Weight loss through excessive sweating during exercise.

[Faram]

Higher heartrate= more calories gone.

But shrink wrapping yourself sounds like a very dumb idea, he might get a heat stroke. And perhaps some other complications that I do not know about.

[Broomstick]

Not a way to lose significant weight - just about all of it is water, which, as you point out, is quickly replaced.

Not to mention damned dangerous - people have wound up in the hospital from that stunt, either from dehydration or overheating. Not always, but there's a potential to be seriously injured or killed doing this.

[Covenant]

The kind of stuff that you pump out of sweat glands that your body wants to lose is basically going to be removed through normal bodily functions anyway, assuming your kidneys aren't, like, broken.

Wrestlers can do this for a quick weight reduction but sweatloss is not permanent. The only way to lose weight permanently and safely is just to reduce the amount of calories you eat compared to the amount you require. It's a very simple formula. 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat, so taking in 500 calories less per day than you need to keep your body going is going to result in a loss of one pound per week.

So really, the best way to lose weight is still... *drumroll*

Diet and Exercise! Nobody wants to hear that though, cuz it's not sexy or super fast. It's also cheap as all fuck, so nobody sells it either. You can diet smartly and not have to really complain about what you eat, so long as you make note of WHAT you're eating and plan accordingly. 500 calories from apples is the same as 500 calories from pizza or doughnuts, in terms of weight loss. Obviously, you want to go for things that are filling and healthy if you can, but there's no easy way to duck out of weightloss. But the flipside is that it's really not complicated. Getting bulked up in a gym is waaaay harder and more complex than losing weight.

[weemadando]

Wearing the raincoat is a good way of CUTTING weight (which will be put back on through rehydration) and is a VERY VERY dangerous thing to do without proper medical supervision.

Just do it properly. What I'm working on at the moment, its a damn good system and designed to help you lose weight and gain fitness.

[SpacedTeddyBear]

My thoughts, is that your friend is seriously misinformed. There are people who've died or ended up in the hospital because of drinking too much water after sweating away their electrolytes.

To quote what my coach used to tell us, " Shut up and run". Just make sure you have a good pair of running shoes, and a routine that fits what you're capable of doing comfortably.

[wilfulton]

My recommendation is DON'T DO IT.

Heat exhaustion is a serious issue if you shrink wrap yourself prior to exercising. I would never, ever, ever recommend deliberate excessive sweating.

Additionally, all the weight you do lose is indeed water, which you will gain back during rehydration. Yes, there are probably some proteins that come out in sweat, but not enough really to score honorable mention. If you want to lose weight, just stick with a good exercise program.

Me personally, I HATE exercise, that is, I hate it in the sense of having to go jump on a treadmill and run nowhere for half an hour or picking up big pieces of iron and putting them back down in the exact same place while watching stupid shows on TV to distract my attention so I just get bored and jump off and go play DOOM on the computer. I'd much rather take a long hike through the woods. My point here, is find something that you enjoy doing that is physically demanding. That way your mind is focused more on having fun than on exercising.

[wilfulton]

To quote what my coach used to tell us, " Shut up and run". Just make sure you have a good pair of running shoes, and a routine that fits what you're capable of doing comfortably.

A word on that, if your routine involves a lot of running, definitely get good running shoes. I recommend gel insoles to absorb the shock, this is doubly critical if your only running track is comprised of asphalt or concrete (if, say, it's just regular dirt, it's less of an issue, I've done that barefoot)

And allow me to say this, YOU WILL NOT save money on running shoes. You can save $20 now by buying a cheap pair, but you'll pay for it later with irreparable damage to your knees, which adds up to a lot more than what you saved. If you shop around you should be able to find a good pair for ~$50 (in the US, I can't vouch for other countries). Of course you might get lucky and get the same shoes on sale for a bit less.

[PainRack]

God...... i hate buying running shoes. For every sole I purchase, I wear a hole in it in a month or less, gel insole? Worn out within 3 months. And of course, any suspension my shoe has appears to be utterly gone within 4-6 months............

And its not as if I do an obscene amount of walking and running.

And the shoe is supposed to last for a year.

[Master of Ossus]

My friend, however, swears up and down that the proteins and other substances in sweat (besides water and salt) are lost in significant enough amounts to contribute to increased weight loss.

What do you guys think?

People have died doing this, but it's usually practiced only by people who need only a very temporary drop in weight (eg., wrestlers the day before a weigh-in). It is not effective in dropping your weight on a permanent or even semi-permanent basis, and is actually quite dangerous.

[Darth Wong]

If it was possible to sweat the fat off your body, wouldn't your sweat be greasy and oily, the way fat itself is?

[Covenant]

People have died doing this, but it's usually practiced only by people who need only a very temporary drop in weight (eg., wrestlers the day before a weigh-in). It is not effective in dropping your weight on a permanent or even semi-permanent basis, and is actually quite dangerous.

Which leads me to my next question: Is my friend trying to kill me?

I don't think they're actively trying to kill you, they're just mistaking the feeling of doing more work and the loss of extra sweat weight for real weightloss. My friend Tom would do this sort of thing before a wrestling match to drop down weight and make the cutoff, but it was obviously not real weightloss. If he was actually trying to kill you he might tell you to continually drink water while you're doing this, so that you pass out and die from water poisoning.

If your friend wraps himself up and then goes running, he may be burning extra calories, but he's just mistaking the reason of it. This is like an old wive's tale--it has an element of truth, but it has no scientific basis.

[Darth Servo]

I've heard school wrestlers do crap like that to rapidly reduce the weight class they compete in. It works over the VERY short term and has the unfortunate side effect of leading to rather severe dehydration.

[Alan Bolte]

If anything, you'd burn more calories by being in an environment cold enough that you have to burn extra to keep your internal temperature up.