How Can Swimming Help You Lose Weight?

You have decided to do something about your excess fat and have chosen swimming as part of your weight loss program. Yup, an excellent choice indeed! Swimming can be fun, challenging and its low impact form of exercise means that you are less prone to sports injuries such as knee, back, neck and hip pain.

Precisely that because swimming is a low impact form of exercise, everyone regardless of age or shape can take part this form of exercise. Swimming is the ideal exercise for many people who can no longer take the high impact exercises because of some diseases or injuries since swimming to not involve joint stress of other exercises such as running or jogging to lose weight and improve their health.

However, there are critics who say that it is not possible to lose weight with swimming but we will not discuss this issue in this article. The fact is that if swimming is combined with a healthy weight loss diet, swimming regularly can certainly help people lose weight as easily as other physical activities meant to burn calories. In fact, for overweight or even obese people, swimming is perhaps the best way to exercise because it alleviates stress on the leg joints, furthermore it has the added benefit of providing a total body cardiovascular workout. That is a bonus, isn't it?

The American Heart Association reported that just 30 to 60 minutes of physical activity 3 to 4 days per week can help reduce your risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. A regular physical activity program can also help lower your blood pressure and cholesterol.

It is a good idea to monitor the heart rate when you swim because to lose weight effectively with any cardio exercise, you must maintain your heart rate at 70% or more of your maximum heart rate consistently. Your the maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age. So if you are 40 years old, you maximum heart rate is 220 minus 40 which is 180. So you must maintain your heart rate of at least 70% of 180 which is 126.

Many people get hungry after swimming and they often go to a fast food joint and gulp down huge quantities of junk food and sugary drinks. This is one of the reasons critics of swimming as a form of weight loss program point to. So if you must eat, then eat a reasonable amount of healthy food such as good carbs and proteins and do avoid the sugary drinks.

Next, there is a very important think to remember about swimming as a form of exercise is that swimming predominantly activate your "pull muscles", so it is important to hit the gym to exercise your "push" muscles to avoid muscle imbalances and at the same time, get that nice well toned swimmer's body, right?

So can swimming help you to lose weight? My answer is it certainly can if you follow the tips given in this article. See you at the pool soon.