How Using Saunas for Weight Loss Can Boost Your Results
After taking a sauna, it’s natural to feel more lithe and awake. That feeling of relaxation and clarity makes an excellent post-workout cooldown, which is why so many athletes use saunas for weight loss after a hard day. However, many people treat the sauna not as a post-workout but as a place where you can actively lose weight. There have been decades of talk and studies about whether or not saunas can genuinely help with weight loss. While some firmly believe that regular sauna use aids in weight loss, others remain skeptical, seeing it as more myth than reality. Let’s explore together all the ways saunas for weight loss can or can’t assist in shedding those extra pounds.
Can a Sauna Help You Lose Weight?
Saunas technically do make people lose weight. However, the weight you lose in the sauna may not be the type you’re hoping to shed. It’s entirely possible to weigh yourself before and after a sauna session and notice a drop in weight. So yes, saunas can help with weight loss—but why does this happen?
How Do Saunas Help Burn Calories and Reduce Fat?
Think about what happens when you spend time in the sauna. Anyone in a hot sauna is bound to sweat and probably sweat a lot. When the body gets hotter, the water supply kept close to the edge of the skin starts to seep out of the body to keep us as cool as possible. As that sweat drips off your body, it technically accounts for part of your overall body mass. If you sweat enough, it’s more than possible to tip a scale down a kilogram. This, however, is not the type of weight loss that people are generally looking for.
This weight loss isn’t related to excess fat but rather to water weight. A good portion of our overall weight is made up of the water sloshing around in our bodies. When you sweat in the sauna, the only thing leaving your body is that sweat, not fat. The human body is very efficient in water use. After your sauna session, the body will quickly restore the lost water once you rehydrate. This means that the weight lost during the sauna will return when you drink water, emphasizing that this isn’t a sustainable form of weight loss. To achieve lasting results, saunas for weight loss should be combined with other health and wellness practices.
What Are the Benefits of Saunas for Weight Loss?
While saunas may not cause a person to lose weight outright, saunas are actually very good at helping people lose weight. This may be hard to believe after reading the section above but for some interesting biological reasons, saunas can actually help you lose weight as long as you make some key moves before and after your visit.
Saunas Help You Burn Calories
Using saunas for weight loss has been shown to increase heart rate, which causes your blood to flow faster and promotes calorie burning. As our blood flows faster and more fully throughout the body, this also makes us burn calories quicker.
A study once found that committed and regular sauna use actually helped people lose body mass (not just water weight). When we step into the sauna, our bodies immediately start working harder just to keep our internal temperature the same. Our body working harder means that blood flows faster, the heart pumps more quickly, and, most importantly, the body’s metabolism speeds up. When our metabolism speeds up, this means that we start consuming the calories from food faster than usual. This is very similar to what happens during exercise.
With this in mind, think about how much exercise you must do to lose meaningful weight. Then think about how long you would have to sauna in order to see any sauna weight loss benefits.
However, to see weight loss results, it’s important to understand that a sauna session alone may not be enough to burn a significant amount of calories. When combined with a healthy diet and exercise, though, the benefits of saunas for weight loss can become more noticeable. Regular sauna use can supplement your fitness routine, helping you burn calories while enjoying other positive effects on your body.
Saunas Help You Develop Muscle Mass
Many people might not realise that using saunas for weight loss goals can also indirectly help by increasing muscle mass. Using the sauna makes the body produce more heat shock proteins which help us create more muscle mass in a shorter time. The body makes heat shock proteins as a result of spending long amounts of time in high heat, but the body will have even more places to use heat shock proteins if you recently worked out your muscles before using the sauna. Heat shock proteins bind to the natural tears in our muscles that happen after a workout and help muscles grow back fuller and more robust.
While it’s obvious why a person would want bigger muscles, having more aerated and developed muscles means that the body will start to run more efficiently overall. And as you continue to use the sauna after a good muscle workout, your body will get better and better and produce heat shock proteins. Further, muscle tissue is more porous and less dense than fat tissue. So as the body replaces fat with muscles, you won’t only lose weight but also have a more healthy overall look.
Saunas Help Steady the Body’s Insulin Level
Another important benefit of regular sauna use for weight loss is its effect on insulin levels. Saunas help stabilize insulin and regulate blood glucose levels, similar to the effects of cardiovascular exercise. Lowering insulin levels is directly linked to fat loss, and while using a sauna alone may not be enough to cause significant weight loss, it can contribute to an overall healthier metabolic function when combined with exercise and a balanced diet. This makes using saunas for weight loss an effective tool for improving your body’s ability to manage fat and calories.
Best Way to Lose Weight in the Sauna
If you’re interested in using your sauna for weight loss, there are several strategies you can follow to maximise your results.
First, make sure you pair your sauna session with an intense, sweat-inducing workout. Whether you’re going for a run or engaging in strength training, any activity that gets you sweating is a great start for your sauna weight loss plan. Be sure to drink plenty of water during your workout to maintain stamina and help increase sweating.
As soon as you’ve cooled down from your workout enough that your breathing is even and calm, go right into the sauna (as long as you’ve had enough water beforehand!) and zone out for the next twenty calming minutes, or however long you are comfortable (check out our guide on how long to stay in the sauna to maximise benefits!).
The 20 minutes in the sauna will do a multitude of good for your body and your weight loss potential. Your muscles will be getting doused in heat shock proteins, your heart rate will maintain a healthy and high count, and most importantly, your metabolism won’t dip back down to passive levels. Your sweating will continue, too, which will do plenty of good for your skin as well!
After your sauna session, consider your workout complete. By entering the sauna after intense exercise, you extend your body’s active metabolic phase and maintain a higher heart rate for a longer period. This strategy helps you burn calories more efficiently and supports your overall weight loss goals.
Common Mistakes FAQ’s on Using Saunas for Weight Loss
Now that we know the proven ways that saunas can help a person lose weight, let’s talk about some classic myths about saunas and weight loss. While some myths come from original points of truth, others are completely unfounded.
The Advantages of Using Saunas for Weight Loss Routines
If you’re using the sauna to jump-start significant fat loss, it’s important to combine this practice with healthy habits. Sauna weight loss alone is unlikely to produce noticeable results. For visible fat loss, you must maintain a daily caloric deficit—burning more calories than you consume. The sauna can help you burn extra calories, but it won’t be enough to dramatically change your appearance without exercise.
Yes, saunas for weight loss can be effective, but only when you’ve already achieved a caloric deficit. But that will only happen if a person has burned enough calories throughout the day already to make a caloric deficit in the body. Then, the heat in the sauna may kick up a person’s metabolism enough to cause excess fat to burn.
Note on Sauna fat loss: While the body technically loses weight on a calorie deficit, that doesn’t paint the complete picture of what happens in your body when that deficit comes from not eating enough food. The human body needs anywhere between 1,500 and 2,000 kcals to keep our body running smoothly. Any less than that, and you have a real danger of causing health problems. Your calorie deficit must come about from burning that 1,500-2,000 kcals through exercise and the sauna rather than not eating enough and then forcing yourself into the sauna.
How Many Calories Can You Burn in a Sauna Session?
By spending time in the sauna, your metabolism kicks up its pace. This means that your body is burning calories faster compared to if you were just doing nothing. Specifically, scientists believe that people burn anywhere between 1.2 to 1.5 times more calories in the sauna. While there isn’t a universal number as to how many calories a person burns each time they visit the sauna, there is a consistent way you can find out for yourself.
First, do some research on your BMI and find out how many calories you burn in 20 minutes when you aren’t doing anything. For the sake of example, let’s use a general average number: 40 calories. If a person burns 40 calories in 20 normal minutes, they will probably burn anywhere between 48 and 60 calories during a 20 minute sauna visit. These numbers, of course, are dependent on a person’s metabolism and current weight. But as a baseline, understand that saunas technically increase average calorie burning in the body.
While these numbers may not seem huge, if you pair a sauna session with a workout that has already raised your heart rate, the sauna becomes an added calorie-burning bonus.
What are the Benefits of Using a Sauna Suit to Lose Weight?
The sauna suit is a specialised full-body garment that claims to promote weight loss by inducing sweat, similar to the effect of sauna weight loss. Before sauna suits, athletes used insulated sleeping bags for similar purposes. But do these suits really work? The answer depends on your expectations. While sauna suits can make you sweat, they won’t result in transformative or visible weight loss without additional exercise.
Before the Sauna Suit, athletes were known to take up a similar strategy by sleeping in an insulated sleeping bag to make them sweat more overnight. So, do these suits actually work? Well, that depends on what you’re looking to get out of them. The sauna suit is not nearly as intense or healthy an environment as an actual sauna. The heat in a sauna suit is brought about by your own internal body temperature, which can never pass 37 degrees Celsius unless you’re sick. Wood-burning saunas, on the other hand, can genuinely burn twice as hot as this.
Many of the sauna health benefits that aid weight loss only come about because the heat level in saunas is above normal human body temperature. So by simple logic, sauna suits will never be as healthy as taking a real sauna. But this doesn’t mean that sauna suits can’t help you sweat more fully and meaningfully. This is a great way to heat up your body faster. You will likely find both with cardiovascular exercise and muscle training, that wearing a sauna suit is a great way to kick up your overall sweat, which in turn activates your metabolism even more.
So, yes, the sauna suit can help you lose weight, but only when paired with other well-known weight loss methods, namely regular sweat-inducing exercise.
Final Thoughts: Can Saunas for Weight Loss Truly Help You Shed Pounds?
While people in the know may sneer at the idea of saunas causing weight loss, there are indeed proven ways that the sauna can help a person lose weight. Using the sauna in combination with an engaging workout is a meaningful and unquestionable way to draw out your metabolism’s strength and burn a fair few more calories during a workout. Further, using a sauna after a workout is great for the rejuvenation of the body in general!
Healthy people who exercise and drink a lot of water have the most to gain from regular sauna use. Without exercise, don’t expect meaningful or life-changing weight loss from a sauna alone. There is no magical trick to weight loss. Just putting on a sauna suit or spending time in a sauna every day likely won’t lead to visible weight loss if that is all you change in your daily routine.
Losing weight will always take hard work, but that doesn’t mean that a sauna can’t help. Spending time in the sauna is already a massive boon to your health, so if you are really looking to make a weight loss change, don’t neglect the benefits of a sauna in combination with a good workout.
