Can Salsa Dancing Help You Lose Weight?

I love today’s question because it’s personal to me. Yes, Salsa dancing can help you lose weight! For a big portion of my life, I was overweight.  At my heaviest, I weighed 196 lbs (about 89 kg). I have dropped about over 50 lbs (22.6 kg)! The most important part is that I have kept it off.

So the short answer is, yes, you can lose weight doing Salsa. But it is not a silver bullet. It won’t magically make you lose weight overnight. I want to be honest with you, I was dancing for a long time, dancing at Salsa nightclubs up to six times a week when I was a student and I was still overweight. I looked up the stats and for 60 minutes of Salsa dancing, you can burn anywhere from 191 calories to over 300 calories. It depends on the speed and energy of your dancing and your initial weight.

Awesome right? You get to do something fun, something exciting, and meet cool people in the process and get a bit healthier. Here are some tips to help you on your health journey.

Focus on Feeling Better in Your Body

When I was at my heaviest I was definitely unhappy. I remember getting out of bed, feeling depressed, feeling sad. I walked up to the mirror and saw this bloated corpse of a man with puffy cheeks, and dark circles under the eyes.

Once the weight started to come off and I was going out social dancing, I felt different. I felt lighter on the dance floor. People started to interact with me differently. It was an amazing journey. Salsa dancing was a big part of it for mental health. People are so supportive on the dance floor and when they started to see me transform, they would cheer me on. That reinforced how I felt about my body.

Watch How Many Calories You Consume.

I would love to be able to tell you that Salsa Dancing alone will help you lose weight. It’s simply not true. No matter what level of activity you do, if you’re eating more calories than your body can burn you’ll gain weight. Period…it sucks but it’s true.

I’m incredibly active – teaching dance classes for about 20 hours a week, nightclub dancing and walking back and forth to the studio lulled me into thinking I could go out to McDonald’s or eat a large pizza every night. But no matter my level of activity, my body couldn’t burn off those excess calories. You have to consider what you put into your body.

There are a lot of ways to track your calories from intermittent fasting, to calorie counting apps. It doesn’t matter the method you pick – just pick one.  So if you want to see change, eat less.

Focus on Your Wins

I hate going to the gym.  I hate running. But Salsa is a way to become active in a fun and engaging way. I am not saying that you go to a class or to a nightclub and bam, suddenly I lost a bunch of weight.

As your Salsa dancing improves, you will naturally use more of your body. So you will see results in the way you are able to to move. This happens as your dancing improves but it also happens when you lose weight. So you will notice your transformation as you improve as a dancer. You will flow across the dance floor more easily and your moves will be smoother.

Salsa dancing is one tool to help you maintain your health. You get out of the house, socialize and move! I have had the pleasure of seeing many of my own students go through beautiful transformations because they found something that was fun and that inspired them to work on themselves outside the dance floor too.

There are many other Health Benefits to Salsa, click on the link to learn more.

I can’t wait to welcome you to our big family, have you come in week to week, have fun, connect with new friends and let loose to amazing Latin songs. Click here to check our current schedule.

If you have any questions you would like me to answer here are some ways you can contact me: message me on Instagram (torontodanceSalsa), on Twitter (#torontodanceSalsa), on Facebook (Toronto Dance Salsa) or email me at [email protected].