swimming

I've been swimming 2kms most days lately as well as my normal gym stuff.

I'm not trying to loose weight. I would just rather not put it on. Seems, though, the swimming has probably been useless (and possibly worse than useless) as an additional exercise.

Research published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine shows that in the absence of a controlled diet, swimming has little or no effect on weight loss [1].

Professor Grant Gwinup compared three exercise programs for three months. Each program began with up to 10 minutes of daily exercise. The length of each workout was increased by five minutes every week.

• Test subjects following the walking program lost 17 pounds of weight during the three-month study.

• Those following the cycling program lost 19 pounds of weight.

• However, subjects following the swimming program actually gained 5 pounds.

Assuming that all three groups burned a similar number of calories, the swimmers must have compensated by eating more. "Presumably," speculates Professor Gwinup, "swimming in cold water stimulates the appetite to increase caloric consumption."

D'oh.

I do enjoy it, though, so not all is lost!