sauna and weight loss for a fat man

Sauna and Weight Loss? 1 of the WORST Reasons to Sauna

If you’ve heard the first thing about saunas (and you’re an American), you’ve probably heard that sauna and weight loss go hand in hand.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to just sit in a sauna and witness your extra pounds melting away?

It could look something like this:

sauna and weight loss exaggerated

Not only do you enter the sauna as obese and exit it as slim, but the sauna also shaves your facial hair and removes the pattern from your suit.

There’s just one tiny detail I haven’t mentioned yet: all of those scenarios are equally impossible.

So, do saunas help you lose weight? No, going to sauna won’t lead to any actual weight loss. At least not in the sense many people hope it would.

Let’s see why sauna and weight loss aren’t a good pair in reality and answer the most frequently asked questions related to this topic.

Sauna and Weight Loss: What You Actually Lose

Let’s imagine for a sec you’d lose your arm in a traffic accident.

As terrible as that were, you’d actually lose weight as a result because your arm obviously has weight to it, weight that you’d no longer be carrying with you.

Yay, successful weight loss, right?

This example goes to show that it’s not just any weight so many people wish to lose: you want to lose fat. Fat loss is the only loss that makes sense if you’re carrying extra weight.

You don’t want to lose muscle, let alone entire body parts just for the sake of losing weight.

What kind of weight do saunas make you lose, then? The answer is fluid (= water weight).

medical doctor's quote on sauna and weight loss
Source: Good Health Interview

Most people aren’t interested in this kind of “weight loss.”

Unless you’re a professional athlete, like a wrestler, who uses a sauna to lose water weight before a weigh-in to qualify for the weight category he’s been aiming at (so that he doesn’t have to compete against a heavier opponent), sauna and weight loss isn’t the dream duo you’ve been led to believe.

My Smart Watch Says I’m Burning a Ton of Calories in a Sauna. Are You Saying It’s a Lie?

Your heart rate increases in a hot sauna, which most smart watches and fitness trackers interpret as being caused by exercise. But as we all know, sitting in a sauna isn’t exercise.

Besides, it’s a known fact that while smart watches do many things well, calorie-counting isn’t one of them.

Stanford studied how well seven different fitness trackers measured factors like heart rate and calories burned, and found the devices are very inaccurate with their calorie burning info:

Many fitness tracker users report similar findings: some devices claim you burn very little calories even during a long and strenuous workout while others claim you burn the same amount of calories by just sitting and sweating in a sauna, for instance.

If you’ve been tracking calorie-burning with a device like this during your sauna sessions, you can work as your own guinea pig:

Once you’ve “burned” 10,000 calories (20 x 500 kcal sauna sessions), but haven’t lost any weight aside from temporary fluid loss, it’s then when you start to see you’re not really burning lots of calories as it’s not translating to actual weight loss.

I’ve Seen Some Impressive Sauna Weight Loss Before and After Pics. Are They Not to Be Trusted?

That’s correct, you shouldn’t trust them.

Whenever I see a headline such as “I used a sauna for 30 days and lost XX pounds!” it makes me laugh as my own, truthful headline would say “I’ve used a sauna for over 35 YEARS – with no weight lost!”

And I actually happen to be someone who has lost weight successfully:

NOT a sauna weight loss before and after
Yes, this is my waist.

It would be so easy to claim I got these results by just sitting in a sauna, and try to sell you the exact sauna that brought me these results, but I’m not a shill who lies to her readers.

So, what does sauna do for your stomach? Nothing, but intermittent fasting will.

Can You Lose 20 Pounds from the Sauna? How Long in the Sauna to Lose 5 lbs?

No, you can’t and shouldn’t attempt to.

A 2019 study found that young, sedentary men who didn’t sauna often lost an average of 0.65 kg (1.43 pounds) of bodily fluids during four sauna sessions that each lasted for 10 minutes.

The emphasis is on fluids; you’re not losing any fat by sitting in a sauna, only getting dehydrated, which can be dangerous.

You shouldn’t aim for this kind of “weight loss” (= water loss) in any sauna.

Sauna and Weight Loss Reviews, Are They Always Fake?

Mostly yes. If the reviewer has noticeably lost weight, then they’ve obviously done something to lose weight, but it’s not thanks to saunaing.

It’s of course possible that getting a sauna of your own, or buying a gym membership with access to sauna, makes you want to exercise more frequently than before, and maybe even eat more healthily as part of your new lifestyle.

Then it’s those changes that explain the weight loss, not the sauna alone.

A 2024 study found that a randomized group of people who exercised, changed their diet, and did hot bathing (such as the Finnish sauna) got much better results with weight, abdominal circumference, BMI, and body fat percentage than the other groups who didn’t do all three.

Saunaing alone didn’t bring nearly as good results, neither did exercise and diet changes together without the hot bathing.

diet, exercise and sauna for weight loss

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. How often should I use a sauna for weight loss?

Never.

You can happily sauna 2-4 times a week or even every day, but you should never do it for weight loss unless you’re a professional athlete doing it for a weigh-in before a competition in order to lose water weight.

2. Is sauna good for losing belly fat? Will sauna reduce waist size?

No, saunaing isn’t a good way of losing any kind of fat. It won’t flatten your stomach.

3. Is a wet or dry sauna better for weight loss?

The concepts of wet and dry sauna are fake and misunderstood by most people, but neither are good for weight loss.

(When people talk about dry saunas, they mostly mean traditional saunas that are used incorrectly. “Wet saunas,” on the other hand, are steam rooms that are not saunas. Infrared “saunas” are the only ones that can truthfully be called dry, but then again, they’re not real saunas.

Traditional saunas have been studied extensively for hundreds of years. Infrared saunas have been studied far less and are most known for wildly exaggerated health claims with very little evidence to back them up.

4. Does sauna speed up metabolism?

Yes, it does, but this slight and temporary change has no permanent effect on your weight.

5. Do you sweat out fat in a sauna?

No, you don’t. Even though fat eventually leaves the body via breath, sweat, and urine, it has to be broken down first which happens mostly in the small intestine.

6. Does sweating burn belly fat?

No. You can’t spot-reduce fat.

how many calories do you burn in a sauna for 30 minutes

7. How many calories do you burn in a sauna for 30 minutes?

A woman burns 58-72 calories whereas a man burns 65-81 calories.

Even if you’re a bigger dude, you don’t burn lots of calories in a sauna; a man in his thirties who’s 6′3″ tall and weighs 243 pounds still burns only 89-105 calories during a 30-minute sauna session.

8. How long does it take to see results from sauna?

Even just one sauna session brings many desired results: you relax, your blood pressure is likely to drop, your circulation improves, you may experience pain relief if you’ve had an injury, and you’ll sleep better the following night.

But if we’re talking about weight loss results, then you’d have to wait forever. You shouldn’t rely on any kind of sauna for weight loss results.

9. Is it better to use the sauna in the morning or at night for weight loss?

It makes no difference as sauna and weight loss aren’t a thing.

Generally it’s more common to use the sauna in the evening as it’s relaxing and improves sleep.

10. How do you maximize weight loss in a sauna?

Very few people are interested in losing mere fluid (= water weight) and nothing else, so there’s nothing weight-related to maximize in a sauna.

Just accept that sauna and weight loss don’t go together and move on.

sauna post or during workout

11. Which sauna is best for weight loss?

The best sauna for weight loss doesn’t exist.

The more a sauna shop claims their saunas make you lose weight, the faster you should run away from them.

If you did that literally, you’d actually lose some weight, which is quite a paradox!

12. Is it better to go to the sauna before or after a workout?

The absolute majority of people prefer saunas after a workout. There’s also a lot of research on saunas post-workout with good results.

Only some professional athletes use saunas before exercise to warm up their muscles.

13. How long to stay in the sauna for detox?

No time as sauna detoxification is a scam. No detox happens when saunaing but that’s okay as your liver and kidneys will do that work for you.

14. Infrared sauna and weight loss?

The realm of infrared saunas is most known for quackery, pseudoscience, and outright lies (heck, infrared saunas work even as vaccine-replacements!), so be very skeptical when you’re told about their benefits.

Ask to see proof for the claims, and also read the studies these sources site. Often the studies, even if real, don’t even mention weight loss, detoxification, or other topics the seller would have you believe.

sauna and weight loss for a fat man

Final Thoughts

Just because sauna and weight loss aren’t a dynamic duo, there are countless other reasons to go to sauna.

I’ve written about sauna benefits before, particularly related to health and together with contrast therapy.

In a sauna you relax, your circulation improves, blood pressure drops, and your airways clear. Many also report pain relief, muscle recovery, and better sleep.

Long-term saunaing is also linked to a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Even if more research was done in the future and more studies suggested that sauna and weight loss are a bigger deal than previously thought, we already have existing studies that suggest otherwise:

A 2018 study with 867 female and 821 male participants reports several sauna benefits and states that:

Participants with a frequency of sauna bathing of four to seven sessions per week had higher BMI and alcohol and energy intake, compared to those with 1 sauna session per week.

This finding wouldn’t be possible if saunaing was slimming because it’s exactly these frequently sauna-going people who should have seen most weight loss results.

Yet, their body mass index is higher and they consume more food than people who go to sauna much less frequently.

My gosh, does this mean saunaing is actually fattening?!

No, of course not. Correlation doesn’t imply causation.

But it does mean that the next time somebody tells you sauna and weight loss go perfectly hand in hand, you can tell them how it really is and outsmart them.

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