As well as being fun, scuba diving is actually an extremely healthy sport. There is no wonder why, as doctors recommend that you take up swimming if you want to improve your physical health and scuba is only more intensive swimming.
A typical exercise is usually drab and boring, not only that, but hitting the gym feels more like a boring obligation than something you can do for fun. It’s common to seek out activities that help you burn calories without feeling like exercise if you struggle to find the motivation to exercise. Because of the buoyancy effect of the water, scuba diving may also appeal to people who suffer from joint discomfort or other health problems.
But does scuba diving even work when it comes to burning calories, and if it does, how many calories can you even burn during a session of scuba diving?
Does scuba diving help you lose weight?
Many people believe that scuba diving isn’t actually helpful when it comes to losing weight because the buoyancy in the water means that you don’t have to put much work into it. However, this really isn’t the case at all and in fact, scuba diving is one of the most body-intensive sports that you can take part in.
When you are scuba diving, you are fighting against the pressures of water current and the sea’s intensity. Because of this, you are essentially using every muscle in your body and working all of those muscles out.
However, before you start googling the top 3 full face scuba masks and start your scuba hobby, you may want to know just how much weight you could lose and how many calories you could potentially burn.
How many calories could you really burn?
Now, a lot of research has actually gone into how many calories can be burned when scuba diving and how this differs between waters. If you are a novice to scuba diving, you may not have even been aware that you can scuba in different waters.
Temperate waters
Temperate waters are the average temperature waters that you scuba dive in, so what you would expect on an average warm day. If you do a full hour of scuba diving in temperate water, it is predicted that you will burn around 600 calories. This is quite a lot of calories considering how little time an hour really is. It will also feel a lot more fun than doing a standard workout in the gym.
Hot water
Unfortunately, if you take to the water on a hot day when the water is quite warm, you will lose fewer calories. Due to the hotter water, you can expect to only lose around 300 calories. Though this is quite different from what you would expect in temperate waters, 300 lost calories can still be considered to be quite a successful workout. You could always make up the difference easily by increasing the time you spend in the water, which you probably wouldn’t notice.
Cold-water
If you want to lose a lot of weight quickly, your best bet would be diving in cold water. This helps your body burn fat much faster and you can expect to lose around 900 calories from an hour of diving in cold water. However, diving in cold water comes with its own risks. On top of worrying about the human crush depth, you will also need to worry about hypothermia and other issues.
