Swimming is usually considered the best form of exercise for burning calories. From the face of it, it is quite convincing too.

Swimming brings into use all of your major muscle groups. It brings your heart and lungs under pressure. People who are extremely overweight, pregnant, or suffering from some kind of injury, usually opt out for swimming for a lot of reasons.

So how can you determine calories burned swimming? The fact of the matter is, it depends. Swimming breaststroke or backstroke burns almost as much calories as a fast walk or a slow jog. Also, it depends upon the kind of swimming effort you are making, whether you are doing “speed work” or “lap swimming”. Based upon general feedback and measurements, it is noted that swimming helps burn between 450-950 calories per hour. Below is a list of rough estimates of calories burned in swimming, categorized by kind of swimming, or amount of effort put in (for a body weight of 150 lbs).

Moderate effort, general = 272 calories
Ocean, river, lake = 408 calories
Non-lap, leisure = 408 calories
Laps, moderate-light effort = 476 calories
Backstroke, general = 476 calories
Crawl, 50 yards per minute = 544 calories
Sidestroke, general = 544 calories
Synchronized = 544 calories
Fast, vigorous effort = 680 calories
Breaststroke, general = 680 calories
Butterfly, general = 748 calories
Crawl, vigorous effort, fast = 748 calories

However, swimming is apparently not as effective as other forms of exercise, as far as weight loss is concerned. Research published in the “American Journal of Sports Medicine” shows swimming is not effective for weight loss if not coupled with a controlled diet.

Professor Grant Gwinup did a comparison of 3 exercise programs over a period of 3 months. Initially, each program was of up to 10 minutes of daily exercise. The duration of each exercise was increased by five minutes every week. The observations were as follows:

- Participants of the walking exercise program lost 17 lbs during the 3 month study.

- Participants of the cycling program, 19 lbs.

- Quite to the contrary, participants of the swimming program actually gained 5 lbs.

Lets suppose all 3 groups burned the same number of calories, the swimmers must have compensated by eating more. “Presumably,” says Professor Gwinup, “swimming in cold water stimulates the appetite to increase caloric consumption”.

One last thing to note about calories burned in swimming is, regardless of the effort and weight, women in general lose fewer calories per mile swimming than men. This is because, in general, women have bounciness and high body fat percentage.