Does Sweating Equals Burning more Calories?
Time and again, this question is asked by someone, somewhere, because that is what most of us think. Most of us seem to think that if we are sweating a lot, it means that we are burning calories, and lots of them.
As much as we’d like to believe that, the answer is no. We cannot judge how hard we are working by merely sweating. Sweating is a way for your body to cool down. This usually occurs when you increase your body’s core temperature by, let’s say exercising. Now sweat helps bring this temperature back to normal.
But, we can safely say this that the fitter your body is, your body sweats lesser. Unfair right, but why is that? Because you body is used to this type of exertion, meaning that it does not require a whole lot of sweat to cool down.
We think we just have to say so here but if you are just 10 minutes into your workout and you are a mess, feeling all hot and sweaty, that does not mean that you are unfit. In fact, it is not you at all in this instance.
The problem lies here; The number of sweat glands in a human body differs person to person. Some people have large number of sweat gland, meaning that at times a walk down the block to the grocery store may have them breaking into sweat while for other, fit or not, may hardly break a sweat even after a climbing up about 50 stairs.
Other than have minimal amount of sweat glands, dehydration might also be the cause behind barely sweating at. After all, having large amount of water to spare is crucial to the process of sweating.
Now, we can’t let our body get dehydrated... Can we?
So to keep your body dehydrated all you have to do is drink about 3 glasses of water (i.e. 24 ounces) – the amount that fits in a typical sports water bottle, before you warm up. Then drinking about a glass (8 ounces) of water every half an hour or so into the workout.
Also, do not forget under any circumstances to keep drinking water thirsty or not, especially on a hot day.
In a nutshell, sweating does not mean we are burning calories, but it does work that way when you work out on a regular basis.
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