Does anyone else find it inhumanly maddening to wake up an hour early simply to jar your body into the metabolism management race? In the Adding Insult to Injury category, you arrive home from a long day of working for the man to find your stair master mocking you.  That internal voice screams four letter words at you: lazy, poky, slug. I don’t have to listen to that drivel, so my brain’s justification committee has taken over. I researched 15 common daily activities and will admit my surprise at how many calories are expended just living the life of Sherrie.

These are in no particular order of importance nor do I engage in every activity. But a girl’s gotta dream, and more importantly, have achievable goals:

  • Vacuuming – Sucks up 100 cal. per hour. Considering I do this particular activity rarely, and never for one hour, I am awarding 25 to my weekly calorie bank.
  • Phone Walk – Talking on phone for 35 minutes and walking around my tiny apartment chats up 100 cal. If I actually include the walking part of this activity, Mother AT&T awards me the full 245 cal. for the week.
  • Styling Hair – Holding your arms over your head for extended periods of time is tricky, but at 100 cal. for 35 min. of blow drying and straightening, I bank 171 since I coif for 15 mins. 4 times a week.
  • Pooch Pamper – Washing the dog is dirty business, but at 238 cal. per hour, I bank every calorie for the week. My little princess, Sierra the Writer Dog, is into serious cleanliness.
  • Ironing – You may have a laundry day when you routinely iron your clothes. Me – not so much. At 156 cal. per hour, I get to bank 5. Don’t’ judge. I’m happy in my wrinkled state.
  • Windows – If you spend 15 minutes a week with Windex, you’ve washed away 50 cal. I score yet another whopping 5 bankable calories for 1 partially clean window.
  • Strollering – Pushing that bundle of joy down the block is full of multiple benefits. Besides your reward for breathing noxious fumes (unless you are a country mouse), you burn 118 cal. per hour. Unfortunately, my 30-yr old son is opposed to sitting in a stroller, I think.
  • Brushing – Finally, an activity I can sink my teeth into. At 4 cal. scrubbed away every 2 minutes, I bank 48 for the week. You may notice I am 8 cal. shy of twice-a-day brushing. Weekend teeth get brushed once a day. What can I say?
  • Pool – Cleaning your pool scrubs away 204 cal. per hour, but swimming in it burns away 476. Why clean when you can swim? If shooting billiards counts in this category, I get to bank shot 104 cal. for my weekly shark match.
  • Gardening – For those of you blessed with green thumbs, stopping to smell (plant, prune, fertilize, aerate, and water) the roses for an hour will harvest a lovely 326 cal. Since I have brown thumbs, I’m claiming 10 cal. for the olfactory part of this equation: smelling.
  • Train Hopping – If you live in a large city like me, and running for the train is a common occurrence, then plan to bank 9 cal. per block. Since I commute daily, I earn 45 very deserved calories. If you are a timely person, you get nothing.
  • Injury – After you forgot you were not Michael Jordon and now sport a lovely pair of crutches after your pickup game this weekend, your reward will be 324 cal. per excruciating hour of speed crutching. MJ may even sell a blue Swoosh Boot for your swollen foot.
  • Coaching – Your spouse has wrangled you into coaching the kiddie softball league. If you discount the brewskies you slam down after each practice with the little darlings, you burn 241 cal. per hour.
  • Mowing – You’ve invested in the very awesome low-tech retro push mower. Congratulations! You look super RAD mowing down 300 cal. per hour. If it only takes you 20 minutes to trim up the yard, you can burn up those extra unwanted calories by participating in the next activity.
  • Sex – An hour of sex (this eliminates most men) will burn 100 cal. But weirdly, women don’t burn as many calories and top out at 69. The jokes here are screaming to jump into this blog, but enough said.

My tally for one week of the above activities – in which I actually participated – earns me 886 bankable calories. Assume you (not me) complete one hour of every activity above, you walk away with a very respectable bank of 3,221 calories. With my bulging bank, I think I will spend my calories on the following: Café Latte (272), Stem of Wine (79), Snickers (273), and a Coca Cola (207).  If I brush my teeth 6 more times and add to my few remaining unspent calories, I can swish down that second glass of Cabernet.  Now that you are getting to know me, I will leave it up to your imagination to determine which calorie-burning activities above I have not participated in for a very, very, VERY long time.

Remember,

Sherrie’s Always Write

Tune in tomorrow for Thirsty Thursday A Potato by Any Other Name Tastes Like Vodka

Read yesterday’s Trending Tuesday Garage Sale Hell

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