Daily HealthBeat Tip

Where do you want that six-pack?

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Warm weather means a lot of us are walking around with six-packs of one kind or another.

One kind is the tight band of muscle that shows we work out and eat right – no belly fat to speak of.

But the other six-pack holds the calories that settle over our gut and hide the first six-pack.

Could we have both? We’ll ask nutrition expert Kim Stitzel of HHS’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion:

"Let's be generous and think you’re drinking light beer. It’s about 100 calories per beer, so that’s about 600 calories in a six-pack. And if you’re an average guy – let’s say you’re five-ten, 160 pounds, something along those lines – you got to run about an hour to burn that off. At a pretty good pace." (15 seconds)

If you drink comparable cans of regular soda, add about a half hour of exercise. And individual results may vary – for instance, older people with slower metabolisms could have to exercise more.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: July 11, 2005

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