Can you burn lots of calories without exercising?

You're supposed to go to the gym every day. Okay, five days a week. Okay, three times a week--we know you're busy. And I think that too often we decide that if we don't make it to the gym, we fail, return to start and to a pair of pants that don't fit the way we want them to and a heart that will explode before we're drawing social security and so we might as well dip our spoons right into that bucket of lard anyway, right? (Here's how we do manage to make it to the gym even when we really don't want to go.)

It's a trap I fall into every day. But, unless I've made very odd vows to very strange religious sects and should really be revaluating my social circle, I am not sitting perfectly still in dark rooms every day. I'm moving, active, using my body more or less every moment of every day, from my fingers on the keyboard to the march down the hallway into the kitchen for another glorious and life-saving cup of go-juice. We are all using our bodies the way they were built to be used, and we can't discount that energy we expend, and the glorious thing is that we can take that one step further, even, and make that movement count even more.

There are calories-expended lists for every possible activity out there, on the Internet: you can find out how many calories it takes to brush your teeth, to blink, to talk on the phone. I want to find out how many calories I burn when I try to teach myself a piano sonata, when I walk up the block and over to the further-away coffee shop, when I throw a toy for the dog, when I run after the toy myself, to the dog's great and crazy excitement. I want to figure out what tiny things you can do to expend even more energy, and make it a game. Can I learn to play pool? Would it burn an awesome number of calories to bowl? I can skip the dishwasher and scrub the heck out of my pots, I can give more high-fives, I can take up pencil twirling or tournament roshambo! Nothing will replace the gym in the long-term, I know, but you can't deny that being more active in your every day is nothing but bonus.

[photo credit: Getty Images]

Related: Is it possible to go from hating exercise to craving it?

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