How Long Do You Need to Swim to Lose Weight? It Depends!

Most people ask: Is swimming good for weight loss? And the answer is a resounding yes.

The question is about how to swim to lose weight. If you swim 4 times a week, you can enjoy some incredible benefits. The same applies to swimming daily, five times, etc. But what really will help you lose weight?

Well, swimming is practically good for everything. For example, it can give you the most awesome cardio workout. These help to improve your lung health and heart rate. You enjoy better circulatory health.

So, how long should I swim every day to lose weight? Swimming for 30 minutes a day is going to help you lose weight. Other sources say that swimming for 30 minutes a week is great for your cardio workout. The idea here is to swim for as long and as often as possible. Basically, a person with moderate weight is going to lose up to 1.5 pounds of weight a week from swimming alone at a moderate pace.

When thinking about weight loss, most people do not list swimming as one of their to-do things.

However, experts can tell you that swimming for weight loss works since it involves almost all the muscle groups.

You kick with the legs and pull with the arms. You also use the core muscles to propel you through the water.

Is swimming good for weight loss?

The results of swimming three times a week include weight loss!

Everything that you do in the water burns calories. Even when you tread water while swimming, you burn calories.

The same applies even when floating on water. The balancing act in the water burns calories.

Swimming is not just perfect for weight loss; it is perfect! For instance, a person who weighs 150 pounds can burn about 200 calories after swimming for 30 minutes.

Now, if you bump the swimming time to 1 hour, you can burn about 400 calories.

If you weigh more than 150 pounds, you are going to burn more calories swimming at the same time, probably because you have more fat reserves to burn.

However, after some time, when you have lost the easy fat, you kind of hit a plateau stage, and you find that you have to bump up your speed and swimming time.

Therefore, if you have been asking: is swimming a good way to lose weight? The answer is yes. However, you still have to know how much swimming you have to do to burn the excess calories.

How to burn calories by swimming

There are many ways to burn calories by swimming. If you just want to swim to tone your body, you need not worry about weight loss too much.

Regular swimming also helps you burn calories, but intentional swimming to burn the pounds does a better job.

For good measure, you can include HiiT (high intensity interval training) sessions in your swimming workout.

This means swimming fast for about 30 seconds, slowing down, and then swimming fast again. It boosts the heart rate and blood circulation, and in return, the metabolic rate rises.

When you are determined to burn calories, you need to build on your speed and the distance that you swim.

Swim longer and harder

If swimming for 1 hour at a slow and moderate pace is going to enable you to lose up to 400 calories, well, when you increase the speed and the distance that you swim, you can lose much more weight.

Therefore, to burn calories, build on your speed and distance. You also have to change your style—perhaps even your diet.

You see, even if you swim for hours on end and still eat a lot of junk food, you will still gain weight.

So, how much weight can I lose swimming five days a week? Well, you will not only lose a lot of weight, but you will also delay the aging process of your body.

You can lose a lot of weight, or perhaps not. You see, it still depends on the time that you are ready to put in and the speed that you can do. For instance, you should aim to swim up to 5000 yards a week.

How to swim to lose weight fast

We have agreed that swimming for fat loss is indeed possible. As you have seen, you can lose up to 1.5 pounds of weight a week by swimming at a moderate pace.

However, sometimes, a regular pace just won’t cut it. Therefore, you want to know what you can do to lose weight faster.

Therefore, you need to know what you can do for faster swimming weight loss results. Here are a few things to try:

Swim faster, longer, and harder

This is obvious. It also applies to strength training for weight loss. The more work you can put in, the more weight you will lose.

Therefore, increase your swimming laps for weight loss. Or perhaps you could ask: How many laps should I swim to lose weight?

Some sources say you should do 20 laps, and some say you should do 30 laps. However, laps can be a bit confusing when you are swimming to lose weight.

It is much better to concentrate on increasing the time that you swim. For instance, you could aim for 60 minutes a day.

Of course, as a beginner, you might need to start with 15 minutes, increase to 30 minutes gradually, and keep working on it until you can do 45 to 60 minutes of swimming.

Try different swimming styles and routines

The human body is notorious for getting into a comfort zone. Therefore, you need to try different things from time to time.

Try different swimming techniques such as the front stroke, butterfly, and so on. This will work out different muscle groups.

You can also try a slow start, followed by a burst of speed, and then a slow speed. In treadmill runs and indoor spinning, this is referred to as HIIT (high-intensity interval training).

Swim five days a week

If you ask, how long do you have to swim to burn 500 calories? Well, first, you might have to swim for more than an hour.

Of course, this will depend on other factors, such as weight. However, sometimes you need to stretch yourself too much.

Therefore, you should aim to swim five days a week. Also, aim to make the distance you swim in those five days at least 5000 yards.

To lose weight with any exercise, you need to increase the intensity of the workouts. The more you can do it, the better.

Get a proper swim diet for weight loss

Do not just ask how long I should swim every day to lose weight. Well, you should aim for 45 to 60 minutes, perhaps even as low as 30 minutes.

However, as much as swimming is helping you lose weight, you should still embark on a diet change.

At the same time, you should also know that swimming is hard work. Therefore, bump up on your proteins and vegetables and take small quantities of starch.

You can also make a habit of taking a protein bar before a swim every morning because you will need the energy.

Conclusion

How long should I swim every day to lose weight? You have seen that you should swim 4 to 5 days a week.

Also, you have seen a couple of things that you should do to lose weight while swimming. The best thing is to start right now and then stay consistent with your schedule.

Losing weight is just one of the benefits of swimming. There are many more.