Brain exercises such as jigsaws, crosswords and riddles my help burn an average of 90 calories per hour. Tim Forrester, an expert in the area of cognitive abilities, says you can lose weight by making your brain work the way you make you muscles work in the gym.
Our brain needs 0.1 calorie every minute to just survive. When you do something that makes your brain boil like solving riddles you burn about 1.5 calories every minute, Forrester says.
Our brain consists of millions of neurons that interact and send signals to the rest of the body. These signals are transmitted by chemical compounds called neurotransmitters. Neurons need 75 percent of glucose and 20 percent of oxygen from blood and additional energy to produce neurotransmitters. Therefore, solving riddles or Sudoku increases the consumption of glucose and calories by the brain.
If you spend one hour doing brain exercises, you can indulge yourself in having one of the following foods:
- 50 g soufflé (150 calories)
- 50 g honey (155 calories)
- 50 g pastille (150 calories)
- 50 g sponge cake with fruit (190 calories)
- 200 g wine (160 calories)
Source of the image: flickr.com/photos/01-17-05_t-m-b.
