Verdict: have more sex

I'm tracking calories these days on weightwatchers.com.  Those of you familiar with Weight Watchers know that certain foods have certain point values -- which can be countered by certain physical activities with certain point values. Sometimes finding these point values involves research.

Today, while doing a Google to see what kind of calories a person can burn playing the piano (this site says 170 an hour), I accidentally typed into the search engine

"How many calories do you burn having sex?"

(Come on. Don't tell me you haven't wondered the same thing. Every time.)

Of course, such a number is going to be a moving target based on body types and types of actual movement, but I get the sense there is no way to calculate a good answer. The only close results seemed to be user-provided-content answer sites ... super reliable as they are. Like this example:

"About 4 and 5 calories per minute, but obviously it varies by how vigorous the sex is!"

I think this one from Yahoo! content was not really meant to be tongue-in-cheek, what with the scientific research seemingly involved:

"... the average person, according to webmd, is only capable of having actual "intercourse" for about ten minutes. Foreplay, for this same individual, usually lasts twenty minutes. So the total calorie burn while having sex should be around 30 minutes, especially if it happens every night. So ten minutes worth of sexual intercourse should burn around 58 calories while twenty minutes of foreplay should burn around 50 calories. So 30 minutes of sex for the average person should burn around 108 calories.

"I decided to find out how many calories I would burn just sitting on the couch so that I could see how many extra calories I would burn by having sex. Sitting on the couch, according to http://www.healthstatus.com/ for the average person burns around 120 calories an hour. So thirty minutes of sitting on the couch would burn 60 calories, while 30 minutes of having sex would burn 108 calories. So the total amount of extra calories I would burn by having sex every day is 48."

(A statement both sobering, depressing, and relieving, if true, considering how much I sit on my couch.)

However, if you really want to get an accurate reading, do visit this site, which breaks it down into extremely specific movements and situations, for example:

By Location (ex. on bar stool = 20; in rear of Honda Civic = 38;)
By Noise (ex. low growling = 8; urgent begging = 22)
By Possible Side Effects (ex. sliding around = 9; whiplash - 27)
By Position (ex. standing, partners equal height = 18; woman 1-foot taller than man = 90)

Among many, many others, many much more graphic.  Read on only if you really want to know.

(And if you do, that's OK. I kind of did.)