September 19th, 2003

By Darren Barefoot

Filed under:
Sports
4 Comments »

Sex and Calories

Devon and Donna (I think) introduced me to Fitday.com, where you can record all of your foods eaten and activities done and track your weight gain/loss. Because it’s free and I’m a bit compulsive, I immediately signed up. Unlike them (brave souls), I’m not going to make my fitness info public. I won’t be mocked for my poor dietary habits.

As I mentioned, you can record your physical activities to track calorie burnage. They’re very thorough–I was impressed that they even had Ultimate Frisbee (216 calories per hour? That’s prety chintzy.) listed. They also have three kinds (just three?) of charmingly-categorized sexual activity listed:

  • Sexual activity, Active, vigorous effort (43 calories/hour)
  • Sexual activity, General, moderate effort (26 calories/hour)
  • Sexual activity, Passive, light effort, kissing, hugging (0 calories/hour)

What’s with that? This flies in the face of every women’s magazine I’ve ever read. 43 calories for an hour of ‘vigorous effort’? Maybe I’m in lousy shape, but my, uh, vigorous activity usually leaves me out of breath and, uh, spent. Surely that’s worth more than 43 calories per hour.

It’s amusing that they even bother to include the ‘Passive’ category, despite its lack of calories. It seems to yell: ‘Hey, you, quit laying there like a sack of potatoes and do something.’ It also seems to frown on kissing and hugging, but I digress.

Comments: 4 Responses so far

Ryan
September 19th, 2003
3:22 pm

I would disagree that light sexual activity, kissing, or hugging would burn 0 calories an hour. In the example of kissing, muscles are required to move your lips. The movement of muscles requires the expenditure of energy. Where do you get that energy? From calories of course! Heck, simply breathing burns calories! I would agree, however, that there is a correlation between the rate of caloric expenditure and the vigour of one’s sexual activity.

Slim-Fast claims that a 89 kg person would burn 47 calories from kissing alone: http://www.slimfast.co.uk/exercise/exercise_count.asp . An interesting weight-loss calculator may be found at http://weightlossinternational.com/newsletter/burning-calories-calculator.html .

Mind you Darren, I’m surprised that you’re even looking into weight loss issues. I, on the other hand, have some weight loss goals that I need to attend to!

bree
September 19th, 2003
7:20 pm

Yeah, I’ve read other sources (which I can’t remember) that say you burn calories sleeping, and I don’t know about you but I’m a lot more … active … when I’m “sleeping” with someone than when I’m just sleeping. Not sure I trust Fitday’s calculations …

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May 24th, 2007
8:36 am

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