The best ways you can burn fat at home during the lockdown

Q Each day of this lockdown that passes makes me more anxious about my weight. What is the best way to burn fat at home?

A I have a confession to make. On day seven of the lockdown, I was watching Ozark on Netflix. At 9.15pm I walked into the kitchen. It was cold, I was miserable and I felt entitled to something nice, sweet and bad. I turned my kitchen upside down in my hunt for cookies, chocolates, croissants — anything.

However, being the disciplined active health columnist that I am, I had taken my own advice and shopped around the perimeter of the grocery store to make sure there was nothing tempting in the house. Not even a trip to the 24-hour garage’s doughnut stand could be justified. During a lockdown, staying at home can save humanity. Getting a doughnut could destroy it.

The result? I settled for a seedless grape dipped in Greek yoghurt. Not glamorous, I admit, but a moment I will no doubt be grateful for when the lockdown is lifted.

You need to be mindful of the calories consumed before you worry about the calories expended. Remember the concept of caloric debt, where each goody is packed with calories that would require a certain amount of exercise just to “break even” on calories in vs calories out?

It just so turns out that some exercises are highly effective at assisting with fat loss because of the energy they require, and calories they “burn”. In fact, with so much time on your hands under lockdown, you could create a body budget on Excel!

Cash in will become calories in and cash out will become calories out. It won’t be scientific, because calorie estimations for various food types are just that, and calorie expenditure is also just an estimate. We all use energy differently — it’s not scientific, but it is a useful, broad measure.

The winner of the dubious title of Lockdown Calorieburning King is … skipping. And the best part is you can skip without a rope. It’s called jumping on the spot. If you blare the Ramones through your headphones, it’s called dancing to punk music.

Obviously, the rope adds to the efficacy because of the burn it induces in your shoulders, but if your Noritake of Victoria Beale fine china has sentimental value, you may want to skip the rope. It is said to burn up to a whopping 700-900 calories an hour, at 120 jumps a minute.

The second most effective exercise is running up steps. The Water Cooler doesn’t recommend this, because the disclaimer requires running at maximum intensity and two left feet and broken bones are not something you want to deal with while under lockdown.

Billy Blanks wowed the world with his spandex and Tae Bo in the 1990s. As it turns out, shadow kick-boxing or boxing is efficient at burning calories. Remember boxercise? If you spar at high intensity for up to 90 seconds, followed by short rest periods, you could be looking at between 500 and 700-odd calories in an hour.

Few people would be able to skip or spar with any real intensity for an hour, but these are broad estimates. Other exercises are mountain climbers, jumping jacks, burpees, running on the spot with high knees, and variations of these — all performed in high-intensity sets. Callisthenics is said to burn from mid-400 to late-600 calories an hour.

You cannot go for a jog, and so rather than running up and down your driveway 3,000 times and attempting to log it on Strava, mix things up with highintensity interval training.

Then, those who have treadmills, stationary bikes, rowing machines and elliptical trainers — you know what to do. Binge-watch Ozark while slogging it away on some good old-fashioned steady-state cardio equipment.

Have fun with your body budget and master the art of being a calorie capitalist.