How Does Sweating Make You Lose Weight?

Sweating happens. Every day of your life, you give out urea, sugars, salts and ammonia from your pores. Most people think that you lose weight, when you sweat.
It’s true that you lose some weight when you sweat. However, the majority of the weight you lose is water weight, and you regain it as soon as you rehydrate. Any real weight losses that happen is because of what you are doing which is making you sweat, and not because of sweating.

Causes
You sweat when your brain tells you to sweat. It is done by a tiny structure in your midbrain which collects information about your body’s temperature from the nerves in your skin and from other parts of your body.
When your body temperature raises variety of situations can trigger your brain to turn your sweat glands on such as a warm climate, humidity, exercise, and spicy food which can cause your body to heat up and triggers sweat.

Weight Loss through sweating

People lose 0.5 kilos of water by sweating each day, but in fact people differ in how much they sweat.
So, for example, if you live in a hotter climate, or have a less efficient thermoregulatory thermostat, and if you exercise more, you might lose more weight through perspiration. Losing weight while sweating is mostly from water, salts, sugars, urea and ammonia which are byproducts of nitrogen metabolism that contribute to a small amount of your weight loss.

Weight loss by using sweatsuits or garbage bags

Athletes who want to reach a certain weight, speed up temporary weight loss by inducing sweat. They wear sweatsuits or garbage bags, or even sitfor hours in a sauna to lose weight, which can create stress on their body. If you are really interested in losing weight, then you have to do cardio to burn your calories, and then count on your sweat to cool you off, but make sure not to slim you down.
Foods that help you sweat less and more from the tips

Can food makes you sweat?

• A variety of situations can trigger your hypothalamus to turn your sweat glands on.

• A warm climate

• Exercise

• Humidity

• And yes spicy food cause your body to heat up, which triggers sweat.

What food makes you sweat?

Certain foods can cause you to sweat almost immediately after consumption such as:

• Spicy Peppers

• Caffeinated Beverages

• Hot Soups

• Alcohol

What food can help you sweat less?

There are foods you can add to your diet to help you stop excessive sweating:

• Water

• Low fat or skim milk

• Calcium rich foods such as Low-fat yogurt, cheddar cheese, cottage cheese, almonds, baked beans, kale and collard greens.

• Fruits and vegetables

• Olive oil

• B Vitamins

  Christelle Bedrossian
  Dietitian-Nutritionist
  Beirut, Lebanon