Exercising means burning calories. If you aren’t aware of that by THIS point, I can’t help you. Light knows I’ve written about that very thing quite often during the previous 700 posts I’ve put up. And although intense exercise and movement is the best option for a calorie burn that contributes to one’s overall fitness and weight loss goals, It may come as a surprise to some people that there are a number of reasonably strange and everyday activities that help you to burn calories.
One good example of this is what happens within your body while you sleep. Most people refer to being “at rest” during the night, but there’s a plethora of internal activity that takes place while a person sleeps. Muscle and tissue repair, digestion, brain activity and whole bunch more… I would be curious as to what amount of calories are burned by the average person during an 8-hour sleep. This got me to thinking about some strange or “non-fitness” activities that can burn calories, as well.
The first and most prominent one in my mind is meditation. Although I wouldn’t necessarily refer to mediation as a workout in and of itself, a person does burn calories during meditation. Just to be clear, it’s important to understand that calories are burned for any and all movement that the body performs. How little or how much is the question. And it can be a different amount for different people, based on age, level of fitness and body chemistry. But for me specifically, I’m burning approximately 90 calories an hour during meditation. This means that the 10 minutes of restful meditation I perform at the end of my workouts will burn roughly 15 calories. Does that tip the scale on the mount of calories I just burned during the actual workout? No, but it exists nonetheless and it’s still a calorie usage.
For example, did you know that taking a hot bath for about an hour will burn about 140 calories? This is according to a study performed at Loughborough University and explained in a post by theconversation.com. This somewhat makes sense to me, since sitting in a hot tub of water increases one’s core temperature resulting in sweating and a bunch of other functions of the body. Where there’s movement, there’s calorie burn, remember? Even things like drinking multiple cups of green tea a day or cleaning your house can burn well over 100 calories over the course of a day.
According to an article posted by HealthLine.com, 6 unusual ways to burn calories include exposure to cold weather or drinking cold water. This makes sense as it forces your body to work in order to warm itself and this can only be done by burning fuel. But the article also describes things such as chewing gum, donating blood and even constant fidgeting. If that last one genuinely burns calories, how do I not have a freakin’ six-pack yet? I fidget like a maniac. I can barely EVER manage to sit still. last but not least, the article also describes laughing more often, which will also burn off extra calories.
There are plenty of articles and studies out there that describe all sorts of different activities that will accomplish an extra amount of caloric burn. Some of them are a bit on the surprising side, and it should be noted that many of them depend on a person’s body chemistry and overall metabolic rate, as well. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go fidget some more… ☯
The Blogging Buddhist 
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