While you can indeed lose weight with an electric blanket, by getting under it for an entire night, turning it to full, and sweating, this is not the sort of long-term weight loss most people hope to achieve when they wonder if they can really lose weight with an electric blanket.
True weight loss for this discussion, is defined as the loss of only fat from the body; not water, not protein, not salt, not blood, not sweat, not tears.
Here are some of the specific problems with losing weight through profuse sweating, as triggered by the heat of an electric blanket.
- Electric blankets can indeed cause weight loss because they make you sweat. But weight loss through bodily fluid depletion alone is generally not permanent. You gain the weight back as soon as you drink some water, soda, juice, milk, or other beverage.
- More lasting and true weight loss occurs when you burn more calories in a given time than you take in (details here), and sweating alone does not burn off many calories. So the weight loss it generates is generally short-lived.
- In fact, adding fluid to your body at the right times, by drinking more water, can actually increase true weight loss.
- Sweating also saps the body of salt, which in turn, causes internal fluid reductions. While this indeed appears as fewer pounds on the scale, again, the weight returns when you eat more sodium. Details here.
- When you perform vigorous exercise, you burn off more calories. But you also typically sweat as well. However, do not assume that it’s the sweating that causes the true weight loss, rather than the extra calorie utilization of working out.
- Again, it’s burning calories that burns up fat; not the sweating. Sweating is only a corollary effect of exercise; not a cause of anything nearly so grand as true weight loss. So do not expect much loss of fat from your body just by sweating alone.
- Whether you sweat or not, if you’re working off more calories than you’re eating, you’ll lose weight.
- So you do not need to sweat to lose weight, although admittedly, the more intense forms of exercise (the ones that promote more weight loss), often come with a shirt full of sweat. But it’s not the sweat that gets you there; it’s the work.
- Besides, sleeping and sweating with an electric blanket may create other health problems. When I’m too hot, and sweating a lot, I don’t sleep as well. My sleep is broken and restless, so that the next day, I’m bushed. If this happens for too many nights in a row, I’m apt to be more stressed, get more colds, and a host of other illnesses when I haven’t slept soundly. So I believe it a very bad idea to intentionally create discomfort for yourself by creating a sauna in your bed with an electric blanket.
- The more you sweat in bed, the dirtier become your bed-clothes; including electric blankets. So save yourself the added costs of doing laundry as well as the wear and tear on your bedding
With all that said, it’s apparent that gimmicks such as electric blankets, saunas, hot tub baths, sun baths, and so on, really do not increase the amount of actual fat your body gives up. The idea that you can lose weight with an electric blanket therefore, is myth and pure bonk. Buy an electric blanket to keep warm; not to lose weight. True weight loss requires true work; not huddling underneath an electric blanket, and not wallowing in a sauna.