Burning Calories

Friday, July 11, 2008

According to Calorie Count, I burn approximately 102 calories per hour performing "light" office work. Of course, I started wondering what qualifies as light office work; I'm not sure mindlessly playing Bookworm for at least three hours of my day would burn as many calories as, say, filing or filling up the water cooler. My heart rate does, however, increase whenever I have to do financial reports (small company, near bankruptcy) so I can only hope that evens out somehow.

Also, I supposedly burn 136 calories per hour driving. Well, at least that is some good news, since I spend a minimum of two hours (maybe more like three) driving.

(102 cal/hr * 7 hours) + (136 cal/hr * 2.5 hours) + 150? cal/hr x 3 hours [an average of doing dishes, fish feeding, plant watering, crocheting, etc] = 1504 calories burned.

Now, I'm sure I'm missing a few things, as I believe you even burn calories while sleeping and watching movies, so lets say I burn about 2000 - 2200 calories in a single lazy day. I've been averaging about 400 burned calories on the elliptical trainers, totalling 2600 calories.

It takes approximately 3500 burned calories to lose one pound. Therefore, if I can eat less than 2000 calories on a day I work out, I can burn, hopefully, 1500 calories a day, then I can potentially lose one pound every 2.3 days. Let's just say 3 days. To lose 70 lb will take approximately 210 days, about 7 months.

Hopefully by February or March, I just might be a size 7! Hmm, 7 dress sizes in 7 months. Sounds like a great title for a diet book!