By Katy Loren
While weight management involves balancing energy intake and expenditure, it’s not as simple as counting calories. Factors like our metabolism, the types of foods we eat, and even stress levels can influence how our bodies process and utilize energy.
However, even small changes in our daily activity levels can contribute to a healthier lifestyle. With that in mind, we’ve explored some fun and easy ways to boost your calorie burn and support your overall well-being.
With that in mind, we ran the numbers for a 45-year-old female exerciser of average height (5’5”) and weight (150 pounds), plugged a few fun ways to get moving into the physical activity calculator provided by the American Council on Exercise, and came up with 10 options you can keep at the ready to turn up your burn.
1. Walk 1.5 miles.
Feel the need to burn a fast 100? You can do it in just a mile-and-a-half at a moderate 3-mph pace, either on a treadmill or by getting outside. If you’re looking to lose weight, a good habit to get into is to go for a walk after your largest meal of the day, whether that’s lunch or dinner…or both. (Bonus points for bringing your dog!)
2. Run 1 mile.
Want to burn an even faster 100? Running a 12-minute mile — at a not-overly-intensive 5-mph pace — does the trick. And it holds true whether you use a treadmill or have the opportunity for some outside work. Add an incline, and you’ll torch a few additional calories.
3. Cycle for 30 minutes.
Bicycling outdoors or using a stationary bike doesn’t need to be high-intensity to get results. A casual 5.5-mph pace for 30 minutes can knock out over 100 calories. Crank up your speed to an average of 12 mph, and you can accomplish the same feat in half the time.
4. Try this 15-minute calisthenics circuit.
For this quick 15-minute session, gather a medicine ball, jump rope, and a timer or clock with a second hand in view. Then you’ll do the following circuit, doing each activity for 30 seconds, then resting one minute in between (standing during your break, which requires a few more calories than sitting):
• Two-Hand Medicine Ball Overhead Slam
• Burpee
• One-minute standing rest
Repeat five times.
Note that if speed isn’t essential, you can insert more rest periods as necessary between exercise bouts, depending on your fitness levels. Finish all the rounds, and you’ll still burn 100.
5. Rev up your weight-training workout.
Typically, during our weight workouts — which can utilize 100 calories every 30 minutes or so — we’ll take a breather between exercises of anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes. If you’re lifting especially heavy, that makes sense; if you’re using more moderate weights and sets of 8 to 12 reps, however, you may be missing an opportunity to squeeze out some additional benefits.
An old-school training technique called “staggered sets” takes advantage of those rest periods by slipping in extra sets for smaller-sized body parts such as your forearms, calves, or abdominals in between sets for larger body parts like back, legs, chest, and shoulders.
For instance, say you’re training chest; in between each set of presses and flyes, instead of merely sitting still, you’d do a set of, say, 20 crunches, reverse crunches, or plate calf raises. Or, when doing legs, you could do 12-20 Zottman curls or farmer’s walks between sets of squats, leg presses, and quadriceps extensions. In a typical hour-long weight workout, the additional sets should add up to 100 calories of effort.
6. Take a yoga class.
Yoga may not seem like the most obvious activity to turn to for a fast calorie incineration, but even one of the most relaxing and stretching-focused options, Hatha yoga, will push you over the 100-calorie mark in just a half-hour of work. Of course, the more intensive variations will amplify that total, including Ashtanga, Vinyasa, and Power yoga. Namaste.
7. Fuel your competitive fire.
Joining a recreational sports league isn’t just great for your social life, it gives a weekly built-in boost to your activity levels as well. A half-hour of indoor volleyball uses up more than 100 calories on average; so does basketball, soccer, tennis, kickball, and pickleball. Even 30 minutes of softball can push you over the 100-calorie mark.
So, pick something you like and sign up. Just search “social sports leagues” online, or check out sites like Meetup.com for information. (Corporations often sponsor league teams for their employees as well, so check with HR if you work at a large company.)
8. Climb higher.
If you’re ready for adventure, head out to a local rock-climbing facility, where you can improve your strength, endurance, flexibility, agility, and balance — and extinguish some excess calories in the process. Every 15 minutes of focused climbing can melt off 100 calories or so, giving you extra incentive to reach the top and ring that bell.
9. Challenge your friend to a game of one-on-one basketball.
In a 15-minute game of hoops, you can break a nice sweat while displaying your skills in the paint and at the three-point line. And even if you lose, you still come out a winner by working off more than 130 calories for the effort.
10. Spend a half hour in the yard.
Is the outside of your house in need of some love and attention? Whether it’s mowing, pulling weeds, planting a garden, trimming the hedges, or washing windows, some simple yard work comes with a benefit most people don’t consider — it can burn off a hundred extra calories in just 30 minutes. And if you’re in a part of the country where you’re still stuck indoors, no problem: The same goes for housework, including vacuuming, cleaning, or organizing the basement or garage.
