Quit your day job

The energy you burn in your everyday life contributes to greater calorie expenditure than your daily trip to the gym; that is, assuming you don't sit around all day while you work. Oh wait, that's exactly what you do? Then if you're looking to burn some serious calories, you may want to think about changing jobs.

Let's pretend for a second that the economy isn't in ruins and that switching occupations is an easy task. Didn't work. Too difficult to even pretend such a thing? Try again. Come on... humor me. Thank you. Now, take a look at how many calories you burn per week doing your current job, and then compare with how many calories you'd burn if you were, for example, outside digging ditches every day. Suffice it to say that after a day like that, you needn't ever step foot in a gym.

According to Men's Health, on average, people who work in an office environment burn about 9,000 calories a week through non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). Then, depending on how much time and/or effort you put in at the gym, you could then be burning an additional 900 calories (three half-hour workouts per week) to 1,800calories (6 half-hour workouts per week). So, all said and done, an office worker burns under 11,000 calories per week even if they exercise regularly. How does that compare against our guy or gal that's out there digging ditches? It's no comparison at all. Skilled laborers burn an average of 21,000 calories per week at their job alone, never mind if they have the energy left at the end of the day to go the gym.

So, either start scouring the classifieds for ironworker, carpenter, and mason jobs, or make it a point to get up and move around in your office as often as you can. And, try to close the calorie-burning gap even further by making sure your workout intensity level remains high.