It’s the first Wednesday of January which means it’s time for our monthly linky – Math IS Real Life!! If you want to see how the linky works, or just want other real world math ideas, check out our Pinterest Board of all the posts so that you can look back and find some great ideas and REAL pictures to use in your classroom!

If you are linking up, please include the below picture AND a link back to all four of our blogs – feel free to use the 2nd image and the links listed below!

A monthly REAL WORLD math blog link-up hosted by

4mulaFun, The Teacher Studio, Teaching to Inspire in 5th, AND MissMathDork,

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So another new year has come and gone…and I am still not in shape or healthy.  I still drink too much soda and only very rarely exercise.  How does this happen?  I stepped on the scale and LITERALLY weighed more than the day I delivered my second child.  I’m so disgusted with myself.

So…I decided to do some soul searching to figure out how to tackle this beast of a situation.  The math is simple. 

Calories in – Calories burned < What I am currently doing

I mean…the math isn’t hard.  We all know that we need to take in less calories and we need to burn more calories.  Sadly, for me, neither option is pleasant.  I think I burned myself out on exercise when I was a competitive athlete.  Now everything hurts and it simply isn’t fun.  What IS fun is eating…and thus begins my mathematical dilemma.  I decided to get the “My Fitness Pal” app to track the number of calories going into my pie hole AND the number of calories I try to burn off my sitting apparatus.  Have you seen it?  It’s free…and I’m all about free.

So I started by tackling (and by tackling, I mean thinking and reading about) a few of my biggest numerical INTAKES…

All of this is very alarming because I have no portion control.  Do you see the Pringles? 16 crisps.  16.  A ten and 6 ones.  That doesn’t happen here.  And the soda?  Despite KNOWING full well how bad it is for me and how many calories it has…I can’t kick the habit.

So…eat like a pig and simply increase the exercise, right?  I did a little research on calories burned during activity to see how viable an option this is.

How about these numbers.  In a half hour, an “average” human burns a whopping…
250 calories riding a bike
330 calories on an elliptical machine
150 calories on a moderate walk
240 calories race walking (ever seen this?  We have a race walker in my neighborhood.  This activity is not an option for me.  Just sayin’)

So…this is all fine and good but I hate all those activities for the most part so I dug a little deeper.

Hang gliding burns 130 calories (Probably a bad idea with our wind chill at -45)
Snorkeling burns 146 (I repeat…I’m in Wisconsin)
Wrestling burns 220 (I am NOT wearing that lycra thing)

So I continued my quest for ways to burn additional calories!

Butchering animals burns 160 calories (yes…I found this online)
Bathing a dog burns 86 calories (think my cat would be close enough?)
Maple syruping burns 140 (making, not eating)
firefighting burns 446 calories (no comment)

and then I found….

scrubbing floors burns 100 calories in a half hour
ironing burns 44 calories
washing dishes burns 50 calories
grocery shopping burns 44 calories

This news was a bit disheartening.  That’s IT for how to increase my calorie burning?  I could do better butchering animals than maintaining my house?  Sigh.  I guess I am going to need to change my fitness equation to

smaller portions + move a little bit more = very slow and steady weight loss

Wish me luck…I have the will power of an eggplant.

(By the way….since starting this post I have decided to try doing yoga (150 calories)…I found an online website called “Do Yoga With Me” that streams a bunch of classes for free–even for “fluffy sloths” like me!  I am on day 3 and am doing it in the privacy of my basement so no one has to see the horror that is me exercising!  Namaste.

(by the way…I could not find the number of calories burned while blogging…but I’m going to guess it’s probably the 18 calories burned while knitting.  This may explain my problem.)

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Don’t forget to check out the other MIRL posts below! Check back over the next few days – more will be added!!