Shop Till You're Thin!

In about an hour I am going to make the trek out to the mall for some Christmas shopping with a friend, the same as Mr. Kawaii and I did earlier this week (although I was too busy to blog about it afterward - bad Denise!).  Although it may seem odd to post mall-shopping as an exercise, the truth is that you burn a pretty fair amount of calories while shopping - whether at the grocery store or at the mall.

Shopping, particularly extended shopping (an hour or more) includes some of the very same exercise moves that you loathe at the gym: walking for extended periods of time, lifting objects of weight, and if you're trying on lots of clothes there's squatting, over-the-head reaches, and any number of other odd movements you might make trying to get a good look at yourself in the mirror.  

Don't believe me?  I looked up some information on shopping as exercise - every woman's dream - from Nutrition ATC and found an article that backs up what I'm talking about.  In an article found on their site (originally published by StarBulletin) they state that a 200lb person can burn as much as 750 calories during a 3 hour shopping trip at the mall just by slowly walking from store to store and standing in line.  They also note that a "super shopper" who is more active (fidgeting in line, picking up and inspecting merchandise, waving to friends or flustered mall staff) may burn an additional 100 to 250 calories during the same time-span.

All that adds up to a workout that can't be found ordering Christmas presents online.  Who needs a better excuse to get out and get shopping?  A word of warning though - avoid the food-court lest all your shopping exercises be undone by pretzels, cinnamon rolls and fried foods.  I'll see you there!

(And I promise to try to find an hour somewhere in my day to do some yoga too.)

Working So Hard, I Almost Forgot!

Typically, I try to complete this blog while the sweat is still dripping and the stink still surrounds me.  No, I don't have a bad-smell fetish.  I just know that if I don't get the blog done right away, I'll get side-tracked by other projects and forget to do it!  Today is a case-in point; M, K and I all wrapped up our walk hours ago and I didn't remember until I was pajama-clad that I didn't get a chance to blog about it!  For shame.

This evening we all put off the walk until the sun sank low in the sky to avoid the heat and humidity that popped back up this afternoon.  The result was a perfect evening for a stroll, and we took advantage with 2 miles of walking and talking.  Solving the world's problems one step at a time, we managed to get our workouts done with enough energy left over for me to come home and get so involved in my work (I've been working on a handful of new articles in addition to doing graphic design in my "spare time") that I forgot to finish the written portion of the calorie burn.

Tomorrow may be more of the same, Mr. Kawaii and I are headed to help move some furniture and hopefully do some substantial lifting for a great workout without pains, strains or pulls!