According to researchers, keeping your brain engaged is a surefire way to burn extra calories. Mental exercises like puzzles, quizzes, crosswords, and reading this blog are said to burn an average of 90 calories an hour. That means you can allow yourself an extra cookie just for browsing this site for an hour… (so maybe it’s not the sex and relationships content people keep coming back for?)
Tim Forrester is a mental agility expert from the brain-training website cannyminds.com which published the claims, and he says that a brain workout burns calories much in the same way hitting the gym does. But less sweat, and I dig that.
“Our brains require 0.1 calories every minute simply to survive,” he said. “When we do something challenging such as a puzzle or a quiz we burn through 1.5 calories every minute.”
The brain relies on of millions of neurons which communicate with other neurons, transmitting messages to the entire body. These neurons produce chemicals called neurotransmitters to relay their signals (at shocking speed). Neurons extract 75 per cent of the sugar glucose, available calories and 20 per cent of the oxygen from the blood to create these neurotransmitters.
Basically that means that when you’re hard at work figuring out your taxes, making sense of a vibrator you saw on this site, or thinking up a viable excuse for why you need to not see your boyfriend tonight… you’re giving yourself the freedom to have a cupcake 🙂
I believe it! I just planned my whole wedding and am convinced that the constant stress of researching and decision-making put my heartrate at a constant aerobic state. Lost 7 pounds without trying.