Exercise that burns 600 cals with minimum effort

I’m sure I’m not alone in the belief that the best kind of exercise is that which doesn’t feel like exercise at all. I’m not talking about a lovely feeling of accomplishment after completing a 10km run, I’m referring to doing something that is so ridiculously enjoyable you would carry on doing it even if it burned absolutely zero fat. Let me tell you, it exists.

I was not one of those scuba divers who fell in love with being underwater from day one. In fact I hated it. My first dive was 15 years ago in Egypt’s Red Sea. It was December and the air temperature was surprisingly cool, the water temperature felt even cooler. First time ‘try dives’ are usually done in a swimming pool or in shallow, calm waters. There I was, stood petrified on the beach with this ton of heavy equipment strapped to my back, walking into the sea. It felt completely unnatural, extremely uncomfortable and I didn’t like it one bit. While my fellow divers sat calmly on the sea bed, I was inhaling air so hard I kept bobbing up to the surface like a champagne cork. When our very patient dive instructor finally calmed me down enough to join the rest of the group I began shivering. I was cold, my mask kept filling with water. It was deeply unpleasant.

Five years later while backpacking in Thailand I decided to give it another go. I was on the island of Koh Tao, the sun was shining and the sea felt like a lovely warm bath full of brightly coloured tropical fish. My experience was completely different, and I fell in love with life underwater. I qualified as an advanced diver with an underwater photography speciality and I’ve dived all over the world, taking pictures beneath the sea, ever since.

I’ve never really considered diving an exercise, so it came as a pleasant surprise this week to learn that an hour spent playing in the warm, tropical sea could burn as much fat as dragging myself out in the cold British drizzle to run around the park for an hour. Diving is not meant to feel exhausting, quite the reverse. Dive instructors stress the importance of never being short of breath. So how then is it possible that calmly paddling with the fishes exerts so much energy?

There is of course the effort involved in putting your dive gear on – lugging it onto the boat, strapping a 15kg tank to your back. It might feel weightless once in the water but on land this stuff weighs a ton. Then there’s the science: water is much denser than air, it can absorb enormous amounts of heat, so that even in a wetsuit you’re unwittingly fighting to stay warm. Just a small variation in water temperature, one that wouldn’t make much difference on dry land, can vastly increase our calorific needs.

While the precise number of calories burned varies depending on factors such as water temperature, dive difficulty etc. PADI estimates a leisurely boat dive in warm, tropical waters burns about 300 calories an hour – the equivalent to a brisk walk. An average shore-dive (where you literally walk into the water from the beach) can burn twice as many, averaging 600 per hour – that’s the same as my 10K run!

For me the allure of diving, aside from its subliminal fat burning properties, is what it does to my mind. The sense of calm that comes from being underwater makes it my favourite form of meditation. While I’ve always struggled to switch off my thoughts on land, you can’t help but redirect concentration elsewhere beneath the ocean. It’s crucial never to hold your breath, dive instructors will check for a calm, constant, steady stream of bubbles to ensure you’re breathing correctly. Breathing with meaning, controlling but never holding each breath, learning to breathe is vital. For me it offers that beautiful, yogic feeling of serenity.

I have a strange fascination for photographing abandoned places on land. There’s mysterious beauty in capturing the stillness in a home, theme park or hospital left disused and empty with nature gradually taking over. I recently dived with Viking Divers in Cyprus on the ‘Zen’. MS Zenobia was a Swedish built ferry that capsized and sank close to the coast at Larnaca on her maiden voyage in June 1980. Seeing an enormous ship beneath the water, often complete with cargo, bathrooms, kitchens, ropes, ladders and lifeboats which never deployed, call me strange but it presents a ghostly, fascinating beauty.

I felt mesmerised by the eerie stillness of a monumental sunken ship, transfixed by the tiniest of sea creatures hiding beneath the shelf on a coral wall and got momentarily distracted by a gigantic shoal of silvery fish darting by. My body was effortlessly burning fat while my mind was spellbound by a whole new world.

Further Information

Fly to Larnaca from London Gatwick or Manchester with Monarch, Thomas Cook, Easyjet or Jet2 starting from £55 one way.

For more information about Viking Divers, Larnaca, visit viking-divers.com or call +357 24 644676 /+357 99 682765 or email: vdivers@spidernet.com.cy Try Dive at Green Bay from €50