How Does Sweating Affect Weight Loss?
You put in the work. You put out a ton of sweat. Surely, you’ve lost weight, right? Downer alert: Sweating only sort of helps you lose weight. Technically, sweating can take your weight down, which explains why sauna suits are popular with people like wrestlers who need to make weight in a hurry. If you sweat out 20 ounces of fluid, you’ll “lose” 20 ounces on the scale.
But you’ll bring those pounds right back on when you down that much water after your workout (which you should do), explains Robert A. Huggins, Ph.D., president of research and athlete performance and safety at the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut. “It’s not fat mass, which is the weight most people have the goal of losing,” he says.
Excerpted from Men’s Health
