Extreme Christmas Fitness

Here it is: Your holiday season workout guide. Get those buns of steel and a flat belly by doing Extreme Christmas Fitness (ECF, to be trademarked, of course!).

Tis The Season To Be Jolly…

Sure, there’s eggnog and pumpkin pie and cookies galore. Yes, there are baked hams and sinful gifts of Christmas chocolates. Yet, the holidays don’t need to be a time to bulk up like Old St. Nick himself.

Perhaps we can get into the holiday spirit and burn loads more calories, without even realizing it… that is, until now!

Extreme Christmas Shopping

As the saying goes, “Shop til you drop” – and don’t even feel guilty about it. Just look at these numbers…

• Burn 190 Calories: Carrying shopping bags for 30 minutes.
• Burn 600 Calories: Senselessly meandering the aisles at a leisurely pace for 6 hours.
• Burn 1,200 Calories: Walking briskly for five hours on the 24th while trying to find the present you forgot.

Extreme Christmas Decorating

• Burn 240 Calories: Rearranging furniture for 30 minutes.
• Burn 150 Calories: Rushing to the ER to get the toe looked at you dropped the couch on.
• Burn 210 Calories: Illegally chopping down your own Christmas tree, strapping it to your car, hoping you won’t be caught.
• Burn 250 Calories: Acrobatically balancing on a chair, hoisting lights and putting garland on the tree.
• Burn 132 Calories: Putting Christmas decorations away, rediscovering the Easter decorations you were looking for in March.
• Burn 51 Calories: Wrapping gifts for 30 minutes.
• Burn 200 Calories: Unwrapping and getting into arguments about them.

It's a shopping mall! No, it's a holiday fitness center!

Extreme Christmas Chores

• Burn 240 Calories: Sweeping and mopping the floor because your visiting in-laws expect perfection.
• Burn 240 Calories: Doing it again, because your dog just came in from the snow, dripping wet.
• Burn 150 Calories: Slaving over dinner in the kitchen for an hour.
• Burn 138 Calories: Baking Christmas cookies, cakes and pies that Mom will tell you are burned.

Ready, Set, Go, Ho, Ho, Ho!

With the right goals in mind, holiday season is a calorie-burning event like no other! Merry Christmas!

Pictures courtesy of Christina Rutz and Niyam Bhushan.