The 39 best ways to burn the most calories in an hour
Shutterstock/El Nariz
- This list shows how many calories you burn while doing a number of popular sports, from running to swimming to rock climbing.
- But the best exercise to burn calories is one you like enough to do regularly.
- You can always make a sport more or less intense by pushing yourself harder or taking a breather.
There are a lot of great reasons to exercise — it's the closest thing we have to a miracle drug. Depending on what you want to get out of it, you can see some results quickly, though others may take months.
But one of the most basic goals for a workout is to burn calories.
So what's the best way to do that?
Most experts suggest picking a type of fitness that you enjoy enough to do regularly over time. But if you are deciding between a few different activities, you could pick the one that burns the most energy.
The Mayo Clinic, drawing on research published by the National Institutes of Health, ranks 36 popular forms of exercise based on their caloric impacts. We've ordered them from least to most intense, and listed the approximate calories burned in an hour for a 160- and a 200-pound person (in that order). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American women weigh 168.5 pounds on average, compared with 195.7 pounds for the average American man.
We also calculated the values for several other sports, including soccer, rock climbing, and kayaking, based on NIH data, and included stats for a few additional popular activities.
39. Hatha yoga: 183 calories/hour | 228 calories/hour
Mario Tama / Staff / Getty ImagesHatha yoga, a version of the practice centered on specific poses and mental exercises, sits at the bottom of this list, burning an average of about 183 calories an hour in a 160-pound person.
38. A slow walk (2 mph): 204 calories/hour | 255 calories/hour
Flickr / Ed Yourdon35. Bowling: 219 calories/hour | 273 calories/hour
Wikimedia CommonsBowling can help you burn a few hundred calories an hour, but the alley snacks may counteract that.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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