We’d all like to sit here and pretend that the sex we have is so mind-blowingly strenuous that only Hercules or A-Rod could do it without breaking a sweat – unfortunately, reality is a real annoying bitch which means that the four minute pump and dump you did last night on your corpse of a girlfriend didn’t burn any calories. Eh, I guess that’s technically a lie. You burned like, 12 calories. Congrats, go eat a frosted flake or two. You deserve it.
Then again, I’m not a fancy-pants scientist with fancy-pants equipment that does fancy-pants measurements on horny humping people, so I’m really not qualified to tell you what counts as exercise and what doesn’t. In that case, I’ll let the researchers who performed this study take the wheel here:
Landmark studies in the 1960s showed people having sex had an increase in their respiratory rate, heart rate and blood pressure.
These are all signs the body is working at an elevated rate, similar to that experienced during exercise.
More recently, these findings have been replicated by a number of researchers using less obtrusive, miniaturised and wireless equipment, enabling more realistic results.
Again, they found a significant increase in markers of physiological stress, such as heart rate and blood pressure.
Comparing this to what happens during exercise, they showed sexual activity elicits a moderate level of physical stress – up to 75 per cent of maximal exercise.
But they also noticed these physiological stress levels were intermittent. Much of the average time of sexual activity recorded (33 minutes) was spent at lower stress levels.
A more recent study of young Canadian heterosexual couples showed a bout of sexual activity was akin to moderate physical activity – such as brisk walking – when energy expenditure was measured.(via)
So does sex count as exercise? Honestly, it depends on what your definition of “exercise” is. If exercise is simply getting your heart rate up and your sweat running, then sure, real Olympian we’ve got over here. But if you believe that the purpose of exercise is to improve yourself physically over the long run, well…not so much. Sex is neither sustained nor frequently occurring enough for any permanent physical change to take place in the long run.
FINAL ANSWER: Ehhh…sort of. Moreso only if you’re a lazy cow.
[H/T Daily Mail]