There is only one way to lose weight safely: You must burn more calories through activity than you take in while eating. One method for achieving this is to get regular, vigorous exercise to increase how many calories you burn during the day. Aquaerobics is one of the thousands of exercise choices available to help you accomplish your weight-loss goals. If considering aquaerobics as a workout choice, it pays to know how many calories a one-hour session will burn.
How Calories Work
A calorie is a unit of measure that indicates an amount of energy. When you eat, your body takes in energy. If you eat more calories than you burn, your body stores the excess as fat. If you store enough extra energy, you will gain weight. To lose weight, you need to reverse that trend and eat less than you burn. This forces your body to burn the stored energy, shedding the fat you've put on.
How Aquaerobics Works
Aquaerobics exercise puts you through a session of movements similar to other aerobics classes, all the while immersed in water. Different classes use different depths, ranging from hip deep to unable to touch the ground. The water increases the resistance to limb motion while simultaneously protecting you from falling and reducing the wear on your joints. Although the sound system must be farther away for safety, most aquaerobics classes are set to music just like their dry-land counterparts.
Caloric Burn
According to health information website HealthStatus.com, a 180-pound person will burn approximately 325 calories in a one-hour session of aquaerobics. Although the buoyancy of water reduces the impact of body weight on caloric burn, heavier people can still expect to burn more calories and lighter people will still burn fewer.
Variations
Calorie counting is not an exact science but more of an approximate art. Each time you exercise, you will burn a different number of calories based on a wide variety of factors. Some things that will affect your caloric burn during aquaerobics include your personal baseline metabolism, when you last ate, the air and water temperatures, and even your mood during the workout.
References
- Health Status: Calories Burned While Swimming
- "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy"; Walter Willett; 2004
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