Sometimes, I’m quite alright with cutting a corner or two. Farm Boy makes better gravy than I do. Lasagna is very time-consuming and there’s a frozen variety that we like. I once wrote a column about house-cleaning short-cuts that included pouring a little bleach down the sink, because the smell of bleach gives an illusion of “clean”.Â
But I couldn’t have predicted this one.
Researchers in England say a study shows that an hour-long hot bath burns as many calories as a thirty-minute walk. Scientists at Loughborough University in England put fourteen men through a one-hour bike ride while another group of fourteen soaked in a high-temperature bubble bath. Cycling burned a lot more calories (it varies depending on weight and other factors) but the bath, at 140F, burned 130 calories. That’s equal to a 30-minute walk.
A couple of questions. First, how do you keep bath water hot without burning your toes, and the bubbles bubbly for an entire hour? And second, how do you stay in it that long? I haven’t been able to do it. I get bored and get out.
While rubber duckies around the world are being put back into service because of this news, our CJBK expert, Dr. Mitch, says not so fast. It’s too good to be true. Raising your core temperature can eat up a few calories but you get no other real benefit that you’d get from exercising, of course. Darn doctors and their logic! Do you have a favourite short-cut of any kind? I’d love to know in the comments.
I’ve never known a health or fitness shortcut which really offers any benefits, other than making you feel good. As to keeping the water warm and bubbles, it’s called a hot tub or whirlpool and turn on the jets for bubbles.
Yeah, I don’t do hot tubs. But a whirlpool would work. Still, it would cool down quickly, as I recall. Sigh.
Maybe it’s imagination but turning the jets on in the tub does SEEM to keep the water warm longer. Perhaps an experiment is in order.
I had a tub with jets in my previous house. Perhaps it’s time for another one! For science’s sake, of course.