What It Takes To Work Off That Thanksgiving Meal

Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings, we look forward to it ever year. Dietician Cindy Thomas with Greenville Hospital System says, "A traditional meal is white meat turkey, stuffing, mash potatoes, gravy, green beans, sweet potatoes, of course the roll with butter and then the infamous pumpkin pie. Now that totals to about 3,000 calories."

By: Carrie Davis | News Channel 7
Published: November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings, we look forward to it ever year.
Dietician Cindy Thomas with Greenville Hospital System says, "A traditional meal is white meat turkey, stuffing, mash potatoes, gravy, green beans, sweet potatoes, of course the roll with butter and then the infamous pumpkin pie. Now that totals to about 3,000 calories."

That's just for one meal, no seconds. The average adult only needs about 2,000 calories a day. Thomas says, "If you are going to be taking in three thousand calories on Thanksgiving day jogging you will have to do that for 5 hours. Walking you will have to do for 7 hours at four miles per hour."

She says, if you don't scale back on the portions, you may not work off the entire meal but you can make sure you pack on less pounds. According to Thomas, get moving even if it is just a little bit.

Thomas says, "Your calories will be burned a lot slower your metabolism will slow down if you sit down and rest so it is better for you to go out take a walk your metabolism will get up you will burn the calories."

After the meal, if we sit down or go to sleep we will only burn 1.6 calories an hour. That means it would take nearly 2,000 hours to burn off our food, which is something to think about when you consider eating all those yummy leftovers.
Here's some more food for thought. If you are planning to hit the Black Friday deals, you can burn off 325 calories just by shopping for an hour and a half.
You can burn 125 calories by doing laundry for that long.
If you work really hard you can burn nearly 900 calories doing housework.