Fitness: Real Sauna Sauna Suit

I see more and more success stories about getting fit these days. It seems Fit is in. This is encouraging, especially with the dreary winter months coming, where we typically gain due to holidays and lower activity levels. I posted a number of years ago about my weight loss plan, eat less, exercise more. Pretty standard line of thought. I'm happy to say its almost 3 years later, and I've lost about 80-85 pounds going that route. I' floating around 205 at this point (my highest weight was at around 290 when I really got serious), give or take water intake. Still not at my target weight, but then again, its not a race, and I've got plenty of time.

So, one of the tools in my weight loss toolshed is the sauna suit. The one that I use and can honestly recommend in good faith is the Real Sauna sauna suit.

I got this thing almost 2 years ago while looking for something to help me get accustomed to extreme heat during exercise. I needed this for a number of reasons. First, I live in Texas, where we have 60 degree winters and 100+ degree summers. Second was this was a killer for me in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu when I started out and I found myself not being able to endure 5-15 minute matches due to overheating. I also wanted to encourage more sweat while increasing my water intake so I could flush my system of garbage.

So I went through a few different sauna suit, which were all pretty much junk. They all tore and none of them sized correctly. Plus, it looked like I was some kind of hobo wearing a garbage bag.
I came across the Real Sauna suit out of the blue while searching the internet. It was pricey, but it sounded durable, which was my main focus after going through a few other brands. At the time, they only had the gray hoodie. While not exactly stylish, it looked like a normal sweat suit so people wouldn't look at me like I was crazy. So I gave it a try.

So here are the activities that this thing has survived with me over the years:

• Running
• cardio kick boxing
• general house work
• Wii Fit
• Wii Punchout
• Dance dance Revolution
• and Gimnastica Natural

It has survived being stuffed into a suit case over and over. It has survived multiple washes. It even survived my wife accidentally putting it in the dryer. Only within the past 3 months did the inner lining finally tear, which has forced me to order another suit. Now, take into consideration, thats over the course of 2 years of heavy use.

I only have 2 real gripes about the real sauna suit. First is that it is expensive. Second is that they do not sell the pieces individually. Since I did need to get a new pair of pants, I wanted to order just the pants. This wasn't an option on their site. So, while I did order another gray suit, I ordered the new one that does not have the hoodie in addition to the Navy blue one.

Word of caution. I learned the hard way to not wear the suit if it is over 80 degrees. I pushed the envelope and was wearing the suit when the temperature got into the upper 80s and 90's, and started to suffer the effects of severe dehydration and heat stroke. If your not accustomed to the heat, don't push it. This thing gets hot, and I mean really hot. If you wear this while exercising, you will pour buckets of sweat. I do. You can easily lose 5-10 pounds of water weight with one session, so when you take it off, don't take it off on your carpet. Second word of caution, hydrate like crazy. And I mean, drink lots of water. You will need it.