Surprising Calorie Burners

When you’re trying to lose weight, especially baby weight, calories become a reasonably big part of your life. How many you’re eating and, more importantly, how many you’re burning off are crucial parts of the weight loss equation.
While becoming obsessed with input and output isn’t healthy, having an awareness of the calorie content of your food and the potential number you may burn through exercise and other activities can be a useful way to keep weight loss on track.
Calorie burning is usually synonymous with exercise, cardio in particular. Walking, running, swimming or a structured gym class are all great ways to burn calories and contribute to your weight loss.
Incidental exercise has also been shown to have an impact on your weight, with simple, daily bursts of low impact, integrated exercise, contributing to your overall calorie burning potential (think walking to the shop instead of driving or taking the stairs instead of the life).
Research has also found that there are a range of simple activities that also help to burn calories. These aren’t necessarily classified as ‘exercise’ (like walking to the bus stop or carrying heavy shopping to the car could be) but still have an impact on your body and weight. The best bit? The majority are things you may already be doing everyday. It’s the calorie crunch without the burn.

Surprising calorie burners

• Gardening – Pottering around the garden is a great way to burn extra calories with weeding and planting especially productive.
• Ironing – Strangely enough ironing is a decent calorie burner due to the muscles it utilises in the arms, shoulders and back, burning 76 calories per half and hour.
• Grocery shopping – Pushing a trolley and reaching for items to put it in for 45 minutes each week (not to mention wrangling a baby or toddler) burns around 125 calories.
• Washing the dishes – A 20 minute session with the suds burns approximately 55 calories, not bad for a job that needs to be done almost everyday!
• Walk the walk – Standing burns close to 50% more calories than sitting. Remaining on your feet while you chat on the phone o browse your iPad can give an extra boost to your calorie burning.
• Down some (cold) H20 – Staying hydrated is important for weight loss and wellness but cooling down your glass or bottle can also have calorie burning benefits. When we drink cold water, our body has to kick things up a notch to to increase the temperature of the water so that our bodies can tolerate it, this in turn, burns calories. Start sipping!