You’re burning calories right now
In the 10 minutes it takes to read this article, you’ll expend about 15 calories, assuming you’re sitting upright and weigh 150 pounds. If you’re reading this while lying down, you’ll burn even less. If you plan to spend the next hour leaning over a casino table, you’ll burn 156 calories. Praying to hit the jackpot? Praying (while kneeling) is 68 calories.
Scientists have assigned a calorie value to a dizzying array of activities. Cleaning out an illegal dump site: 450 calories. Painting over graffiti: 342. Digging worms: 272.
“People have measured just about everything,” says John Porcari, an exercise researcher at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse. “They’ve compared regular vacuuming to self-propelled vacuuming. Hand-held snow blowers to automatic ones.”
For more than a century, scientists studying calories and physical activity have approached the task in pretty much the same way -- slapping masks on subjects and analyzing their exhalations. But now scientists can do it more accurately. Some, in fact, are taking calorie-counting to a new level, outfitting subjects with high-tech underwear packed with delicate motion sensors that can track calories expended in activities as minute as twitching.
It may be tempting to dismiss the idea of assigning calorie values to everyday activities as a frivolous parlor game, but the research, these scientists say, is providing a trove of data on why some people stay lean while others slide into obesity, and documenting historic declines in daily activity that are slowly expanding the American waistline.
“You can go through a wide range of occupations and household chores,” says William Haskell, a professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, “and see there have been small declines, day in and day out, at work and at home.”
Typically, calorimetric measurement involves having a subject perform an activity while breathing into a mask or under a hood or canopy that’s hooked up to an analyzer.
The analyzer, which looks like a small printer, measures the volume of air a person breathes during the activity, as well as the oxygen and carbon dioxide inhaled and exhaled.
Based on this information, scientists can calculate the amount of oxygen that was used during the activity, which then can be used to determine the number of calories burned. (Exactly 4.825 calories are burned for each liter of oxygen).
There are other methods for extracting this data. One is to collect exhaled air in special bags and then measure the volume and gaseous constituents of the collected air. Another is to place a person in a room or chamber, have the person perform an activity, then measure the exhalations afterward.
But Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., gets the prize for the most creative and exhaustive study of calories spent on daily activities. He outfitted 20 volunteers in special underwear with sensors similar to those used in the military to monitor jet fighter motion.
By tracking small motions, while controlling diet to the last scrap of food, he’s tracked calories expended in motions most of us don’t think about -- such as tapping fingers, pacing and fidgeting. Last year, he reported in the journal Science that the extra energy burned by people who tended to fidget was on average about 350 calories a day.
By now, most of our standard daily activities have been thoroughly researched -- including kissing, fertilizing the lawn and washing the dog. But investigators are still cataloging more exotic pursuits.
Porcari, for example, has measured the calories expended dragging a deer, which required the help of 16 hunters and procuring several road kills from Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources. Porcari “standardized” the deer to 125 pounds each by cutting off a leg or two.
“Dragging a deer is a common activity in Wisconsin,” he says.
Researchers are quick to point out that the values they arrive at -- though reasonably consistent -- are by no means absolute, because of myriad individual differences in how an activity may be performed.
For example, two people playing tennis might burn calories very differently. One might play with great intensity while another might play the game walking, and yet another might dawdle at the net. A player with an efficient stroke may burn fewer calories than one who flails around. A heavy person will burn more calories than a thin one performing the same activity.
That’s why the most accurate estimates will never rely upon just one reading, says Porcari, who has established calorie values for snowshoeing, rock climbing, in-line skating, Pilates, yoga and kickboxing, among others. (For testing outdoor activities, he uses a $30,000 “portable metabolic analyzer” that’s strapped to the subject’s back.) Porcari typically tests 15 to 20 subjects performing the activity under a variety of conditions, then establishes an average.
The point to keep in mind about such calorie estimates is that although the figures aren’t precisely accurate, they’re useful for comparing activities, says Dr. Robert Rizza, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
“I’m looking at something on my wall,” says Rizza. “It says jogging 6 miles an hour at 150 pounds is 11.6 calories a minute, and mowing grass is 4.1 calories per minute. When I’m jogging, am I really expending 11.6 calories? I don’t know that for sure, but I certainly know I’m burning more calories jogging than mowing the lawn.”
A punishing treadmill
Scientists have been nibbling around the corners of calorie research for centuries. In the early 1700s, they developed equipment that allowed them to measure the volume of air a person was breathing. By the late 1800s they had discovered techniques to determine the oxygen and carbon dioxide content of air.
One of the earliest calorimetric experiments was performed by Edward Smith, a London physician who, in the 1850s and ‘60s, was concerned that inmates at a local prison sentenced to hard labor were forced, as punishment, to walk on treadmills for long periods.
Believing that the prisoners were receiving insufficient calories to perform their labor, he designed a face mask to collect expired air and used chemicals to measure carbon dioxide in the air while the prisoners were walking on the treadmill.
By the early 1900s, there were several laboratories in the U.S. and Europe busily measuring the energy cost of activities. Over the next few decades, universities created laboratories to study exercise science, and the military got into the activity-measuring act to determine proper amounts of calories in rations.
Although methods for collecting and analyzing data have evolved considerably over the past century, the early data were surprisingly accurate, says Stanford’s Haskell, the original inspiration behind a “Compendium of Physical Activities,” last updated in 2000, which lists energy expenditures for hundreds of pursuits.
Soft modern lives
Ironically, the steady infiltration of time- and labor-saving devices into homes and the workplace over the last century -- designed to make our lives easier -- has made our lives a little too easy, say doctors. Cars have replaced walking, manual tasks have been replaced by computers and television has tethered us to the couch. What we’ve gained in convenience we’ve lost in physical activity.
Huge demographic shifts also have contributed to a decline in daily activity. A century ago, says the Mayo Clinic’s Levine, the majority of the U.S. population lived in rural areas, many of them farmers. Today, according to 2000 census figures, about 80% of the population is squeezed into urban areas. The result, he says, is a sedentary society.
Levine has fashioned a solution, at least for him. He has turned his computer station into a treadmill, and walks while he works. “A very powerful way of burning calories is to get yourself on two legs, standing,” he says. “As soon as you walk at 1 mile an hour -- I call that shopping speed in Los Angeles -- you double your metabolic rate.” Levine says he’s burning 100 calories an hour simply working at his computer or talking on the phone.
Those who don’t want to go that far can try another strategy: reintroducing small amounts of exercise into one’s everyday routine.
“Go back to some of the old ways of doing things,” says Dr. Harvey Simon, associate professor at Harvard Medical school and author of “The No Sweat Exercise Plan.”
“Treat exercise as an opportunity instead of a punishment. Use a hand mower, instead of a gas mower. Wash the car yourself. Do housework yourself instead of hiring someone to do it.
“It’s the little things that count.”
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How everyday activities add up
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Calorie counters can be found on myriad websites, including www.caloriesperhour.com. Here are some estimated expenditures per hour for a 150-pound person:
* Accordion playing -- 122
* Assembly work, sitting -- 102
* Bobsledding -- 476
* Bookbinding -- 156
* Chambermaid work -- 170
* Cleaning rain gutters -- 340
* Computer work -- 102
* Digging worms -- 272
* Firefighting -- 816
* Jackhammering -- 408
* Light kissing -- 68
* Lugeing -- 476
* Napping -- 61
* Office work at the desk -- 122
* Sexual activity, active -- 102
* Sexual activity, moderate -- 88
* Shoveling coal -- 476
* Taking a shower -- 136
* Tap dancing -- 327
* Walking with crutches -- 340
* Washing the dog -- 238
* Watching TV -- 68
