5 Summer Activities That Prove Burning Calories is Fun

By Jason Knapfel - DietsInReview.com

With the unofficial start to summer behind us and the official start just weeks away, we're ready to take on some of our favorite activities of the season. Summer is a great time to bond with family and friends, but it also presents opportunities to easily fit in more exercise, too. All you have to do is hit the great outdoors!

Here are a few calorie-burning summer activities that you'll enjoy so much you won't even realize you're getting in a workout. They also serve as a gentle reminder that exercise doesn't require a gym and a monotonous hour on the treadmill. Get out and move, play, and have fun. When you think of exercise in these terms, it stops being a chore.

Burn 700 Calories Golfing. Hitting the links is an easy way to walk a few miles while getting your competitive juices flowing (even if it's only against yourself). According to a study by Neil Wolkodoff, director of the Rose Center for Health and Sports Sciences in Denver, putting in just nine holes of golf, and skipping the cart to instead walk and carry your clubs, you will burn about 700 calories.

Burn 400 Calories Hiking. The inside of your gym hardly compares with the beautiful scenery of a hike. Calculating the calories burned on a hike is nearly impossible considering the endless variables of distance, incline, the weight of a backpack, your weight, and more. For the sake of simplicity, if a woman weighing 145 pounds took a one hour cross-country hike, she would burn a little over 400 calories. Guests at the Biggest Loser Resort hike each morning for about three hours in the Utah red rocks and report that they can burn more calories in the hike than they'll eat all day (the Resort has a 1200 calorie/day diet for guests).

Burn 200 Calories Playing Frisbee. Spend some time in your neighborhood park and toss around a Frisbee with a friend, the kids, or even the family dog. This easy-going pastime can help you burn a couple hundred calories.

Burn up to 400 Calories Swimming. You don't have to be a champion swimmer to enjoy the calorie burning benefits of dipping in the pool. Not only can you cool off and relax during the hottest summer days, depending on your body weight, you can burn between 250 and 400 calories in an hour. That burn only increases when you make it an aerobic swim class.

Burn more than 200 Calories Water Skiing. A weekend at the lake is often a calorie-filled trip thanks to burgers and beers. But you can help the burn by water skiing (far less tame and more exciting than a regular swim). Not only can a 150-pound person burn over 200 calories in 30 minutes, but there is a demand on your upper body strength to stay on top of the water's surface while being dragged by a boat.

Any activity you take on is going to burn calories. So rather than sweat away the best days of the year in a gym, take up one of these activities, or anything else that peaks your interest like canoeing, cycling, beach running, outdoor yoga, and so much more.

Learn more about staying fit all summer long:

Best Yoga Moves for Summer

A Beginner's Guide to Swimming Workouts

Hey Parents! Summer isn't an End to Fitness


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