Actually, I'm starting to come around on the subject - maybe sweating does equal fat loss... I mean, why else would there be so few obese people in the sweaty southern states?

Ride more and eat less. Sweat is just water, it is not body fat. Your body will burn the extra body fat if it has nothing else to burn for energy.

I believe that you lose weight when you sweat ... it's called dehydration. I can ride a century on a hot day and lose 2 or 3 lbs if I don't drink enough.

As for real weight loss, however, how much you sweat is just incidental.

Do you keep track of how much you cycle year round?

If you cycle less frequently and/or for shorter distances in the winter, you burn fewer calories. If you cycle more frequently and/or for longer distances in the summer, you burn more calories.

Your body also burns calories to keep itself cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Ignorance at it's worst.
Trolling at it's best.

Your body is not like a frying pan on the stove with a big blob of lard in it. The heat does not "melt" the fat away. You probably ride more miles in the summer and your average heart rate is probably higher to pump more blood to try to cool your body off. More miles + higher HR = more calories burned.

Two or three pounds? I'm about to go running and will probably come back at least six pounds lighter.

Of course, then I'm going to drink a ton of water and get back to normal.

+1.
Ride more in summer -> lose more weight
Ride harder in summer -> lose more weight
It's not complicated.
Trying to correlate weight loss to other things that happen in summer (sweating, longer daylight hours etc) -> fail.

Your body spends a considerable amount of energy keeping cool. The more you are sweating the more energy you are expending keeping cool.
But, there is only so much to go around and performance will suffer.
But the OP is correct, sweating burns calories. I've read that on a hot day you can expend as much as 1/3 of your energy trying to keep cool.
And I am not talking about pounds lost in water.

Also, I find I eat WAY less in summer. When it's hot, my body doesn't want nearly as much food.

I'd love to see any research that supports these claims.

http://www.military.com/military-fit...ght-loss-myths

For decades, many people have used sweat suits, garbage bags or saunas in order to lose weight quickly. You will lose weight in the form of sweat, which is water and electrolytes, but you will gain it back as soon as you eat again or drink water. This myth seems to have spread through the wrestling, boxing, and other sports gyms where guys need to lose a few pounds in order to make a weight class. But sweating excessively has no useful purpose in health weight loss. The dangers of sweating to lose weight are severe -- they include overheating (heatstroke), extreme loss of electrolytes (kidney damage/death), and other cardiovascular related emergencies.

While your body does use more calories to keep cool, overall the increase is negligible...I'd be willing to bet under 5 calories/hour. It's definitely no where near 1/3 of your total expended energy.

By your logic I could eat 30% more calories in the summer than I do in the winter and still not gain any weight.

No offense intended to the boozers and smokers.

As for eating what we want simply because we log lots of miles is also not true for everyone. I have been stuck at about 200 lbs while logging 5,000 miles a year. The white starches were keeping me there. Not everyone's body works the same, but I do get your point about sweat overall.

Here's a new diet for the summer: Sit in your car with the engine off and windows rolled up on a hot sunny summer day in a parking lot and eat peanut M&M's for 8 hours, and see how much fat you lose.

Here is some, but I will dig further.


http://www.active.com/triathlon/Arti...in-Hot-Weather

Here is another article, but MX guys though.

Charles Dao (Trainer - Justin Brayton, Broc Tickle, Cole Seely, Nick Paluzzi, Travis Baker, and Lance Vincent)

Pre-Race: Cooling Vest -
Approximately 75% of energy is expended as heat by our body to maintain normal body temperature and only 25% of energy is used to activate our muscles and stimulate the brain. Racing under severe heat and humidity conditions not only alters physiological adaptations for optimal performance, but can also result in serious life-threatening medical emergencies. Utilizing the “cooling vest” as a means to decrease internal core temperature is only effective if there is an apparatus allowing constant circulation of cooling fluids throughout the material, otherwise the heat from your skin temperature will actually decrease the “coolness” of most damp vests and only soothe the peripheral tissue.

Through research and personal experience, studies show that “pre-cooling” an athlete’s core temperature in feverish surroundings is the most effective method of decreasing internal core temperature. By chilling the body approximately 15 minutes on a spin bike at a low heart rate immediately prior to the race as part of a warm up routine, can drastically decrease inflammation and improve an athlete’s performance up to 21% by reducing the demands on the body to cool its own core and preserves muscle energy for competition. Although a huge inconvenience, the payoff is arguably worth the extra effort.

Intra-Race: Hydration-
A proper hydration protocol should always be implemented with any cooling method to ensure athletes are properly hydrated and not mistaking the sensation of coolness with proper fluid replacement. Our bodies are comprised of approximately 70% water and competing racers whom are continually exposed to hot weather often demand a minimum of 6 liters or more, according to several studies. Utilizing hydrations packs such as “camel backs” are somewhat controversial but in my professional opinion are not necessary for racing the outdoors. If you experience the harsh fate of being dehydrated the day of your race, you’re already too late unfortunately and may consider seeking medical attention and asking for a saline IV instead.

In any type of sporting event, if you lose enough water to equal just 5% of your total body weight, it is considered serious enough dehydration to be cause for medical intervention. Riders should start taking the role of being more “pro active” than being “re active” when it comes to implementing proper training and nutrition protocols. Staying hydrated the week of your race and making sure to stay properly fueled is all preventative maintenance and play a large role in your overall program. In addition, endurance athletes may need more sodium and potassium because they lose more in sweat from intense and prolonged physical activity. Replenishing your fluids with electrolytes and consuming starchy complex carbs with natural sugar from fruit. Eating fruit during long training sessions and directly after exercise, accelerates the replenishment of glycogen levels thus optimizing recovery rate. Make sure to incorporate a minimum of 1 gallon of water fortified by additional electrolytes and consume fruits high in sodium (pineapples, tangerines, oranges, and grapefruits) as well as potassium rich foods (spinach, cantaloupes, almonds, brussels sprouts, bananas, oranges, grapefruits, and potatoes).

I can't remember where I read this, but I think it was a military study. I believe it was 1.3 calories per minute in 10 degrees.
But this isn't about sweat. Its about your body maintaining core temp. And the energy used to maintain in hot weather.

Weight loss is about 80% diet in my experience. You can't outride a bad diet.

What do you think that this article is saying regarding calories burned by sweating? I assume you're focusing on this paragraph...

It is important to understand your body's individual physiological response to a hot and/or humid environment and how much energy it must expend to cool itself. You may be surprised that most of the chemical energy used for muscular contraction is lost as heat—up to 90 percent at high intensities!

Pigs don't sweat.

Horses do.

The expression should be "sweat like a horse" unless you mean that you didn't sweat at all.


Carry on.

This. Also, It's been so hot here lately that I have been not only riding more, but swimming more, (but never preceding a ride).

But if you swam, and then rode, you could follow it up with a run and be an awesome triathlete like me.

I'm so not being serious.

This is the statement that is likely the source of confusion. Like a car engine the body is roughly 20-25% efficient but the excess 75% of energy expended as heat is simply a by-product of the energy conversion. There is nothing in any of the articles you've provided that indicates that cooling the body requires a significant amount of energy. In fact burning any calories would have the opposite of the desired effect as it just generates more heat to deal with.

It's correct that performance suffers when the core temp rises but there is no evidence that the body burns more calories in an effort to keep cool.

OP, I'm a sweaty fat dude. Explain me?