Ryley got me to take a look at this website called FitDay*. It’s supposed to be the most awesome diet/fitness tracker on the whole Internet. You can track mood, body measurements, meals, etc. (I have issues with the nutritional information, but that’s not the point of this post…)

The most interesting part of the website is the activity tracker. You can break your day down into what you do minute-to-minute to figure out how many calories you’re burning. It is quite finely-grained, to the point of neurosis. For example, now I know that all of the following activities burn 75 Calories/hour:

• watching TV while sitting
• watching TV while lying
• sitting quietly
• lying quietly
• writing while reclining
• reading while reclining
• talking while reclining

This continues throughout the activities. There are four different kinds of coal mining, six different kinds of tailoring and eight different things you can do in a steel mill. There’s an entry in there for my cobbler, my bookbinder and my furrier. If you switch from traditional “American Indian” dancing to 19th Century dancing, that’s a different activity. Walking for pleasure on a work break is different than walking to a neighbour’s for social reasons and should also not be confused with walking to and from an outhouse. Changing lightbulbs burns 151 Calories/hour.

Oddly, they only have three different kinds of sexual activities: passive – light effort, general – moderate effort and active – vigorous effort. Vigorous sex only burns 113 Calories/hour. If vigorous sex takes less work than changing lightbulbs, you’re doing it wrong (or maybe changing lightbulbs right).

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