Most people commonly associate sweating and perspiration with weight loss and better health. They do many different things just to induce their body to sweat and produce as much perspiration as it can. Many people go to saunas to make themselves sweat. They actually prefer this kind of “workout” because they think that with the help of a sauna, they get to burn and sweat off their unwanted extra fat without having to go through different exercises at the gym. They think that they are actually burning off excess fat and calories from their bodies while they are just sitting down, relaxing, and chatting with their friends. What else could be better, right?
This reasoning is erroneous though. The fact that you have produced a lot of perspiration does not necessarily mean that you have burned a lot of fat and calories. You see, perspiration only indicates that your body is hot and that it is cooling itself down. It is not an indication that your body is burning all the extra weight that you want to get rid of.
Perspiration is not calories that have been burned by your body and that it is excreting. It is not fat that has been melted by your body heat into a liquid that is being discarded through the pores of your skin. In fact, perspiration is mostly water and other substances and fluids that can be found in your blood. When your body becomes warm or hot, your body tries to lower its temperature by releasing some of the heat through perspiration. Thus after you have perspired a lot, you will certainly see on the bathroom scale that you have lost some weight. But the weight that you have lost is not fat, it is actually water.
If you have made your body produce a lot of perspiration by increasing its temperature through external forces such as a sauna, a body wrap, a thick coat, or even a warm blanket, you certainly have not lost a lot of fat or have burned a lot of calories; you have just lost a lot of water. This is because all you did was to make your body release the water in your blood. You will easily regain the weight that you have lost as soon as you hydrate yourself back to the normal level of water that your body requires. However, if you have made yourself sweat and perspire through internal forces such as those brought about by exercise or other intense physical activity, you have burned the fat that you are trying to get rid of. This is because the heat that caused the perspiration is the heat generated by the fat being burned by your body to produce the energy it needs to perform the exercise that you are doing. When you perspire during exercise, your body is actually doing two things. First, it is metabolizing the calories and fat in your body to provide you with energy and two, it is producing perspiration to cool you down. Thus, only the perspiration that you produce during exercise is really an indication that you have indeed lost some of the fat in your body.
