← The Dr. Shannon Show
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Before we get into today's episode, if you want to actually improve your body composition and are sick of random workouts that just wear you down and burn you out, that's exactly why I built evlo. EVLO is science back strength training designed to help you build muscle, improve body composition and feel better in your body without beating yourself up or living in the gym. You can try evolo now for two weeks free if you visit evolofitness.com welcome
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to Fitness Rewired on the Dr. Shannon Show, a nine episode capsule designed to close the gap between fitness culture and exercise science so you can see higher return on your effort and finally feel like you're doing enough. Many fitness beliefs come from marketing and tradition and don't align with current evidence. When you learn the truth, you can rewire your thoughts around fitness. That shift leads to higher quality actions, better results and health you can actually sustain. I'm your host Shannon Richie. Welcome to the show. Hot workouts are having a moment and many people judge a workout's quality on how much you sweat. I'm seeing sweaty hot Pilates classes where people are filming themselves and literally dripping in a pool of sweat, glorifying it as a good workout. But what is this doing for your body? Do you need to sweat to see results? Does sweating mean a workout works? Are heated workouts more effective? In this episode, I'll unpack the current obsession with sweaty and heated workouts by explaining what sweat actually represents physiologically, why it doesn't indicate calorie burn, fat loss, muscle stimulus or cardiovascular improvement, and how social media and fitness culture reinforced the sweat equals success belief, whether heated workouts improve results and what markers you should focus on instead if your goal is real body composition change. So here's the bottom line. Sweating is your body's cooling system, not a measure of workout quality. It tells you almost nothing about muscle stimulus or fat loss or long term cardiovascular adaptation. Now I completely understand why sweating feels good. It feels satisfying, it feels productive and honestly, it can just feel like you're doing something good for your body. Sweat creates a powerful psychological reinforcement loop. We're wired to associate visible EFF with effectiveness and sweat gives us that visible effort. It gives us that immediate feedback. We're hot, we've got flush skin, we're dripping in sweat and that feels like proof that you did something meaningful. But the adaptation that actually changes your body are a lot more invisible in the moment. You could be dripping in sweat in a heated or Pilates class or a sculpt class. That isn't Doing much for your body composition and yet you can finish a really well designed strength workout and barely break a sweat, all while creating a massive change in your body. And I taught hot yoga and hot sculpt classes for years. I genuinely loved how good it felt to sweat. So this is not anti hot workouts, but I rarely break a sweat in my workouts now, and my results are night and day compared to when I primarily did heated classes and focused on getting as sweaty as possible. My workouts are also a lot shorter. They're about 35 minutes instead of 6060 minutes. And honestly, I don't even have to wash my hair afterwards, which is a big bonus. So if you like sweating because it feels good, go for it. Just be honest with yourself about why you're chasing it. Are you assuming that more sweat equals a more effective workout or more fat burned? Are you seeing influencers drenched in sweat and thinking that's the type of workout that you need to be doing? There's no shame in that. But let's objectively look at what sweating actually does for your body. So what is sweating? Why does it happen? Sweating exists to regulate body temperature. When you exercise, muscles contract and muscles convert chemical energy into movement. But about 70 to 80% of that energy becomes heat. That heat causes your internal temperature to rise, and your body likes to stay at a certain temperature internal temperature. So to get rid of some of that heat, sweat glands activate so that evaporation can cool you down. Sweat reflects how much heat your body is trying to get rid of, not how effective your workout is. Cardio tends to make you sweat more because large amounts of muscles contract continuously for long periods. So your muscles are accumulating lots of heat internally. Heat production stays elevated, so your body has to cool itself constantly. So that's why you sweat more. Resistance training typically won't make you sweat as much. This is because you're using less total muscle at one given time and you're shifting the demand throughout your body. So the muscular stimulus at any one given time is overall lower. So there's a smaller rise in your internal temperature. So you sweat less. But the muscular stimulus can be extremely high, especially when you're training close to failure, but the overall thermal load is lower. This is why cardio workouts often feel sweatier. And that's why people commonly think they're more effective because they sweat more. And that ha. They have that immediate proof, not because they're inherently better or even lead to better body composition changes. Like we talked about in episode two and three of this capsule. But you sweat more because cardio creates more sustained heat. Here's why. Sweating is an unreliable progress marker. Sweating varies enormously between people and and even within the same person over time. So here's some things that sweat depends on. Genetics, body size, sex, hydration, clothing, environment, and especially heat acclimation. In fact, fitter individuals often sweat more, not less, because their cooling systems become more efficient. They start sweating earlier to regulate temperature better. So comparing sweat levels between people, or even between your own workouts really doesn't tell you much about the workout's effectiveness. Does sweating mean that you burned more calories? No, not necessarily. Sweating reflects thermoregulation, not energy expenditure. Calorie burn is determined by metabolic work, so how much force your muscles produce and how long they sustain activity. You can sweat heavily in a sauna while burning relatively few calories, or you can lift heavy weights with minimal sweat while still creating a really strong metabolic and muscular stimulus. Sweat tells you how hard your body is working to cool itself, not necessarily how many calories you're burning. And even calorie burn during a workout isn't the main driver of body composition. Anyway, like we talked about in episode number two, does sweating increase fat loss or accelerate fat loss? No, not necessarily. Sweat is fluid loss, not fat, fat loss. If the scale drops after a sweaty workout, that's just water leaving your body. But once you rehydrate, the water returns. Fat loss happens when the body uses stored energy over time, not when sweat leaves your skin. You can lose fat with minimal sweating, and you can sweat buckets without losing fat at all. So why do these sweaty workouts look so effective on social media? I don't know about you all, but my algorithm has been giving me a lot of, again, people filming themselves doing these sweaty workouts where you could physically see sweat dripping off their bodies onto their Pilates mats. And a lot of these influencers look really toned. And it's great pr, but it's misleading because that toned look may be partially due to the water that they're losing because they're sweating so much heat. And dehydration reduces subcutaneous water, which makes your muscles look more defined. You also have the increased blood flow from exercising, which creates a short term muscle pump, so you have less water retention underneath the skin, and then you have temporarily bigger muscles because of increased blood flow. So the combination of that and then some flattering lighting and some angles makes that person look really toned. And people think that that type of workout is creating that toned look when it may Be partially due because of dehydration, temporary muscle pump, and good lightings and angles. So that visual effect isn't necessarily long term change. Real muscle definition comes from building muscle tissue and maintaining appropriate body fat over months and years, not from just sweating in a few heated Pilates sessions. Are heated workouts better for cardio? You may be thinking, okay, just because I'm sweating or just because I'm working out in a hot environment. That doesn't necessarily lead to better results, but am I getting better cardiovascular stimulus? You may have taken a hot class and noticed that you can do the exact same amount of work that you could in a cooler environment. And yet your heart rate is a lot higher. So what's happening there? Training in heat mainly increases cardiovascular strain because your body has to regulate the temperature. So heat rises partially because blood is redirected to the skin for cooling, not solely because muscles demand more oxygen. So your heart rate may look cardio level, but part of that response is devoted to preventing overheating rather than improving true aerobic capacity. It's similar to how your heart rate spikes when you're nervous or scared. Your heart's working harder and your heart is beating faster. But that doesn't mean that you're improving your cardiovascular fitness. True cardiovascular adaptations happen when large amounts of muscle contract rhythmically. So think walking or cycling or running or swimming or dance classes, creating sustained oxygen demand. Heat changes how hard a workout feels, but it doesn't automatically improve the adaptations that drive cardiovascular change. So just because your heart rate is higher in a heated workout doesn't necessarily mean that you will have better cardiovascular adaptations. It doesn't mean that there won't be any cardiovascular adaptations. It's just not a one for one replacement to true cardio. Heated workouts can also be counterproductive if muscle growth is your goal, because excessive heat can sometimes reduce performance. And when you're very hot, you often feel like you can't lift as heavy, or you have to perform fewer reps or you fatigue faster. And this is because your body prioritizes temperature regulation over force production. The same workout might feel harder in heat, but that doesn't mean that it's more effective. It actually could could be limiting performance and force output, which means the muscle is getting a weaker stimulus, which means you might not be seeing the same return on investment. So does this mean that heated workouts or sweating is bad? No, not at all. If you enjoy heated workouts, they're absolutely fine as part of an overall routine. But if your primary goal is body recomposition or quote unquote toning. Heated workouts alone are usually not the most efficient path because muscle growth again depends on mechanical tension, progressive overload, adequate volume, enough recovery, the proper nutrition, and none of those things improve simply because you sweat more or because the room is hot. Heated workouts can support general fitness and activity levels, but they work best when they're paired with structured strength training. So here is the takeaway from all of this. You sweat more when your body is managing heat during cardio or heated classes, not necessarily when you're creating the adaptation that changes your body composition. Sweating doesn't tell you much about the fat you lost. It doesn't tell you much about how many calories you burned or whether you've simulated muscle. Some individuals just start sweating a lot sooner, and some individuals don't sweat at all. But that doesn't necessarily mean that sweating itself is an indicator that you've had an effective workout. If you love sweaty workouts because they feel good, I totally get it. Again, I used to teach heated workouts and I loved them. So keep doing them. But for lasting change, prioritize progressive strength training, adequate nutrition and consistency, and just don't worry about how much you sweat or don't sweat sweat. Come back tomorrow where we are talking about why you may feel bulky after strength training. This is a fear that a lot of women have. I'll discuss the three primary reasons why some women feel bulky and help you understand where that may be coming from. See you tomorrow.