How many calories normal people actually burn doing 9 Winter Olympic sports
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We can't all be Olympians.
But we couch-bound Olympics-watchers can still reap serious health benefits from trying out some of the sports in play at the Winter Games.
We've rounded up nine of the most exciting winter sports to determine about how many calories you'd burn based on a metric called METs.
We calculated how much the average Joe and Jane USA might burn doing each Olympian-style sport for 60 minutes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average American woman weighs about 168.5 pounds (~76kg), and the average man is somewhere around 195.7 lbs (~89 kg), so we've used those weights.
The calorie estimates are based on a tool built by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Arizona State University. Of course, they aren't perfect, and the numbers would likely be different based on your fitness, age, and other factors.
But with that in mind, take a look at what a spin around the rink or slide down an icy chute could do for your body.
Traveling around the ice at 9 miles an hour or less (that's a regular pace, not an Olympic one) burns around 490 calories for an average man, and 418 for a woman.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
In an hour of consistent movement on the ice, you're probably expending around 5.5 METs. By comparison, competitive speed skaters and ice dancers can burn up to 14 METs an hour.
When people really get moving, ice skating and ice dancing can be some of the most intense winter sports.
For average Americans, an hour of ski jumping burns 532 calories for a woman and 623 for a man.
Quinn Rooney/Getty
Carrying your skis up the hill then hurling yourself off the top can blow through energy — around 7 METs an hour.
If you want to calculate how many calories you might burn in your own hourlong ski-jumping session, multiply your weight, in kilograms, by the MET of 7.
A typical American adult skiing down the slopes at a race pace would burn 608 calories for women and 712 for men.
Alessandro Trovati / AP Images
But that estimate is for someone speeding downhill with their most vigorous effort.
Mikaela Shiffrin, who won a gold medal in giant slalom and a silver medal in women's combined alpine skiing at Pyeongchang, eats 3,000 calories a day to fuel her impressive runs down the mountains.
But how much people burn skiing and snowboarding depends a lot on how fast they go and how fit they are. Skiing can plow through up to 8 METs in an hourlong race, or as little as 4.3 METs if you exert just a light effort.
If you're taking it slow, you'd burn closer to 327 calories for women and 383 for men.
Again, multiply your weight in kilograms by the MET to find your hourly calorie burn.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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