Can you sweat off body fat?

interfere with fat burning which is pretty much the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

If you want your workout to be both productive in terms of improving your fitness and also burn the maximum number of calories so you lose fat, you need to consume adequate quantities of water. In fact, if you weigh a lot less after your workout than you did at the beginning, this suggests you are not drinking enough H20, not that your workout was super-effective.

Exceptions to the rule

Part of the reason that some people still believe they can sweat off fat is that sportsmen such as boxers, jockeys, wrestlers, and weightlifters sometimes use sweating as a tactic for coming in at a specific weight before competition.

Imagine you are a boxer weighing 144 pounds, but you want to compete in the 140-pound category rather than in the under 147-pound class. If you can pull this off, you’ll be one of the biggest competitors in your group rather than one of the smallest if you stay at your current weight.

By limiting water intake, doing exercise to make you sweat more, cutting carbs, and using diuretics which increase urine output, you should have no problem shedding four pounds of water weight in just a couple of days. Then, once you have successfully weighed in, you drink like a fish to replace lost water and make it back to your original 144 pounds. As a result, you have successfully “ducked in” to a lower weight category which will be advantageous when the first bell rings.

Sneaky? Yes! Dangerous? Extremely! Cheating? Not really, as most of your fellow competitors will be doing exactly the same.

Despite the effectiveness of losing water weight for weigh-ins, this is something that only highly competitive sportsmen and women should attempt and then, only carefully and preferably under supervision from an experienced coach. Done badly, dropping water in this way can result in reduced performance, illness, coma, and even death.

Losing fat and losing water weight are two very different things. If you lose fat, your scale weight may or may not change depending on whether you gain some muscle but, either way, your appearance will improve. Rather than worry so much about your very unreliable scale weight, focus more on your body composition, body fat percentage, and your hip, waist, and thigh circumferential measurements. They are all much better indicators of your dietary and exercise successes.