The Fat Bloke Diaries
Episode Fifty-
I’m bored with running. It’s dull.
There
we go, I’ve said it. I’ve always known it to be true, but while I had a goal, a fund-
I’ve got to get back into exercising again. I have to hold the weight
at bay. Eating relatively healthily seems to be steadying the scales at the moment,
but if I want to lose any more unwanted blubber then I’ll have to burn it off. And
although the blowtorch option has seemed tempting a few times, I know that in reality
it will come down to hard work. It always does.
But since I have no motivation to
put my running shoes on at the moment, I’ll have to find something else to do. And
although I can be a master of procrastination I did at least manage to exercise my
mouse finger enough to search for some new and exciting ways of fighting the flab.
I searched the internet to see how many calories various forms of exercise expend.
So what do I enjoy doing? Well, I’m a writer, I write. That apparently uses 144 calories
per hour (henceforth referred to as cph), the same as reading a book, or talking
on the phone. Or watching TV. It’s only marginally more than being asleep (126 cph)
but it’s a start.
I like playing guitar too, though I’ve never been any good. You
don’t use extra calories for musical ability though, so that seems worthwhile at
432 calories. That’s more than ten pin bowling and surfing. The guitarists they measured
must have been more Pete Townshend or Wilko Johnson than Julian Bream, I’d guess
(score five points for each of these that you’ve heard of). And who says that attending
a concert doesn’t count? An hour in a mosh pit apparently spends more calories than
two hours playing snooker. It certainly gets you more sweaty.
Playing golf is something
that I also enjoy (despite last week’s admission), and at 827 cph it seems a reasonably
active pursuit. That figure drops dramatically if I choose to ride a buggy rather
than carry my clubs by the way. But as that’s something that’s reserved for old men,
golfers with false legs and corporate Americans, it won’t be happening anytime soon.
Unless I lose a leg.
I don’t know how many calories sky-
After months
of practice the stairs at work are getting easier on my daily eight-
A gentle stroll in the country
apparently logs 378 cph. That doesn’t sound like much of a return compared to the
954 for an hour of gentle jogging or more vigorous static cycling. These are among
the higher rated things that I could do, but I’m looking for something exciting,
something that raises my heart rate and gets me a little sweaty but is fun.
There’s
one activity that immediately springs to mind here, and I certainly enjoy it as much
as the next man or woman. Sex burns off an impressive 576 calories per hour, apparently.
I’m presuming that these must include an active partner. But all I could find on
the activity charts was a catch all ‘sexual activity’. How can a vigorous bout of
swinging from the chandelier while dressed in a latex Bananaman outfit be comparable
with placidly lying back and thinking of England? Still, it’s a better way of burning
those 576 than showering, which apparently burns the same. That’s some vigorous scrubbing
there. Maybe if I combined the two? And an hour of foreplay apparently can add another
198 to the total. Put them all together and I could effectively get the chocolate
sauce calory-
But sixty whole minutes each? I’m not as young as I used to be.
I think I’ve found something that’s more likely to happen though. Shopping is a highly
respectable 323 cph. And as all you ladies know, you can keep on shopping for hours….
© Shaun Finnie 2009