Can You Lose Weight by Swimming and Walking?

| March 26, 2010 | 0 Comments

There are many ways in which you can lose weight. Unfortunately, being overweight is a very common condition to many Americans. However, there are hundreds of different weight loss programs out there that you can use to lose weight. But, most of these weight loss programs are doomed to fail, as they fail to take in the motivation factor. Hence, it is important for you to try to lose weight by doing sports and exercises that you normally enjoy doing.

This means that you will need to incorporate activities that blend seamlessly in to your life. Trying to do heavy sports and aerobics can be very hard and boring after repeating them everyday. But, by doing sports and exercises that are fun, you are guaranteed to lose weight and feel motivated at the same time. One of the best candidates for these activities are definitely swimming and walking.

How Can Swimming Help You to Lose Weight?

  • Swimming is beneficial to losing weight, because it is a combination of aerobic exercise, cardiovascular exercise and as a strength training exercise.
  • As a cardiovascular exercise, swimming is very beneficial since when you swim, it pumps your heart and your blood starts circulating faster in your body. This way, your whole body is oxygenated and every organ and tissue in your body receives lots of oxygen. As your heart pumps blood faster, the endurance of your body increases too.
  • As a strength training exercise, your swimming efforts also cause you to increase your muscular strength too. Since you swim against the resistance of the water, your body muscles from your arms to legs will increase its muscles.
  • Swimming is not a strenuous exercise your joints are not put under pressure since your weight is decreased while you are immersed in water.
  • The best form of swimming has been found to be free form, as it helps you to benefit from both the aerobic parts as well as strength training part. Moreover, you need to alternate your style as much as possible when you swim. This will allow you to derive maximum efficiency from your swimming exercise.
  • If you don’t have any lakes or seas nearby where you live, you can always swim in a pool.
  • The ideal schedule for swimming is at least 3 times a week.

How Can Walking Help You to Lose Weight?

  • Walking is an activity that can be done by any one of any age group.
  • You should walk for at least 30 to 45 minutes per session. Moreover you can walk for 7 days a week as it is not considered as a strenuous exercise. However, you should definitely consider the fact that you will need to walk for at least 5 times a week.
  • You should vary your walking speed as this has been shown to help increase your metabolic speed so that your body burns more calories even after you stop walking.

Category: The Best Weight Loss Articles!

Comments are closed.