I joined a karate studio about 3 months ago. When we started we had to buy a gi to wear (a uniform). I asked the teacher last week if we had to wear the uniform or if we could wear just the pants and a t-shirt from the school (with the school logo), because I saw that’s what others were doing. he said this is fine.
I know that wearing the full gi, with a t-shirt underneath, is making me sweat alot. We do some heavy work during class but not enough to make me stand there and sweat alot the whole time if I weren’t wearing the uniform. Seems that I am sweating just because we start off with about 15 mins of heavy work and my body heat can’t escape the heavy black gi.
If I just wore a t-shirt instead of the jacket, I’d sweat alot less.
I am trying to lose weight right now (well uh…constantly) and I was wondering how much I am benefitting from the extra sweating caused by the gi. Would it behoove me to stick it out and not take off the jacket?
I do look really cool in the full uniform 
But if I’m sweating my butt off for no extra benefit then I’d like to switch to a really cool t-shirt [pun] instead.
Wow I switch between “we” and “I” alot in that first paragraph.
No, I am not the Queen. I just forgot to mention that “My friend and I” joined a karate studio… :smack:
Sweat loss is mainly water weight. You should be drinking to replenish the loss of fluids so it’s not really useful as anything but a short term weight loss technique.
Your body is sweating to cool you down. It’s not burning any extra calories.
Aside from the effort it takes to sweat (which isn’t much), all sweating does is lower your temperature (through evaporation), salt content and hydration level. You don’t get a better workout in August compared to February just because you’re sweating a lot more.
Also, unless you’re radiating heat in the visible spectrum (i.e., glowing), the color of the gi isn’t going to make much difference in how fast you lose heat via radiation. A black gi might actually be cooler for you if you were giving off visible light, because it would reflect less light back at you. Your uniform is going to draw off a certain amount of heat due to conduction, but I don’t think a different color would make a difference.
In any case, if you’re not working hard enough to sweat just standing there during the rest period, and you only really sweat when you’re working hard, I don’t think however much you’re wearing is going to make that much difference.