How far do I need to swim to make a difference to my weight/fitness?

[StrumpersPlunkett]

Am currently overweight and unfit and managing 750 meters before I have to stop.
How much further do I need to aim for to make a difference to my fitness?

[elQuintoConyo]

Sorry can't comment but placemark-a-rama

How many laps are 750m?

I do 50 laps in 30 minutes and am still waiting for my bingo wings to tighten up!

[HollowTalk]

That's really fast, @elQuintoConyo! I used to go swimming every day and would swim 64 laps in 60 minutes. I thought that was a mile until someone on here said actually 70 is a mile! There was a guy there who did 4 laps for every one of mine - I used to love watching him swim (but clearly learned nothing from watching.)

[StrumpersPlunkett]

Ah well it is not a standard size pool it is a 12.5 meter pool so I am doing 60 lengths. It is taking about 35-40 mins

[StrumpersPlunkett]

ElQuinto is that a 25 meter pool? You are far Zoomier than me😁

[HollowTalk]

I'm hoping ElQuinto's talking about her bath

[BIWI]

It's a sad fact that you have to do a lot of exercise to burn many calories. I don't know about swimming, but when it comes to running (just to give you an example) I have to run for 30 minutes/5K to burn around 320 calories. That's not many for all that effort!

There's a saying 'you can't outrun your fork' - in other words, losing weight is more about diet than exercise. (Which is not to say that exercise isn't good for you, of course)

[BIWI]

Sorry - didn't finish. In terms of your fitness, if you're swimming regularly then you should be able to build your fitness reasonably quickly. Certainly you should find that you can swim further, faster quite soon.

[StereophonicallyChallenged]

Tbh OP, swimmers are fit and healthy from following good diets and having fitness programmes out of the pool to aid their swimming iyswim.

Swimming alone (probably - im no expert) won't make any difference to weight. It will help tone and help with stamina, breathing etc. but won't actually increase fitness unless you are in the pool doing miles a day.
That's just my experience, I'm sure everyone is different and I always think every little helps

[BIWI]

I came across this which might be useful - a plan a bit like C25K for running, but for swimming

[ivykaty44]

Sadly it’s the other way round, lose some of the excess weight and you’ll swim faster. It’s 80%diet and 20% exercise for seeing a difference in figure

[StrumpersPlunkett]

Am doing 5/2 fasting as well. Just really hoping to improve fitness to enable me to do other exercise.

[elQuintoConyo]

Oh BIWI that's a fabulous link!

Um, the pool i use is average length sorry i should be more observant!

I alternate crawl/backstroke/crawl/breast stroke but i can't flip underwater at the end of a length. Baby steps!