The issue of sex as exercise has remained largely unexplored. “There are these myths, including one that sex burns at least 100 calories per session,” says Antony D Karelis, a professor of exercise science at the University of Quebec. He did a study, published in the on-line research journal PLOS One in October, to look at how much energy is actually exerted during sex.
Karelis and his colleagues recruited 21 young, heterosexual, committed couples from the local area and had them jog on treadmills for 30 minutes while researchers monitored their energy expenditure so they could compare it with the physical demands of sex.
Next, they fitted the volunteers with armbands that monitored activity. Using these made it possible to gauge exertion in terms of calories and METs – the “metabolic equivalent of task”. This is a measure comparing an activity to sitting perfectly still (1-MET), to an activity requiring more exertion. Then the scientists sent the couples home, instructing them to have sex at least once a week for a month while wearing the armbands.
Couples were asked to fill out questionnaires about how each session made them feel physically and psychologically, especially compared to as session running on the treadmill. When the researchers analysed all of the results, it was clear, Karelis said, that sex qualified as “moderate exercise”.
This is usually taken as a 6-MET activity for men and 5.6-MET activity for women, the equivalent of playing doubles tennis or walking uphill. Jogging, by comparison, is more strenuous, an 8.5-MET activity for men and 8.4 for women. Some men, according to the activity monitors, used more energy for brief periods during sex than they did jogging.
The study showed that sex also burned four calories per minute for men and three per minute for women, during sessions that ranged from 10 to 57 minutes, including foreplay. (The average was 25 minutes.) For comparison, men burned about nine calories per minute jogging and women about seven. Overall, Dr Karelis said, the data reveal that: “Sex can be considered, at times, a significant exercise, worth encouraging in people who otherwise baulk at working out”.
Ninety-eight percent of Karelis’s volunteers reported that sex felt more fun than jogging.
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