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Easy Ways to Burn Off that Christmas Dinner!

By on December 22, 2013

If you want to indulge this Christmas without getting fat, you should probably know how long and how hard you will need to exercise in order to burn for those extra calories you are putting in your mouth.

Let’s say you have a nice six ounce (approximately) glass of red wine with your Christmas dinner. That’s about 150 calories you are adding to your daily total. When you consider that you are meant to have around 2,000 calories approximately for the average adult female, a couple of glasses of red wine could make all the difference to your diet. 3 glasses of wine is 450 calories. That’s almost a quarter of your daily total.

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In order to burn off the 150 calories from that glass of wine, you will need to walk for around 35 minutes at a “normal” pace in order to burn it off. You may also consider doing around 14 laps of the pool. That’s what it will take to burn off that glass of red wine… It almost begs the question – it is really worth it?

The same could be said for a nice big slice of a luxury apple pie. With the trimmings (cream/custard/etc.) you might find that your desert could contain 500-600 calories! When you add that to just ONE glass of red wine, that’s about 700 calories! You’d need to do a 5k job to burn off that apple pie with an average mile time of around 10 minutes!

You should probably know how much turkey is going to cost you calorie-wise too – let’s imagine that you have grabbed yourself a turkey breast weighing around 6 ounces. This could contain around 200 calories. You can add plenty more on if you help yourself to the skin as well. You’d need to enjoy ice skating for around 45 minutes to burn that turkey breast off. Add a crusty white roll with lashings of butter and you’ll add another 200 or so calories to the mix. You’d need to go to a spinning class for 20 minutes to burn that roll off.

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This may all seem rather daunting but when you think of the trouble and stress that normally accompanies the festive period, you’ll soon find yourself burning off those calories. Lugging boxes down from the attic, trying to hump the Christmas tree into the living room, and hanging decorations for what feels like hours could actually be burning off 300 calories per hour so why not crank up the Christmas tunes, put a festive hat on and go a little nuts with the kids? Dance around as you are decorating your pad for the festive period and you could end up burning up to 500 calories per hour. How long do you think it will take you to put your Christmas decorations up this year… #justsaying

Think about the amount of shopping that you do… We’ve already mentioned that 35 minutes of walking at an average pace could burn off 150 (approx.) calories – how long do you think you will be walking around the shops this Christmas? You’ll burn around 100 calories per hour just pushing a shopping cart down the aisles of shops. Again… how long do you think you will spend wandering aimlessly around the grocery stores this year? Think about the potential you have for calorie-burning here! If you pack your own bags and carry them to the car, you’ll burn off even more. It’s not all bad news, eh?

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What about all the times you have family and friends over at Christmas and need to clean up before they come? That furious half an hour of dusting you did just before they arrived will burn off around 75 calories. That 15 minute crazy mopping session you had in the kitchen and bathroom will have burned off around the same calories too. When you throw the vacuum cleaner around, you’ll killing over 100 calories for every half an hour, and if you rush to do the ironing to wear that outfit you forgot to launder before, you’ll still burn off around 75 calories over half an hour too. You have the potential to burn off a lot of calories here ladies – think about it!

There are plenty of ways that you can EASILY burn off those Christmas calories. A slow yet steady hours-long walk with the dogs after dinner could burn off around 250 calories. If you manage to find the park and find a ball or a stick to throw to your dog, you’ll burn off even more. Why not take advantage of the situation and take your partner along? Did you know that half an hour’s worth of kissing will kill off about 30 calories! Every little helps so why not get smooching?

It might surprise you to know exactly how many calories you have the potential to burn off easily this Christmas. Wrapping presents (half an hour equals 60 calories), dancing around at the party (200 calories per half hour) and cooking the Christmas dinner (75 calories for every painstaking half hour) are all quick and easy way to burn calories and therefore prevent piling on the pounds at Christmas. It’s often the little things that can make the biggest difference such as putting music on or having a bit of fun with your chores. Why not give some of these a shot this year and let us know how you got on with it?

While you’re here, why not take a look at some of the other Christmas weight loss and healthy eating stuff we’ve been talking about… You never know what you might find:

**These brilliant photos were found on Pinterest.com