Winter Activities- how many calories burned?

It's way too easy to gain a few pounds during this time of year, but if you pay attention to your calories in and calories out, there's no reason you can't maintain the body you've worked so hard to create! The first part of that is knowing how many calories are in the foods you're eating, but the other is knowing how many calories you burn doing various activities.

I looked at a few common winter activities on the Health Status website and Health Discovery website and noted how many calories the average 150-pound woman would burn over the course of 30 minutes. You can adjust the activity, weight or duration to answer your questions using the Health Status calculator or Health Discovery calculator.

Happy Hostess
You're excited to be the one hosting the celebratory New Year's Eve party or the cozy snow day soiree, and that's a good thing, because many of the activities you'll do are decent calorie burners. Shopping for food and decorations for 30 minutes burns 81 calories, and you'll get rid of another 90 each half hour you spend putting away groceries and cooking. If you rearrange the furniture (remember, you can't have a dance party without a dance floor!), you'll torch 225. Spend 30 minutes styling your hair and burn 90 calories, and when it's all over, you'll go through 153 calories mopping and 77 washing dishes.


Outdoor Enthusiast
After the recent storm, many people are facing inches, if not a few feet, of snow. Snowmobiling burns 117 calories in 30 minutes, ice-skating is worth 252 calories, sledding torches 234, downhill skiing is good for 297 and cross-country skiing wins with 387. You might need to chop a little wood to keep the fire roaring when you get back indoors -- you can count on burning 207 calories in 30 minutes with that. Clearing your driveway is a great calorie burner, too: Shoveling by hand is worth 216, and using a snowblower knocks off 162.

Inclined to the Indoors
If when you hear a forecast for snow, you bury your head under the covers, don't worry -- you'll still burn a few calories. Staying cozy on the couch reading a book gets rid of 36 calories. Up the action to playing a board game and you'll burn 56 in 30 minutes. Use your time wisely and get some cleaning done to burn 99. Or get your chilly buns to a Bikram or hot yoga class to burn 238 calories in just half an hour.

Of course, these aren't the only winter activities you can have fun with. My friends at FitSugar have the calorie burn for building a snowman (143 per half hour), having a snowball fight (160 calories) and making a snow angel (107 calories). We're not sure where they came up with the numbers, but we don't have time to worry about that -- we've got a snowman to build!




SOOO GET MOVING THIS HOLIDAY!