How good is swimming for an hour in the evenings, say three times a week?

Question

Is it good for you? Is running better? Ie in trying to keep fit and shed pounds?

Answer 1

Swimming is wonderful. The link below will give you estimates of calories burned for different types of swimming and taking your weight into account. You need to burn about 3500 calories for each pound lost.

Here are some ideas on weight loss and conditioning from my 360 Blog of September 10:

Don't target more than about 2 lbs per week. If you try to lose faster, your body will go into "starvation mode" and get very stingy about burning calories while at the same time very efficient about storing any calories that you do provide. And it will make you feel awful.

There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

To lose a pound of fat, you need to eliminate about 3500 calories. You can do this by burning more with exercise or by modifying your diet to reduce intake. If you do a Google search on say, "swimming calories" you will quickly find a website with tables of calories burned for a given exercise. You can use such lists to estimate how many calories you are burning up with your routine.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you exercise them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.


Aloha

Answer 2

It depends what you like more. I have heard that walking is best of all, as that is what our bodies were designed to do naturally; but I suppose running, if done cautiously and sensibly, would be great.
For me, it is swimming. I swim for 45 minutes (no stopping; but not like a shark! I make my way through the water gently and gracefully ...) and I go 4 or 5 times a week ... I would love to go more often, in fact, and I find that the more I go, the more I want to go, because it makes me feel so good!
I can't imagine feeling the same about walking or running - especially in winter or in the rain etc.
BUT There are other things to consider and as you haven't provided that information, I can only generalise.
One thing is your age. I find that a slow rhythmic form of exercise is best for my age group (40's plus) and I have always loved swimming. Yoga and walking don't work for me. I also love cycling. I used to dance a lot and run too (sprint, rather - never liked jogging or long-distance running) when I was younger. Still dance a little (at home alone, after a few drinks ... guess that doesn't really count?)
To shed pounds? Hmmm. Swimming and walking will both take a long time to do that ... what they will do is keep you from putting any more on and toning you up. Again, the results will come gradually but I found my upper arms toned up to a visible degree just after the second month of my swimming routine. My waist line is slow to respond though ... must be my age as swimming always dealt with that very nicely before!
It does keep you fit though - more than the toning and all that, it is the increased stamina I noticed and the health improvements that came with that really early on, such as stronger immune system and feeling cleaner (as in detoxification) Best of all was how good it was for my ever-rushing brain. So relaxing!
But if you are younger than me (and I suspect you are,) you might want to try something faster and more aggressive to supplement your 1st choice. Such as boxercize which is great fun, or some form of dance. That kind of exercise will help you shed your pounds faster.
Be careful if you choose running, as it is easy to injure yourself if you push too hard. Swimming won't ever injure you.
Sigh! How nice it would be if we all could have our own personal trainer, eh?

Answer 3

Really good cardio, just like biking, but I'm not sure it will help you with the losing weight bit as much as running or something else. With any exercise, you'll eventually lose weight, but some things help you lose weight faster. Exercising on a regular basis is the first step to leading a healthier life, so I'd say to just keep up with your swimming.
an hour is the recommended amount of exercise to get your heart pumping and calories burning. If you can keep an elevated heart rate going for an hour, then you're getting a workout that will help you achieve you're desired results (weight loss in your case I suppose)
good luck

Answer 4

If it's something you enjoy doing more than running than it's better. Whatever you are going to stick with is great. On days you aren't swimming you could add a short run to your program though to give it variety. Swimming is a great form of exercise. You work your entire body. You will not only shed fat but you'll also be creating muscle tone by having constent resistance against the water.

Answer 5

Swimming is an excellent fitness exercise. 3 times a week..outstanding. Make a book from Excel, reflecting date, how many laps, etc. With this book you can build up your muscular endurance in several months. According to the International Fitness Professionals Association; swimming is one of the few events that build cardio, strengthens muscular fitness, and you will loose weight! No carbs after your evening swim....but have a protein drink!

Answer 6

NO keep swimming. its the BEST excersise. I swear i have told 100 people this, why do people not know. it does EVERYWHERE and i mean EVERYWHERE, apart from your littel man. sholder blades, tum,bum,legs everything. and an hour 3times a week is brilliant, give it 2 weeks and i PROMISE you will see a difference. i am a girl yeah and i should know, i watch men at the pool ALL THE TIME. and if you notice, when you swim, watch all your body aches, that is if youdo it long enough, i swim and i NEVER got anyone saying anybad thing about me or the way my body looks, well cant say much for my face though, but 1 outta 2 aint bad is it. !!?? gudluck **)X

Answer 7

swimming is a great all round exercise and it's less painful on the joints than running. One hour 3 times a week is a perfect start to getting fit.

Answer 8

I was advised to do swimming or brisk walking as they are the best all round exercises for your body. I was told this by my GP and also when I was in the Army. It is very good for you, I used to run up to 10 miles a day but that can lead to heart trouble, or so I'm told, maybe because when you run you try and push yourself. As in any sport it's best to do the exercise to enjoy it and not overdo it. You will lose weight, but once again do so in moderation and not try and do too much at one time. All the best.

Answer 9

An hour swimming can help your sleeping because of reducing the stress. It is no need to be three times a week, except that you want to lose some weight. Once or twice is good enough.

Answer 10

I agree with the others swimming is a great form of exercise, much better than running which is bad for the joints. good luck you seem really determined if your doing it 3 times a week so i'm sure you'll succeed.

Answer 11

ooohh swimming is the one of the best forms of excersise you can do, specially if you hav bad joints cs theres less weight applied to them during the activity. It tones you up, keeps you fit and burns all the calories. Whats more, summers over, do you really want to be jogging in the rain at night???