Surprising things that burn calories

As an OB/GYN, probably one of the most common questions I get from patients each day is, how can I burn more calories? Every woman seems concerned with getting more steps and more calories burned. But here's the lovely secret: every minute of every day, your body burns calories doing anything and everything. While the rate that you burn calories varies by your age, weight, sex and activity level, your body requires a certain number of calories daily to maintain your bodily functions — like just existing. This is your basal metabolic rate (BMR).


With the fitness tracker and heart rate monitor (i.e. Fitbit) craze underway, most women are eerily conscious of their steps, but how do you judge what kind of calories you're burning just from life? Aside from killing yourself in an Orange Theory class, here are some surprising ways you burn some extra calories throughout your day.

Fidgeting

Raise your fidgeting hands… how many of your are chronic fidgeters? Well, congratulations. While tapping your fingers on the desk or wiggling your foot during a meeting, your body is constantly moving. And moving equals calorie burn! It's entirely possible you could burn up to 350 extra calories per day with the extra activity, thanks to information studied at Iowa State University. If you were to sit while fidgeting all day, you could burn about 600 more calories than if you sat motionless all day. Standing and fidgeting increases that calorie burn to nearly 950 calories more than remaining motionless. So wiggle that foot, shake that knee and tap those phalanges. Fidgeters rule!


Crying

When you're in the midst of a heart-breaking sob, it feels like every ounce of your body is involved. During emotionally stressful moments, it is not uncommon for a person's heart rate to elevate. So coming back to the real question, does crying burn calories? The answer is surprisingly yes, regardless of the way that you might cry. By extrapolation, crying is thought to burn the same amount of calories that laughing does, or about 1.3 calories per minute (there's been no actual medical studies on the calorie burning power of a good sob). And there is something true to the excessive "ugly" cry compared to the soft "Jane Austen" version.

Just to compare, CrossFit burns about 10 calories per minute. But hey, who wants to pump iron when they've been dumped? Cry it out, ladies. And whatever has made you tremendously sad, the consolation is at least you've shredded a small amount of calories to make up for that medicinal ice cream.

Laughing

Yes! Laughter gives the body a "mini aerobic workout." It causes the heart to beat faster, sending larger amounts of blood around the body. Laughing burns calories by causing your heart rate to rise by 10 to 20 percent. As your heart rate rises from fits of giggles, your metabolism increases as well, which means you'll continue to burn calories once you stop guffawing. It's the ultimate cardio!

Research conducted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center revealed that laughing for ten to 15 minutes burns between ten and 40 calories.That's enough to shift between one and 4 pounds per year. Laughing intensely for an hour can burn as many calories as lifting weight for 30 minutes, those same scientists have found. So, laugh… a lot!

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