Forget the diet, dive for weight loss!
Have you ever wondered why you are ravenously hungry after two dives? Or why after a five day liveaboard you have weight loss of a kilo or two? Well, scuba diving is a great way to lose weight, here is why.
Diving burns calories
The average scuba diver will burn between 400 and 700 calories per dive dependent on current, water temperature and duration. In comparison jogging burns 400 to 500 calories an hour. I know which I prefer!
Given the required calorie intake for a man is 2000 calories a day and 1500 calories for women, two dives burning 400 (minimum) calories a dive amounts to 40% of the daily calories needed by a man.
Weight loss without the effort
After 30 minutes on a treadmill or cycling machine, most of us will feel tired and sweating, but underwater, the weightless environment, coupled with the water dissipating heat away from the body 20 times faster than air, results in massively reducing the perception of exercise as well as the intensity of the activity.
Water, even in the tropics is cooler than our normal body temperature, so to keep warm your body increases your metabolism in order to generate heat, this process burns heaps more calories than normal without you feeling the strain of exercise.
To give you an example, in arctic conditions instead of a calorie intake of 2000 calories a day, you need to intake 6000 to 9000 calories a day to survive, the calories are burned keeping the body warm.
The colder the water, the more calories you will burn.
Hypothermia and dehydration
If you are scuba diving in cold water, you need to have an adequate exposure suit for the temperature as one of the risks is hypothermia. Also as you are exercising underwater and breathing compressed air you need to replenish the fluids lost during a dive. Stay hydrated by drinking lots of water, one of the biggest factors according to DAN (Divers Alert Network) in Decompression sickness is dehydration.
Scuba diving at Padang Bai, Bali
So next time you go scuba diving at Padang Bai, Bali, don’t feel guilty tucking into this delicious nasi campur, ruining your weight loss program. Remember you have just burned at least 400 calories!
Photo by Melissa at lunch at Padang Bai