as an exercise plan.

Well, isn't the swimming part technically an exercise plan? I've found swimming to be an extremely healthy sport to lose weight as it helps your heart while evenly working out your whole body (rather than just your arms or legs).

You can lose alot of weight by swimming, if your body is moving and getting your heart racing, you'll lose it, i prefer swimming to running anyways, it's a good plan to get some good exercise to.