Does Sweat Burn Fat?

Weight loss attempts often include increased physical activity for the purpose of burning excess body fat. Physical activity in the form of exercise targets your circulatory, respiratory and muscular systems to provide fuel in the form of blood and oxygen, and movement from muscle contractions. Heat is generated by increased blood flow and muscular contractions. Your body cools by producing sweat which released through your skin. Exercise combined with sweat resulting in decreased body fat leads to the question, is it the sweating that burns body fat?

Function

Sweating, or perspiration, is a release of water containing salt from your skin. With increased body temperatures, sweating is a mechanism to cool your body to regulate your temperature by releasing water through your sweat glands. With evaporation, your body cools to its optimal body temperature. Factors contributing to increased heat include exercise, alcohol, caffeine, cancer, medications and fever. Situations affecting your nervous system, including stress and anger, can also trigger increased temperatures resulting in sweating.

Effects

Cardio exercise places an increased demand on your heart and lungs to provide an increased amount of fuel in the form of blood and oxygen to your body. Training examples include running, walking and group classes such as kickboxing and step aerobics. Your heart pumps faster and your breathing increases to meet the demands of the continuous movement of cardio training. Benefits include increased metabolism, the rate at which your body burns calories. When your body burns a higher amount of calories than the amount of calories eaten, the excess fuel is provided by stored body fat. This results in a decrease of excess body fat. Workouts generating excess heat to your working muscles result in sweating to release the heat.

Features

Cardio training workouts include continuous movement using major muscle groups, including your lower body muscles, for a minimum of 20 minutes. Workouts increasing your heart rate to a range between 75 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate result in training benefits including increased heart and lung function. This training range is considered the zone where body fat is burned for energy use. When combined with proper nutrition, excess body weight and body fat are reduced. Sweating with cardio training adds to body weight reduction through a decrease in water weight.

Considerations

Higher intensity workouts resulting in excessive sweating increase the amount of weight loss in the form of water loss. This can be confused with decreased body fat. Without replenishment of water, a condition known as dehydration may occur. Water intake is necessary to replenish minerals and excess water that your body needs to function. Dehydration may lead to health problems affecting your internal organs, including your heart.

Expert Insight

Sweating as a result of cardio exercise is part of a training program that results in reductions of excess body fat and body weight. Sweating as a result of non-exercising factors such as fever, medications, and emotional situations does not bring your heart rate into a fat burning zone and is not considered an effective method for losing body fat.