Body Surfing

Anonycatgirl

I just looked up one of my favorite summer activities, body surfing, and was stunned to see it burned only 195 calories per hour for someone my size. Huh? How can plowing through waist-deep or more water with a strong current, against surf, for the better part of an hour not burn more than that? Here I was thinking I'd accounted for the lobster and beer afterward--maybe not so much!

Can someone who understands exercise physiology better than I do explain this? Maybe because it's intervals of lot of exercise broken up intervals of less "cardio" activity? Does body surfing just feel super-intense because I don't do it regularly?

yogicarl

Probably because you spend relatively little time wading out and more time bobbing around looking for the next wave or missing waves because someone is standing right behind you as you turn! Perhaps if you are bodyboarding with not many folks around and you are catching waves in and wading straight back out there the calorie burn would be more.

Anonycatgirl

Makes sense. Not a big deal because I'm doing for fun, not "exercise."

cwolfman13

Yeah, I wouldn't exactly expect that to burn a ton of calories...not bad though considering you could go run a couple of miles and burn about the same but running is way more sucky....

Reality is that we just don't burn all that many calories exercising or recreating which is why it is far more efficient to build weight loss calorie deficits into a diet rather than trying to work everything off.

the_dude00

Impossible to put an amount of calories burned. .... Things would be dependent on how intense someone was really doing it. For example it could be more intense than swimming if someone is swimming 50 meters back out toward the waves, or could be very non intense if simply standing in waist high water and diving into shorebreak