To think that swimming is making me bigger???

[Springheeled]

I've started swimming 2-4 times a week, 30-40 lengths of 25m pool and I swear it's making me bigger- I've just tipped the scales at half a stone heavier than 6 weeks ago. How can this be????

Take a deep breath before you go into the turn then blow out hard through your nose as you tumble

the swimming conundrum has long been debated, and I think the jury is still out.
Probably there are several factors at play.
Because of the physics carrying extra body fat is far less of a disadvantage in water compared to on land, so there is a selective pressure for swimmers to have higher body fat.

Accomplished swimmers possibly have such superior technique that they expend far less energy per distance swam than do average swimmers?

I've had periods of doing a fair bit of swimming (but not in anything like the same league as Kaizen) I was as lean as when not swimming.
But I've never relied on swimming as a sole form of exercise so cant really draw too many conclusions about the effects of it on my own body composition.

More and more research has shown that exercise has a negligible impact on weight loss

Really?
Which studies are you thinking of?
I've read several studies which show exactly the opposite
EG
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2931400/

sleepwhenidie I did tumble turns! I can do 3 lengths crawl with turns without stopping/ changing stroke at the mo. It's much harder work.
Qu: are you supposed to hit the wall when you turn and use it to push off, or do what I ended up doing: sort of waggling about?

You push off from the wall with your feet

your hands don't touch the wall. Your last stoke/pull under water is what starts your tumble. This gets further and further away from the wall as you get more confident/experienced.

Feels pretty cool huh Spring ...you could even add that porpoise thing athletes do between the push off and next stroke I am crap at it and probably look ridiculous but it amuses me!

Porpoise thing?

Suzanne

As far as I'm aware The Mayo Clinic stated quite recently that its research has "demonstrated no or modest weight loss with exercise alone" and that "an exercise regimen… is unlikely to result in short-term weight loss beyond what is achieved with dietary change."
I also saw a documentary on BBC a couple of months ago which went into the subject quite in depth and seemed to be firmly of the view that this was so. I understood that while exercise would tone you, it wouldn't actually help you lose much weight.

It won't help you to lose 'much' weight, because most people don't exercise that intensively or for long enough.
Remember it takes 3500 calories to lose one pound of weight, and that's a lot of swimming, especially if people go and eat extra calories afterwards, because they feel hungry.

Summer, I can dig up studies showing that exercise does aid fat loss, if you've spent any time reading scientific papers you'll realize that there is rarely consensus.
Different studies prodce conflicting results.

BBC documentaries are hardly the last word in scientific rigour, those I've seen appear to have been dumbed down for the sake of entertainment.

My personal experience is that exercise is a very effective tool for regulating body fat.

I'm not trying to get into an argument Suzanne. I'm just genuinely confused as I understood that a lot of recent research had concluded that exercise is not an effective way of losing weight because, as fatlazymummy says, the amount of calories you burn off during a swim or walk of session at the gym is very few.

Ok
My understanding is that some respond more strongly than others, we are all metabolically different.

If you are overweight, particularly with abdominal adipose tissue then your metabolism is likely to some extent disordered such that it is more of an uphill struggle to shed fat.

The various factors that regulate body composition are not all known or understood.

Furthermore 3500 cals over a week could be burnt off in an hour or so of moderate exercise, I don't see the problem?
A pound of fat a week is a pretty fast rate of fat loss, probably too fast

spring - sort of the body movement you make doing butterfly but without moving your arms from straight ahead of you? Watch olympic swimmers at the start of a race or length and you will see what I mean! shows it, watch from 3:30 in....

You know you are swimming hard enough if, when you stop, your skin steams.

When I used to go to the gym MFP said I burned 300-500 cals per session. If I was burning 500 3 times a week, which is a very generous estimate, and made no changes to my diet, I would have lost less than 0.5lb a week, so pretty slow. You need to calorie reduce plus exercise.

I'm sure others have said it but exercise does not grow new muscle. Weighing heavier after exercise does not mean you are growing new muscle. It might mean the muscles are retaining more water as they repair.

suzanneI'm not so sure that1 hour of 'moderate' exercise would burn off 500 calories. It really depends on what you consider moderate.A person who is overweight and unfit probably isn't going to be able to sustain any level of exercise for 60 minutes continuously, and if they do they will probably overestimate the intensity and the number of calories used.
Of course you can lose weight just by exercising if you are already eating at your maintanence level (and don't change it at all) because you will then be creating a calorie deficit, but it may well be at a slower rate than a pound a week.
My belief is that swimming has helped me to lose weight, because I do gain a small amount of weight when I am unable to swim (school holidays eg), however I can't say for certain because I never count my calories.

I'm sure others have said it but exercise does not grow new muscle. Weighing heavier after exercise does not mean you are growing new muscle. It might mean the muscles are retaining more water as they repair

let me get this straight, you're seriously trying to tell us that exercise cant increase muscle mass?

half a pound a week is a good rate of fat loss btw, slow gradual changes to body composition are better for long term health.

As far as I know crash dieting can be harmful and tends to result in higher fat mass over the long term

Suzanne, unless you are body building, no it doesn't! It tones existing muscle making it more lean and efficient, but it does not grow new muscle.

muscle tissue responds to exercise by upregulating glycogen storage capacity, water is stored with glycogen.
There is also an increase in contractile tissue and blood vessel density.
Yes resistance exercise in particular leads to increased muscle mass but lower intensity muscle contractions will to some extent

the extent to which exercise result in increased muscle mass will depend partly on the activity and partly on individual propensity for muscularity.
Specifically what type of muscle fibres are predominant, fast twitch fibres increase in size fat more than slow twitch, some fibres I think are intermediate and can go either way.

How would you explain cyclists big quads, or swimmers well developed lats and delts?

When you do tumble turns, go in forwards, and don't fully turn onto your front until after you have pushed away from the wall. In slow motion, it looks like you are on your back. I have a habit of flipping over some distance away and while it is a very fast turnover, our coach is amazed I have never injured my back doing that twist. 25 years of habit is hard to break!

I agree Suzanne...until of course you get to the tipping point with endurance training, when your body starts using muscle as a source of energy so you gradually get less - viz Bradley Wiggins track cycling then TdF....same man, still cycling but very different quads - but we've discussed this before. I also exclude distance swimmers, I assume (ready to be corrected by kaizen) that they deliberately maintain body fat/weight to keep warm...

I do keep some fat on but I think I just like an excuse to eat!! I've today done a 2 mile sea swim in 12 degrees no wetsuit in a group in fairly rough water and afterwards ate my body weight in biscuits, cake and nuts - not something I would normally eat but it was there, and I 'felt' starving. I certainly ate more calories than I worked off and I think that's why I'm fatter. Not a great experiment but there you go! I'm going to cut back a bit I think because basically I'm fatter because I eat too much