The Lazy Geek’s Way to Burn 1260 Calories per Week
Posted on May 2nd, 2007 in Cardio and Fat Loss
The biggest problem with exercise is that it takes too long and is invariably unpleasant.
Us geeks have specific needs when it comes to exercise to suit our lifestyle – it needs to be convenient and it needs to be as pleasant as possible.
Well it is very possible to burn 1260 calories per week without having too much of an impact on your lifestyle. In fact the solution to doing this and hopefully dropping a few pounds is remarkably simple.
Walking!!
Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard that one before, but the problem is finding the time to take a walk in the afternoon (impossible if you work late) or in the morning (fine if you don’t mind getting up at the crack of dawn). It just isn’t likely that you’re going to find that time.
That’s totally understandable and it’s a problem that every geek has had at one point or another. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day!
But the solution to this is actually pretty simple.
When you drive to work, park a kilometer (0.62 miles) away from your office (or get off the train/bus a station earlier) and when you go to lunch, eat in a park or a cafe a kilometer away from your office.
That distance only takes about 10 minutes to cover at a brisk walking pace so this isn’t going to take a lot of time out of your busy schedule. In fact you probably already get to work 10 minutes early so you really don’t need to leave home much earlier than you already do. Plus a walk at the beginning and end of lunch is a lot more pleasant than you might think.
10 minutes out of either side of your day and either side of your lunch hour is going to have almost zero impact on your working or home life.
But how much good does this really do?
Check out the table below:
| Weight in Pounds | |||||||||
| Speed | Pounds | 100 | 120 | 140 | 160 | 180 | 200 | 220 | |
| 2.0 mph | 65 | 80 | 93 | 105 | 120 | 133 | 145 | ||
| 2.5 mph | 62 | 74 | 88 | 100 | 112 | 124 | 138 | ||
| 3.0 mph | 60 | 72 | 83 | 95 | 108 | 120 | 132 | ||
| 3.5 mph | 59 | 71 | 83 | 93 | 107 | 119 | 130 | ||
| 4.0 mph | 59 | 70 | 81 | 94 | 105 | 118 | 129 | ||
| 4.5 mph | 69 | 82 | 97 | 110 | 122 | 138 | 151 | ||
| 5.0 mph | 77 | 92 | 108 | 123 | 138 | 154 | 169 | ||
| 6.0 mph | 86 | 99 | 114 | 130 | 147 | 167 | 190 | ||
| 7.0 mph | 96 | 111 | 128 | 146 | 165 | 187 | 212 | ||
As you can see, a 180 pound geek burns around 105 calories per mile walked at a brisk pace.
Well, do the math – in your new walking regimen (that is taking next to no time out of your day) you have added about 12 miles per week to your distance covered.
That’s the equivalent of about 1260 calories.
Not bad for so little a change in your current lifestyle.
Now if you really want to ditch the gut, then you can easily alter this (make it a mile for example) and you could alter your diet too, but we’ll go into that on some other posts.
For now, start looking for a car park 1km out from work!
Technorati Tags: walking, exercise, health
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