If Only Talking Were Real Exercise

After almost two years with braces Carter finally had all the railroad tracks removed and graduated to both an upper and lower retainers.  Much to her parents chagrin she chose Duke Blue for the plastic part, which we were told would not show, but when she opens her mouth I still have flash backs of my Cousin Mary’s Chow dog whose mouth and tongue were black on the inside.

Today while I was driving Carter to the mall for her post exams shopping and movie time I heard this clicking coming from her mouth.  I turned and looked at her and she said, “What, you can hear that?” as only a fourteen year old can say when a parents even cocks a head their way.

“Yes,” I said.  “I’m just exercising my tongue mussel,” she replied.   “If that were an effective exercise I would be the thinnest person you know,” I tell her.  “You are right about that,” she agrees in a voice that says you are not such a bad Mom.

I got to wondering how many calories you burn up by talking.  For a baseline you need to know that watching an hour of TV burns up about 70 calories unless it is incredibly funny and you get a few good bellyaches in.

According to the folks at Calorie Count talking for an hour burns an additional 50% from just watching TV.  So your burn rate is 105 calories an hour.  Just as I suspected…not that much to make a dent in my caloric intake.  For me the talking hour is my baseline number since that is what my body is accustomed to.

As I was reading the activity browser looking for the “talking number” I came across a number of interesting activities that are listed such as “Cooking Indian Bread on an Outside stove” for 210 calories an hour.  What kind of Indian bread are they talking about, American Indian, like fry bread or Nan like from India, and who has an outside stove?  Would you burn more or less calories on an inside stove?  What about making loaf bread, doesn’t hand kneading burn a huge number of calories?  What if you were talking while kneading is that more calories than watching TV while baking?

“Maple Syruping” comes in at 350 calories an hour.  That is a big jump from talking but unfortunately I don’t live in a place cold enough to do Maple Syruping.  I wonder if the temperature you are doing it in makes a difference to the number of calories you burn.

Pushing a plane in and out of hanger is also listed and burns a whopping 420 calories an hour.  Really?  How big a plane are we talking about?  I don’t think I have ever seen a human push a plane.  Do you do this alone or is it a partner activity?  Do you think the calorie counting experts had a real person pushing a plane for a whole hour or is it a shorter activity they just adjusted for the hour time to compare apples to apples.

In case you live in a cold place, but don’t have a plane, you can burn the same number of calories by moving an icehouse.  I reckon you must have to push this house alone, by hand, way out in the middle of a frozen lake to burn 420 calories an hour.

I just want to know how many calories the people at Calorie Counter burn up thinking up the craziest activities to list in their activity browser?