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A couple weeks ago I wrote an article titled “The Couch Potato’s Guide to Losing Weight” here on GoodMenProject. That article was well received, as there seem to be many men like me out there, men who are both overworked and under exercised and are keen to make a change to the latter, if not to the former.
So, here are some more fun and easy exercises and activities that can help you to beat the flab.
Being Active Around the Home
You are always burning calories. We all have a resting rate and even the slightest activity can help to increase this rate a little. For instance, if you are around 155 pounds then you will burn 25 calories an hour in your sleep and a few more just watching TV. If you are reading, this can increase to more than 40 and if you are standing then it will be closer to 50.
These are obviously negligible and I’m not going to tell you that the best way to lose weight is to read all day and avoid sitting down. But being active around the home can make a big difference overall. For instance, cooking can burn as much as 100 calories an hour, which means that if you cook your own meals throughout the day, you could burn between 100 and 200 calories.
Heavy cleaning, whether you’re getting your car sparkling clean or dusting the house, can burn as much as 170, cleaning the gutters can burn 180, and doing simple repairs around the home can burn an additional 100 to 120. And if that’s not enough then think about changing your home around, because moving furniture can burn over 220 calories an hour.
Shopping
Men treat shopping like a mission. There is a plan, it’s in, out, and then back to base for a debrief. There is no window shopping, no hours spent waiting or trying on clothes. However, there are some shops where men enjoy the full experience. They are game shops, music shops, computer stores, hardware stores and of course, car showrooms.
It feels great to get out there and to spend your hard earned money, especially if you’re a workaholic who is typically only concerned with earning money and watching it stack up. It works on all levels, from the pride of being able to afford something to the joy of trying it out for the first time, and the simple act of shopping or it can burn as much as 150 calories an hour.
The more you walk around seeing what’s available, the more calories you burn, simple as that. The only problem with men is that we’re terrible shoppers when we are on our own and even worse when we’re with male friends. We need a woman there. It’s almost like their very presence give us the excuse we need to enjoy the experience and to waste all that time browsing, trying things out and gossiping the whole time.
So, take your wife along. Take a female friend or a sister. Hell, drag your grandmother out of the assisted living facility for a day if need be.
Hitting Things
One of the most satisfying ways to burn calories and destress is to take a bat and hit something hard. By that I don’t mean you should take your aggression out on a neighbor or anyone else you don’t like—I have enough legal trouble as it is without being blamed for your killing spree— but that you should take a bat and a ball to a field or even your back garden and let loose.
Just batting a few balls in a game like cricket can burn 50 calories every 15 minutes. Baseball is also a good option, but the sheer weight of the cricket bat ensures you give your muscles more of a workout. If that’s too much, try your hand at croquet, which can burn over 110 calories an hour. Competitive Frisbee is even better and if you don’t have human friends then you can play with a dog. You can burn as much as 500 calories an hour playing this game at a fast pace.
You can also try playing golf, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Sport
Exercise is boring. There are a few people out there who get a kick out of running and going to the gym, but I can’t speak for these people as I just don’t know how their mind works. It’s an alien prospect to me. However, I understand that sport is fun and that the “fun” aspects of it aren’t confined to watching professional athletes on TV while drinking beer and shouting drunken critiques.
Obviously, some sports will burn more calories than others and some are easier to play than others. Your preferences will dictate what you should do more than the calories they can burn, but just force yourself to make a start and it’s very easy to have fun with all sports. As for calories, you will burn more doing martial arts like kickboxing and karate than you will boxing, and they are also more complete full body workouts.
You will burn between 250 and 500 calories an hour playing Racquetball (depending on your weight) yet with football, it’s 250 to 400, on average. One of the best sports for burning calories, however, is handball, which can burn up to 600 an hour.
Thinking
Okay, this is a bizarre one, but worth including as I’m sure all hardworking exercise haters will enjoy it. As mentioned above, you are always burning calories and the slightest exercise will increase this.
Studies have shown that if you are reading hard-to-digest information then you’re burning as much as 1.5 calories per minute, which is many times more than the calories you burn just staying alive. Your brain is an energy-consuming beast and it needs a lot of your body’s energy to keep going. Thinking hard doesn’t require much more than usual but it’s still enough to burn additional calories. What’s more, mental exhaustion may fool your body into thinking it has had a workout because that mental drain is commonly associated with intense exercise.
I spend most of my days reading celebrity websites and pretending to work. But I know that after trying to read on subjects like transhumanism, cybernetics and more covered by advanced thinking websites like Human Paragon, I felt like my brain had just been for a workout and was in desperate need of a protein shake, a shower, and some sleep.
Nothing like a good workout session to end the day.
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