No. 1 Simple Exercise To Burn 800 Calories in Your Home

The temperature is dropping, which means many things. One of them is that you are less likely to exercise. According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans report exercising less in winter than in summer. The survey found that while 54.5 percent exercise for at least 30 minutes three or four times a week in October, that number dips down to 49.8% in November. If the cold weather deters you from getting a workout in, one new study found that a simple exercise you can do in your home can burn up to 800 calories. 

If you want to burn calories and reduce the risk of heart disease, consider climbing your stairs, say researchers. 

A study published last month in the journal Atherosclerosis found that climbing five flights of stairs daily may reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, including stroke, blood clots, and heart attacks, by up to 20 percent.

 Another 2021 study also found that walking decreases body fat. After three sessions of stair walking per week for 12 weeks, the women in the study lost significant amounts of body fat.

Like any other workout, the total number of calories you burn will depend on factors such as your weight and gender. However, in one hour, you can burn 530 to 835 or around 90-140 calories for a 10-minute stair session.

A third study, conducted in 2021 by the University of Birmingham, also found benefits of climbing stairs. They had 52 sedentary women do two "bouts" of stair climbing every day for eight weeks. They found improvement in aerobic fitness, reduced cholesterol, increased leg strength, and improved cardiovascular health.

"The steeper the stairs are, the more energy you'll burn," Anthony Fletcher, biomechanics coach and co-founder of running app Onetrack, tells The Telegraph.

"Climbing stairs is great because you can take each step slowly but still burn lots of calories," he added. "That's because the muscles are contracting and shortening under tension as they push the floor away. 

"This automatically burns more energy than eccentric contractions when the muscles lengthen, such as when you're running," he continued. "It means that the effort can be quite high even though we don't feel like we're going very fast."

The Birmingham University study also discovered that women assigned descending stairs, rather than ascending, lost more abdominal fat. However, going down burns more calories later on. 

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The study also found that it didn't matter whether individuals went to the gym or a park, finding that  "home-based climbing was at least as effective as an equivalent gym-based routine."