The Best Calorie Burner

Audrey Hepburn said LAUGHTER is the best calorie burner.  That's easy advice coming from a pixie.  The Whoopie Queen take on her quote is "Less stress + more fun = healthy person."  I continue to find that laughter and fun are the solutions to most challenges.  Here's an example.  I took my car to get serviced because the gas mileage was going down from 18 mpg to 12 mpg.  The service guy said the reason may be because "of the way I angle my foot on the pedal."  Really!  Did he think I was that gullible?!  Later when I called to see if they were finished with my car checkup, I told the service manager what the guy had said.  The manager offered, "Maybe he thought you drive with two feet."  I replied, "Sure, two left feet.  And maybe the mpg changes when I wear stilettos vs. flats."   He laughed.  The laughter diffused my stress and helped me dismiss his asinine input.   When I went to pick up the car, I wore a t-shirt that I knew would get a reaction and give me mature, uh hmmm, credibility, i.e., Old Hag.  I needed them to know I'd been around the block a few times.  As I left the dealership, a man waved me goodbye saying, "Have a great vacation!"  I told him I wasn't going anywhere except home to put the groceries away.  He said I seemed so full of joy, he thought I was heading to the beach.  Ha!

How did all this help?  I chose to make a joke in my response to them which made for LESS STRESS.   I chose MORE FUN by wearing a ridiculous t-shirt.  (It was between the Keep Those Old Hags Covered and the Nice Peaches tee).  I could have kept that angry energy of being dismissed and unleashed it on them.  I wanted to tell them off but I felt the negative energy in my body and knew that the nastiness would ripple into the world and I would get more negativity back.  Zen, right?!  Instead, I realized that they don't have a clue.  They're on car-repair crack.  I'll get a second opinion.  And guess what, without doing anything except choosing to wear a silly t-shirt, I burned at least 40 calories.  

I know this is far fetched but what if we could laugh ourselves thin (or at least a bit more fit). I have a friend in NYC teaching Laughing Yoga and it is quite the rage all over the world.  http://www.laughteryoga.org/english 

From How Stuff Works:  Laughing for 15 minutes a day (and not necessarily all at once) burns somewhere between 10 and 40 calories a day [source: Buchowski].  Over the course of a laughter-filled year, the daily calories burnt from laughing result in a net loss of a little more than 4 pounds. http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/calories-laughing1.htm

 
In fact, one study suggests that healthy children may laugh as much as 400 times per day, but adults tend to laugh only 15 times per day.   Kids know how to have fun.  Here are mine at the FUN. concert. 







So I challenge you to have more fun.  Ditch the diet.  Dance.  Lose the scale.  Laugh your ass off.

Call The Whoopie Queen Hotline if you're stuck and need ideas.  I'm a smarty pants. 
917)714-0694

More Calorie Burner Info:

On average, a 150-lb. person can expect to burn 536 calories during an hour of Zumba. By comparison, the same person would burn 413 calories during an hour of moderate swimming, 477 for an hour of casual racquetball and 684 for an hour of running at a 10-minute-mile pace.

The biggest burners

Calories burned per hour*
Based on a 160-pound person

1. 986 calories burned: Running at 8mph
2. 913 calories burned: Rollerblading
3. 730 calories burned: Tae Kwon Do
4. 730 calories burned: Jump rope
5. 657 calories burned: Stair treadmill
6. 584 calories burned: Jogging at 5mph
7. 511 calories burned: Backpacking
8. 511 calories burned: Racquetball
9. 511 calories burned: Cross-country skiing
10. 511 calories burned: High-impact aerobics

* Values from the Mayo Clinic Exercise for Weight Loss chart



Viola!