When I walk/run and sweat, do I lose water or fats?

Question

Somehow we lose weight when we walk or run . .and well I do it a lot and I start sweating , but I keep wondering if that sweat is just water from my body , or actual fat ?

PS: maybe I'm weird , but seeing myself sweating is really motivating , but when I think that it maybe just water .. I turn myself down ..

MrOracle · Accepted Answer

You need to understand how your body works. Normally, your body runs from the food you eat, primarily the sugars and carbs. Protein is used to build muscle and other tissue. Fat is excess sugars that the body stores to get you through periods when you can't get enough to eat, which was a common problem for everyone throughout most of history, and is still a common problem in many parts of the world today.

In order to burn fat, you have to NEED more energy than the food you are eating can provide. That will cause your body to "dip into it's savings" and schedule some fat to be burned. That's important, because it isn't hard to eat enough to negate all the exercise you do and never lose the fat. If you work out hard and burn 500 calories doing it, but eat 500 calories worth of food, you are only even, despite how hard the workout was. In order to burn fat, you must eat less than the 500 calories your workout required.

It's not always that simple, though. If you don't eat ANYTHING, like when many people go on a diet, then your body panics and goes into "emergency starvation mode" and instead of burning fat when it runs out of energy from food, it burns MUSCLE instead, trying to save the fat stores longer. That is again the correct reaction for long-term survival, but not what you want if you're trying to lose the fat. So, you MUST EAT in order to keep your body out of "starvation mode." You just need to eat more low-fat fruits and veggies and lean meats, and less carbs and sugars and fats, and have some portion control. As long as food is still coming in, your body will burn fat if that food doesn't provide the calories the body needs.

Longer-term, by working out, you will be building muscle mass. Unless you are specifically working out in such a way to build muscle rapidly, this is a slow process that you might not notice immediately, but it happens. And muscle tissue burns more calories, so your caloric needs INCREASE as you build muscle, making it easier to lose the fat the further you go, as long as you don't counter that by eating more.

sketchy · Accepted Answer

Put simply, when you "burn" calories, you convert fat into sugar, which is then converted to energy, plus carbon-dioxide and a small amount of water - which are both exhaled when you breathe.

When you sweat, that's basically just the water that you drank earlier on, being used to cool your body.

madmisskelly · Accepted Answer

Much of it is water that you lose through sweating and breathing. Unless you workout hard for hours a day, chances are you didn't lose a pound of fat, which would require you to burn 3500 calories.

That kind of weight loss takes multiple days, about a week of creating a calorie deficit.

Blobb · Answer

Sweat is mainly water loss and other stuff.

But if you're sweating that means you're giving yourself a good workout and thus burning the calories (fats).

So keept breaking a sweat as an encouraging factor :)

TheUglyOne · Answer

You are burning calories thus fat from the running and/or walking. But sweat is 99% water loss with 1% other stuff in sweat like sodium, potassium, and even a little urea.

martyfellow · Answer

Most of the weight you lose quickly is water.  Fat takes a long time to be used by the body, so don't expect it to disappear overnight.

antonlikesmlb · Answer

What you're sweating is "water" used to cool your body, but the actual fat loss is happening when your body is burning the calories you need to run/walk.

Anonymous · Answer

Sweat is good, means you're working hard! But no, it's not actual fat.

When I walk/run and sweat, do I lose water or fats?

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Why do I sweat so much after walking?

When I walk/run and sweat, do I lose water or fats?

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Why do I sweat so much after walking?

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