That evening, I made it over to my client’s home. We have been working together on her journey for a few weeks and wanted to check in to see where she was and show her some exercises she could do at home. I walked in and she and her hubby were cooking up a storm. She was inside throwing it down and he was outside killing it on the grill. As she tried to wrap up cooking to a point where she could take a break, we were talking when an interesting question came up “Does sweat mean you are burning calories”. It was such a great question that seemed like it should have an easy answer… Turns out it does 🙂
I flashed back to a month or so ago when I was at the spa with one of my girlfriends. The spa I go to has different rooms that claim to be unique and do cool stuff for the body… salt room, pyramid room, base rock room etc… Cool names but I’m so on to them, they are all just hot rooms that do wonders for my skin and help me relax. Haha. Anyway we were in the salt room chatting away when she noticed I was sweating a ton and she was not. She pointed it out and we both didn’t have an answer as to why but wondered if it related to fitness.
Like most people know, the main purpose of sweat is actually to regulate the body’s temperature. So it’s like you are a living thermostat and your body keeps making adjustments to make sure it is at a comfortable temperature. The cool thing about sweat is that it is just water loss through the pores so the simple answer is that on its own, it is not an indication of losing weight or burning calories like we often hope it is.
Now when you do cardio exercises and are involved in high intensity activities, you are actually burning calories because your body is using up energy to perform. In the process, you get your heart rate up and increase the overall temperature of your body which is what in turn causes you to sweat. Most people don’t start sweating until they reach about 80% of their age-maximum heart rate so again, the sweat is just managing the temperature. The thing to note here is, when you start sweating, you know that you are in fact working your body well enough.
This was pretty cool for me to learn since many times there is a tendency to think that sweat is in some form related to weight loss. The body is such a cool piece of equipment… Learn it, and take your fitness into your own hands and let’s do this! Have a wonderful day
