With Memorial Day weekend in the rear view mirror, our sights are set on another North Idaho summer.

After two fairly mild winters, many of us outdoor-sy types have been enjoying the ability to burn calories in decent weather for a couple of months now. For everyone else, the time is now to head out the door and enjoy all the great venues we have at our disposal for pretty much any activity you could name.

It’s time to shed some layers and spend some time closer to nature. Whatever activity you choose, rest assured that the effort will pay benefits in the way of better fitness.

I recently found a neat website that has a calculator that allows you to enter your gender, age, weight and height and then you can fill out the activities that you do on a normal basis to determine how many calories those activities burn within your unique body. All the numbers that follow are for my body type (a male over 50 years old, 175 pounds, 5-foot-11 inches tall).

My first use of the site was to determine roughly how many calories I was burning on an average training ride on my bike. Typically, I’ll begin with a 15-minute warm-up session, spinning my legs in the 12-14 mile-per-hour range. Once I have some heat in my legs (and a nice elevated heart rate), I’ll amp up the workout, with either some fast intervals or long, steady distance (LSD) in the 14-17 mile-per-hour range. I will usually do this for an hour and a half, or maybe more depending on how much time I have that day. Once I have completed the workout I had planned, I typically will go through a 15-minute cool-down sequence, similar in effort to the 15-minute warm-up, just reversing the intensity to end with a heart rate in the 90-beat-per-minute range.

Using the Health Status calculator, I can see that the warm-up and cool-down totals around 370 calories, with a hard 90-minute effort coming in at more than 1,330 calories, for a total usage of 1,700 calories for two hours of exercise. If the sun is throwing some 90-degree rays my way, I can expect the workout to use up a total nearer 2,000 calories.

The great thing about such a workout, at least to me, is that my metabolism is in overdrive the rest of the day, as it is eager to replace those calories that have just been burned. As long as I don’t go overboard, this is a good time to have a hamburger or chocolate shake, or whatever it is you don’t normally have in your diet.

Now I realize that the majority of the population either doesn’t have the time or the desire to go through hard-effort workouts on a daily basis or even a few times a week, but the chances to burn calories and lose weight are staring us in the face every day. Activities that we do just for fun can have some major health benefits as well. For instance, that walking, running/playing with the kids (or dog) can burn off more than 320 calories an hour, yardwork in general will take up 345 calories an hour, and even walking the dog for a half hour will burn 130 calories. Do all that in a day and you’ve just seen 1,000 calories disappear in the rear-view mirror.

For those who normally find time to get out and enjoy some North Idaho sights, scenes and sounds, the numbers are even better. Hiking in our great outdoors will take up nearly 490 calories an hour. An hour of jogging will burn 570, and even that 3-mile-per-hour walk will melt off 356 units. Click up the rpm’s and a 5-mile-per-hour run takes up 690 calories, and the 7-mile-per-hour pace is just under 1,000.

Also, airing up the tires of that cruiser bike in the garage and taking to the streets for an hour will burn 320 calories.

Are you up for jumping in a lake or taking to the water at the Kroc Center? A 30-minute moderate-paced swim uses 250 calories. Playing catch (either football, baseball or softball) uses 110 calories for a half hour.

So, really, fitness doesn’t have to be so intense and so focused. Just take advantage of our awesome outdoors and you should see some results in no time. With a moderate diet, pounds will eventually come off as you stay on your feet and keep the burn in motion.

For those of you who are more inclined to stay near home but would still like (or need) to do some moving, never fear. All those activities also burn ample calories. For instance, the Health Status calculator shows a guy my size and age will burn the following:

• Mowing the lawn (30 minutes) 178 calories

• Washing a car (30 min) 184

• Laundry (1 hour) 173

• Dusting/polishing (30 min) 108

• Cooking (30 min) 108

• Housework (including vacuuming — total 1 hour) 238

• Cleaning windows (1 hour) 270

So even if you do a few of those things in a given day, you’ll probably burn roughly 500 calories.

If you want to find out exactly how many calories you are burning for any activity, go to www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc

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Jerry Hitchcock can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2017, via email at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter at HitchTheWriter.