Editor’s Note: How much you weigh and how long you exercise will determine how many calories you will burn.
If you’ve spent the whole semester, or at least the past couple of weeks, working hard in the gym to get slim and show off your best beach body, you don’t want to destroy all of your hard work through inactivity and too many piña coladas.
Here are some ways to maintain your body and stay in shape during Spring Break without having to step foot in a gym.
On the beach
There are plenty of fun calorie-burning activities to do in the sand or in the water. Depending on your weight, playing an hour of beach volleyball can burn up to 600 calories. The best part? You’ll be having fun playing in the sand with your friends and will easily lose track of time.
You can burn even more calories when you decide to relax and jump in the water, as an hour of general swimming in the pool or the ocean can burn more than 500 calories.
On a cruise
If you’re going on a cruise this Spring Break, chances are the ship will have a workout room. But you might as well use some of the ship’s other features that you can’t use in a regular gym like a rock climbing wall. Ascending rock climbing is one of the most strenuous activities you can do; it will increase your heart rate and work your forearms, shoulders and biceps.
An hour of vigorous rock climbing can burn around 900 calories.
Also, if you feel like taking a relaxing walk, walk around the cruise ship. Most ships average about 1,000 feet in length. Walking (or stumbling) the length of the ship five times equals one mile.
On the slopes
Some Spring Breakers will break the mold by going skiing out in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado or at Lake Tahoe. Downhill skiing and cross-country skiing are popular snow activities, but although you are more likely to burn more calories cross-country skiing, doing about 30 minutes of downhill can burn 245 calories.
Don’t feel like skiing and just want to take a sled out to a hill with some friends? No problem! An hour of sledding downhill in the snow can burn 540 calories.
Hooking up
While Spring Breakers will inevitably be looking for that memorable hookup with a complete stranger, sex may not be the calorie-burning, heart-pounding physical activity they think it is. To lose one pound of fat, you would have to burn 3,500 calories.
According to healthdiscovery.net, if you weigh 165 pounds and have sex at a moderate effort for 60 minutes, you’ll burn about 120 calories. Intercourse may seem more entertaining than some of these other activities, but don’t look at sex as a means to burn calories and lose weight over the break. As always, if you are going to engage in some hooking up, make sure it is consensual and protected.
Pace yourself
There are seven calories per gram of alcohol, so if you’re going to drink, do it in moderation and responsibly. After all, you do want to come back with a liver.
Drinking light versions of different beers is a good idea, and believe it or not, dark beers like Guinness have fewer calories than most light-colored beers like Budweiser because the darker ingredients are less fermentable, thus less alcohol is made.
