Calorie Crunching

The holidays are upon us and if you’re like me, you’re already worrying about gaining weight.  It is irritating to watch that gal on TV, the one who is shaped like a talking pencil, say she has been eating this wonderful pre-cooked food and is now a size 8.  I don’t know about you, but I was born larger than a size 8.  She adds insult to injury when she spouts about her new bikini and how happy her husband is with her new found body.  The key word here is “found”.  I wonder how long she stayed on that diet before she found that body in there.

I get so low when I see one of those commercials that I have another cookie for comfort and then try to figure how many cookie-calories I’ll burn preparing dinner.  Remember, we bend over a lot reaching into cabinets and emptying the dishwasher.  If we burn 12 calories a minute climbing stairs, surely preparing a meal knocks off 4 or 5.

A recent article claimed that dancing a fast step for one hour burns 600 calories.  How many women do you know who ever danced a fast step for one hour and lived to get her calories counted?

The article mentioned that eating burned 50 calories an hour.  If you like to read, which uses another 25 calories an hour, you are really burning 75 calories an hour if you read and eat at the same time.

Singing uses 50 calories. So, if you sing what you read while you eat, that totals 125 calories an hour.  Apply the discount to the food you are consuming.  Granted this requires eating very slowly to keep an hour’s worth of eating anywhere near 125 calories.  It is comforting to know there are pleasant things left that really do melt pounds.

Card playing and watching television each burn 25 calories an hour.  That is encouraging news to a regular bridge playing-“All My Children”/”Days of Our Lives” fan.  You can double calorie burning if you watch TV while playing cards.  Six or eight cashews cost 88 calories.  Limit yourself to 5 cashews an hour while watching a good show on TV and playing cards and you come out about even.

Typing burns 50 calories an hour, so I’ll have earned a small cookie by the time I finish this. I forgot to estimate how much energy I put out doing all this math.