How my pet hate burns 350 calories a day!

One of my real bug bears is leg jiggling….for some reason it is usually men that do it, bobbing their knee up and distracting your conversation. I always think they must need the loo and slap their knees.

However, next time you see someone doing this, have a look at them – are they slim?

Studies have shown that fidgeting burns 350 calories a day, which is about half a bottle of wine and 2 vodkas.  Or a weight loss of 36lb in a year and a healthier liver!

It has also been shown that naturally slim people, the ones we hate who can seemingly eat everything and anything and stay whippet thin, tend to fidget a lot more than chubbies.

So jiggle your legs, wiggle your toes, gesticulate more when you talk, tap your fingers, act like you have got ants in your pants and ignore your mothers instructions to stop fidgeting.

You might get the odd slapped knee but for 36lb a year I?ll take that.

In the same vein, when you are standing up you burn 70 more calories an hour than when sitting down?..so whenever you can, get up. Stand up while you are on the phone, when you are out, stand at a high table or the bar rather than flop on the sofas (unless you have huge heels in which case damage to the feet might outweigh the calories burnt!), when you have the TV on, stand up for a half an hour show, all these little things add up and you will soon notice a difference.

Recipes

So you have got home from work at 8pm, had the day from hell and you are shattered – but starving – there is no way you are going to start cooking a huge meal but are really trying to keep your diet healthy and avoid microwave meals and processed rubbish.

Every week I’ll give you a very quick and simple healthy recipe which I cook on days like this. And you can get all the ingredients in any supermarket, if they are not already in your cupboard??because it isn?t a quick recipe if you have to go to 6 different shops to get the stuff.

On Wednesday I did a 12 hour day and really wanted to have a glass of wine and flop on the sofa with a bar of galaxy but I was very good and made a quick stir fry. Stir fries are the time honoured quick meal and 10 minutes later you can feel smug and slim eating a home cooked, healthy meal.

There is no hard and fast recipe, just use a good selection of veg and some protein- meat, fish, quorn, tofu etc.

Heat a wok (or frying pan) and pour in a glug of olive oil (I don’t have time to weigh or measure but probably about a tablespoon).

You can buy chicken, beef or pork ready diced, or use quorn or tofu pieces (try and keep the beef to a minimum and buy organic chicken if you can to avoid nasty hormones and antibiotics)

Chuck the meat (or alternative) into the hot oil and stir around for 3-4 minutes.

Add a teaspoon of minced garlic, chilli and ginger (buy the jars in the supermarket, all ready prepared, quick, no garlicy fingers and last for ages). You might need less chilli depending on your taste.

For the vegetables there is a variety of options;

Onions, peppers, baby sweetcorn, green beans, mange tout, broccoli florets, mushrooms, cauliflower, beansprouts, really anything that takes your fancy.

If you can chop up an onion, a pepper and a few mushrooms while the meat is frying and throw them in with a packet of baby sweetcorn and/or green beans. If you can’t be bothered with this, most supermarkets do a ready prepared bag of stir fry veg which are great.

If you haven’t had time to shop, frozen veg are great, mushrooms, onions, peppers, broccoli, straight from frozen although they may need an extra minute or 2 to cook.

Stirfry for another 3 or 4 minutes, slug in a good dash of soy sauce and fry for another minute or so.

Voila, 10 minutes and your at the table!

Don’t miss next weeks newsletter, I’ll find more easy ways to burn calories, review a couple of diets I have tried and give you another recipe.

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Tags: Calore Burning, Diets, Easy Diets, exercise, Fat Loss, Fitter, Get Slimmer, Healthier, Healthy Recipes, Low-carb, Low-fat, Noodles, Protein, Quick Recipe, Quorn, Recipes, rice, Slimmer, Stirfry, Tofu, Vegetables, Weight Loss

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 2:05 am and is filed under Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.