Original email for context: I was wondering your thoughts on “sweating”… I’m thinking of wearing my Zaggora outfit (clothing to increase sweating) either just walking or doing the light HCG workouts I’ve found. Do you have any thoughts on whether or not it may mimic an “excessive” workout while on HCG Diet and actually cause a setback for me? I’m now at 205lbs and want to lose about 70lbs
You ladies are always introducing me to something new! I had NEVER heard of these before this email. Zaggora clothing for those who don’t know is clothing to make you sweat, with the idea of increasing fat burning. Super interesting! I found some other words for these clothes – hot pants, fat burning clothing, thermal suits, toning clothing. Wow, a whole world I never knew about lol.
So, in theory, this is a neat idea – I tried to do a bit of research on whether or not simply sweating more causes you to burn more calories and it seems like this doesn’t really help actually.
This article mentions that “sweating itself doesn’t burn a measurable amount of calories, but sweating out enough liquid will cause you to lose water weight. It’s only a temporary loss, though. Once you rehydrate by drinking water or eating, you’ll immediately regain any lost weight.”
Also, this article mentions a small study that was done, and here’s what was found:
“The researchers set out to see how exposure to heat can alter the molecules in our bodies. There were only 14 people (all men) in the study. They took hour-long baths at 104-degrees Fahrenheit and did burn calories, which were also measured since energy is required to keep our cores around 98.6-degrees. But the men only burned an average of about 61 calories more than if they had been sitting at room temperature. When they exercised on a bike for the same amount of time, they burned between 515 and 597 calories.”
So it seems like for the most part what the clothing and additional sweating is doing is causing additional water loss, which will make you weigh less on the scale temporarily, but as the article stated, since it’s just water (and potential dehydration seems like too), you will regain it as soon as you hydrate- so in this respect it doesn’t seem like these measures would actually increase your true fat loss results. Such a bummer! I love the idea.
Outside of being careful not to get dehydrated with this method, it doesn’t seem like it could hurt to simply try it out, but I think you just want to be careful not to get discouraged if you lost extra water during this time and then regained it on day 1 of P3 without the clothing you know?
Last thing I do think of when pondering this idea is that if a person were to wear this clothing like, quite often, to the point where the body was feeling uncomfortable and hot a lot, it seems like this would actually be a stressor to the body and combined with a diet protocol that is already extreme/severe, I almost feel like it might be counterproductive, as I have seen that when a body is too stressed by demands, rather than cooperating, it actually begins to resist your efforts and you get fewer results than if you take it easy with your body.
I hope this helps you decide!
