Writing = Exercise

I recently read an article which promised several ways to burn up 500 calories/day. And if you do this seven days/week, you will burn off one whole pound. Naturally there were all the suggestions you'd expect on there -- don't eat dessert (as if), and park far away so you can walk briskly to the dessert place (already doing that).

The one that really caught my eye, though, was the one about knitting. Yes, knitting. It said that a few hours/day of knitting can burn up 500 calories.

Huh.

I haven't knitted in ages, and now that's it a cool activity, I'm tempted to give it another whirl. Except I know I'd be doing that all the time, basically ignoring my WIP--especially now that I know how many CALORIES I can burn. I could justify it since I'd meet my weight loss goal in no time at all.

But then my creative little brain came up with this idea: why can't WRITING burn up those kinds of calories?

I mean, when you knit, you're clacking some needles together, throwing the yarn over, all pretty tame stuff. Nothing that I would characterize as strenuous (even when you get frustrated at having to rip out several rows, and expletives are being tossed out with all the work that was done wrong). You're sitting, not racing up and down the block when you knit. At least that's how I learned how to do it. It's a leisure activity.

Writing, on the other hand, is strenuous. Even when it's going well, at the end of a good day of writing, it FEELS like you've run a marathon. If there was a public service announcement with a picture of "this is your brain on writing", it would look like a sponge that's had every little bit of stuff squished out of it. Also, I can type wicked fast, which is probably why my wrists are SLIM. They get first dibs at the calorie burning, and I can attest they are getting a great workout.

Besides all of THOSE calories, there are the ones that are burned up from procrastinating -- when you're running around the house watering plants and scrubbing the toilet to avoid putting your butt in the chair. Or what about all the calories expended from the websites you surf -- hellooooo, SURFING? -- for research purposes. And the constant inbox refreshing? It's a wonder we don't all fall over from exhaustion after several continuous hours of that.

So now when I'm blasting away at the word count, I can be satisfied knowing I'm also blasting away at those lazy-ass calories. Whew. I'm feeling a little faint from this workout. I think I better take a break and see what's in the fridge. . .