It’s no accident that Scooby Doo’s owners are in such good shape
My very first post for CalorieLab some years back promoted the notion of a canine companion as a potentially valuable weight-loss aid, and urged dieters to make that “extra large dog to go” one of the actual four-legged variety.
Among the suggested advantages:
- Walking the dog each day will be exercise that you probably wouldn’t get otherwise, especially in bad weather or when you don’t really feel like it.
- Time spent walking the dog is time not spent raiding the fridge or cruising the drive-through.
- The calories burned by walking the dog are nothing compared to those burned by chasing or bathing the dog.
- The feel-good warmth supplied by a good dog can diminish the felt need for “comfort food,” generally the most fattening kind.
- The dog owner will often shake off the urge to hit the kitchen for some snacks rather than have to deal with the fixed gaze of a drooling canine.
- And nothing kills one’s appetite, at least temporarily, like cleaning up after one’s dog.
It’s like a personal trainer that wags its tail
Well, it now appears that there may be some empirical and statistical support for my suggestion, at least with regard to dogs and exercise. It seems that some British researchers surveyed 5,000 people and turned up some interesting numbers.
Among them:
- On average, dog owners walk their pooches for up to 30 minutes twice a day, and longer than that three times a week, for a total of some eight hours of exercise per week. By comparison, non-dog-owning gym patrons work out for fewer than two hours a week.
- Those who own dogs exercise as much as six hours a week more than those who exercise on their own at home or in a gym.
- Fully 86 percent of the dog walkers said they enjoyed doing so, compared to just 16 percent who felt that way about their gym workouts.
- Roughly 65 percent of the dog walkers walk their pets even when they’re on a tight schedule, while about 45 percent of the gym users frequently contrive excuses not to work out.
Just one more reason to call them our best friends.
(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)
From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)
Who needs a Stairmaster when you’ve got a Golden Retriever?