Among the suggested advantages:<\/p>\n
- \n
- 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.<\/li>\n
- Time spent walking the dog is time not spent raiding the fridge or cruising the drive-through.<\/li>\n
- The calories burned by walking the dog are nothing compared to those burned by chasing or bathing the dog.<\/li>\n
- The feel-good warmth supplied by a good dog can diminish the felt need for “comfort food,” generally the most fattening kind.<\/li>\n
- 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.<\/li>\n
- And nothing kills one’s appetite, at least temporarily, like cleaning up after one’s dog.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
It’s like a personal trainer that wags its tail<\/h3>\n
Well, it now appears that there may be some empirical and statistical support<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n
Among them:<\/p>\n
- \n
- 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.<\/li>\n
- 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.<\/li>\n
- 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.<\/li>\n
- 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Just one more reason to call them our best friends.<\/p>\n
(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)<\/p>\n
From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News<\/a> (REF3076322B7)<\/p>\n
Who needs a Stairmaster when you’ve got a Golden Retriever?<\/a><\/p>\n