[Question] Exercise and Heat

[Curveegrrl]

I'm not quite sure how to word this question.

My exercise regemine is a lot of walking. I walk a little under 6km 5 or 6 days a week. It's June now. I'm in Japan. It's getting hot. And it's only going to get hotter.

This morning I took my regular route, at my regular time (about 8 am on Sundays...weekdays I go in the evening). It was wicked hot. I was going at my normal pace, but felt like I was working much harder. When I got home I was sweating buckets (attractive, no?). Of course I've been making sure to drink extra water today.

Is there a point here Curveegrrl? Well, yeah. It was the same walk. But felt much harder. Does one burn more calories in hot weather? Or am I just fooling myself?

[Effie]

The short, unscientific answer is that your body is working harder to keep itself cool. It wants to regulate itself by not exerting more energy than it's used to, so when it's hotter, you will feel sluggish because your body is resistant to working harder than it's already working.

Hopefully someone can answer you better than that, but I think that's the general idea.

[ttdriver]

Effie is right; your body works harder in the hot weather. So the KEY is not to overstress during the hotter months by taking it slower until your body adjusts to it.

Here, we battle 6 months of intense heat and oppressive humidity a year. I am definitely slower in the summer, but I don't care because I don't want to end up dead from heat exhaustion! I've been running for over a year and a half and ALWAYS have to give my body time to get conditioned for running in the heat.

Try to walk during the cooler parts of the day if you can (early morning or later in the evening) and MAKE TRIPLE SURE YOU ARE WELL-HYDRATED. You may also want to up your amount of potassium so you don't get any heat-related cramping. You lose alot of minerals when you sweat.

Hang in there, take it a bit easier and soon you should be fine!

Betty

[Curveegrrl]

Thanks for the information and advice! I was wondering what my body was doing.

I was also wondering if one burns more or fewer calories while exercising in the heat.

I seem to recall that a calorie is the amount of energy required to heat a certain amount of water by one degree Celcius. So to burn a calorie, your body has to heat something-something. But now my body is trying to stay cool. It's working to NOT heat something-something. But it's still getting rather warm. Something IS getting heated. However, maybe it's not the something-something that results in calorie-burn.

I suddenly get the feelin that I should have paid more attention in Grade 10 Biology. sigh.