A Painless New Year’s Resolution- Dive More!
Eat the Christmas cookie, have an extra helping of mashed potatoes. When you are on a dive vacation with Lahaina Divers, you’ll be burning calories while diving without even noticing. Scuba diving is a great exercise, and you might even shed a few pounds!
Diving burns calories
Have you gone out for a couple of nicely paced dives in warm Maui waters to find yourself ravenously hungry afterward? The average scuba diver will burn about 400 calories per dive, or around 700 in colder water, dependent on current, water temperature and duration. You’d have to jog for an hour to get the same result, and not see beautiful corals and brightly colored fish.
We choose diving! With two dives clocking in at around 800 calories burned, That’s about 40% of calories needed per day for a man, and over 50% for a woman.
It doesn’t feel like exercise
After 30 minutes jogging or cycling, you might feel tired and sweaty. Underwater, you are weightless (except what’s on your weight belt), especially in buoyant salt water. In addition, water dissipates heat away from your body 20 times faster than air. Without sweat or gravity, there is less perception of exertion.
Even Maui ocean water is cooler than our normal body temperature. To keep warm, your body increases your metabolism in order to generate heat, resulting in more calories burned than normal without you feeling the strain of exercise.
In very cold climates like the arctic, one would need at least 6000 calories a day to survive. We think we’ll stick with warm sunny Maui, and just a few extra calories burned, which you can make up for with great Pacific Island cuisine.
Drink plenty of fresh water
Like with any athletic activity, it is important to stay hydrated. Breathing compressed air tends to make one thirsty too. Lahaina Divers always has plenty of fresh drinking water and bio-degradable paper cups on board to replenish lost fluids during a dive (and you are welcome to bring your own refillable water bottle). According to DAN (Divers Alert Network), staying hydrated by drinking lots of water is important, and along with monitoring your dive profile, one of the biggest factors in avoiding decompression sickness.
Unsure if you are physically ready for diving?
This is a great self-assessment question! It is not uncommon for casual recreational divers to have long breaks between dives. Also, the pandemic has kept a lot of people home, with food being one way to relieve stress and anxiety. So, if it’s been a while or you have any health or fitness concerns, ask your doctor. You can self-review with this medical questionnaire, and DAN provides this diving medical guide for physicians.
Even if the doctor gives you the all-clear, self- assess and decide if you might want to start out with an easier, shallower dive. Check out our article about returning to scuba diving after a break.
Just keep diving!
We love promoting the sport of diving, no matter what locale you choose to explore. And if diving supports a healthier lifestyle and we are able to indulge a bit with our diet, those are just some of the great perks!