Can you lose weight having fun?

By looking at your diet you can pretty much lose weight and get healthier doing any kind of activity, which is good news to most of us. Diet is very important when it comes to losing weight and getting fitter but it’s not the whole battle. You need to introduce exercise over time in order to see a real improvement in your over all state. Pick a fun activity that involves movement and engages your brain or join a gym and pick a class – whichever approach is best for you.

Your diet, calorie intake and the amount of exercise will all effect the amount of calories you burn, a quick search online will come up with multiple calorie intake based diets to help you lose weight. Some can be pretty drastic and we wouldn’t advise any sudden change in diet without discussing it with a health professional first.

So what is the best way to burn calories?

We will take a look at 4 different ways to burn calories so you can take your pick and get to work! From the serious to the sexy I’m sure you’ll find at least one way to burn calories whilst enjoying yourself at the same time.

Trampolining

Yes, that’s right! So the average person will burn around 45 calories for every ten minutes spent bouncing on a trampoline, 120 per 30 minutes. That’s if you’re on one of those trampolines that you go to have fun with your mates. If you were to undertake what is known as a trampoline workout which is essentially a bouncing gym session they claim you can burn up to 1000 calories in an hour. That’s huge. It will obviously depend on the individual but that’s definitely not your average work out.

Tough Mudder

This looks brutal! Could be incredible fun too though. We have taken this snippet from the Tough Mudder wikipedia page to best explain what it’s all about…

Tough Mudder is an endurance event series in which participants attempt 10–12 mile-long (16–19 km) obstacle courses that test mental as well as physical strength. It was co-founded by Will Dean, a former British counter terrorism officer, and Guy Livingstone, a former corporate lawyer. The obstacles often play on common human fears, such as fire, water, electricity and heights. The main principle of the Tough Mudder revolves around teamwork. The Tough Mudder organization values camaraderie throughout the course, designing obstacles that encourage group participation. Participants must commit to helping others complete the course, putting teammates before themselves, and overcoming fears. An average 78% of entrants successfully complete the course.

This is not one for the faint of heart – if you were brave enough to take part you could expect to burn within the region of 2200 to 3000 calories throughout the event.

The gym

For most people the most accessible form of structured exercise is available in the local gym. You have multiple options right there in front of you – of course what you choose to do will have an impact of the calories you burn during your work out. Let’s take a look at a few different ways to burn calories in the gym

1. Treadmill – running on a treadmill for 10 minutes at a steady pace will burn approximately 97 calories although we would suggest running outside where possible because the scenery
allows you to take your mind off things momentarily.
2. Weight training – according to Harvard medical school an average strength training session burns around 90 calories in 30 minutes (180 per hour) not bad, not bad.
3. HIIT class – High intensity interval training – if you’ve done one of these classes you’ll know about it. You will burn around 12 – 16 calories per minute. You will be very aware of
this!

Sex

Glad to have you back in the room! See, we knew you’d find one that interested you. Let’s talk about sex, baby and let’s talk about ca-lor-ies. Ok, I’ll stop. So how many calories is the average sex session gunna burn? It’s around 100 for men and 69 for women, on average both parties burning around 3.6 calories a minute.

Positions

So which positions are going to be the best for your health? If you are going to have sex you might as well burn the most calories right? You know – for health!

1. Spooning – this will see both you and your partner burn around the same amount of calories, for something that doesn’t even feel like a workout this is pretty good. A guy will burn 113
calories on average and a woman will burn 103.
2. Doggystyle – one of the classics, this will see the woman burn 98 calories as she uses multiple muscle groups to hold her position.
3. Missionary – one for the guys really. By taking the lead role they can burn up to 143 calories during this…erm work out while the ladies will only burn 44 calories on average.

It is possible to burn calories whilst having fun, be mindful of the food you eat and seek out activities you enjoy and your overall health will benefit. Exercise doesn’t need to be daunting – pick something new and see where the journey takes you. Or just pick the sex one.