With the holidays here and pounds gained...

It takes about 3,500 calories to gain or lose a pound of fat. To give you an idea of how much energy it takes to “burn” a calorie, here are a few activities with the number of calories they burn per minute, per pound of body weight: fast ax chopping (or cross-country skiing uphill), 0.135; forking straw bales (or playing basketball), 0.063; window cleaning (or playing croquet), 0.026. So a 150-pound person forking straw bales burns 9.45 calories per minute, which means he or she must fork bales for six hours to lose one pound. (Though not listed, the one exercise guaranteed to burn calories is pushing one’s chair away from the table!)