Vending Machine Archive

Dr. Fitness and the Fat Guy are Dr. Adam Shafran and Lee Kantor, two guys in Atlanta who talk fitness online and over the air. We asked them to answer a few reader questions and invite you to send in your questions to tips @ crunchgear dot com with the subject line "FITNESS." Include your geographical location. We'll run these Q&A sessions regularly. What burns more calories? Playing World of Warcraft or Farmville? Bart, NYC In the real world, soldiers and farmers burn around 450 calories per hour doing what they do (size, gender and age can also impact this number as well as what type of task is being performed). When it comes to gaming, obviously the calories burned will be much lower. For example, according to calorie estimates from the Mayo Clinic, you burn about twice the calories playing tennis, boxing and golf when you do it in the real world as compared to playing them virtually on the Wii. To answer your question, doing something awesome like playing WoW always burns more calories than doing something lame like playing Farmville. There are no healthy snacks in the vending machine at my work? What should I do? Sandra, Bridgeport, CT Control your own destiny – bring your own snacks to work. Don’t rely on the man. Find a place to store your snacks like a common area refrigerator/freezer. Or, if you have to, bring your snacks in a small cooler. Frozen fruits like raspberries and peaches are great because they are loaded with antioxidants and have the texture of a sucking hard candy. Walnuts and almonds are loaded with protein which makes you feel full fast - but don’t go nuts and eat a lot because they have a lot of calories. Some other easy mid morning or mid day snacks are: peanut butter and jelly or apple butter on whole wheat; roasted veggies like carrots, red peppers and sweet potatoes and hummus on pita chips.

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