Go Shopping – A New Exercise To Lose Weight!

Shopaholic? Now you have another reason to shop your heart out….. It helps you get slimmer too! Women burn off over 12,000 calories each year by just traipsing around the shops, a new study has found.

On an average, a woman walks 2.02 miles every times she trips to the market, and with five such trips each month she clocks up 10.1 miles a month or a whopping 121.2 miles a year, Ian Cox, marketing manager of Golden Square shopping centre in Warrington, Cheshire, which carried out the study summarized.

And with each mile blazing off nearly 100 calories, the total amounts to a really energetic 12,120 calories every year, the survey highlighted.

The survey which enrolled over 2,000 people, nearly 39 percent women were of the view that a serious shopping spree demanded similar physical effort as a gym session.

"Not only is shopping fun but there is now proof that it really is good for you," Cox marked.

"Visiting the shops might not seem like a workout but this research proves that it can have the same effect as a trip to the gym but without the nightmare exercise routine. Most women love shopping and you can now get fit and shed the pounds while doing something you really enjoy," he added.

Conversely, men don’t seem to reap similar benefits from shopping. Scoring low on stamina while in the shops, accompanied with shorter and lesser frequent shopping trips, they mange to burn off just 8,928 calories over a year or 744 calories a month, the study found.

Teaming up with local health authorities, the shopping centre team has launched a program ‘Get Up and Go’, which highlights the positives of shopping.

Besides encouraging the shoppers to lose weight as they shop, the program will include fitness demonstrations, lower fat dishes in the shopping centre's restaurants and weekly mall walking sessions. The program will run throughout August.