It seems that Santa has some weight challenges – no small wonder with all of the cookies and milk left out for him on Christmas Eve! Plus, he uses a sleigh pulled by reindeer so he just slides down the chimney which might be tough with that belly and big bag of presents, but it doesn’t use up a whole lot of calories.
On Christmas Eve, Santa visits an estimated 92 million households. Walking.about.com figures that if all households were evenly distributed across the earth, Santa would travel 0.78 miles between houses — for a total of 71,760,000 (71.8 million) miles.
Guessing Santa’s weight at 250 pounds and that he moves pretty quickly – he does have to get his deliveries done in one night – it’s estimated that he would burn 13 billion calories.
If Santa climbed stairs delivering his presents — Big12Hoops calculates that he would climb the equivalent of 9.5 billion stairs – he would burn 0.11 calories for each stair, or 1.045 billion calories. That’s far fewer than 13 billion calories – but it’s still a whole lot of energy expenditure that would leave him mighty thin – maybe too thin to be seen – by Christmas morning.
But what about all the milk and cookies left for him in front of fireplaces and Christmas trees?
Can Santa Burn Off All The Milk And Cookies?
Two small cookies and a cup of skim milk (no full fat dairy for Santa, he might have cholesterol issues) clock in at about 200 calories. If Santa snacked at each of the 92 million households, he would chow down on 18.4 billion calories.
That would mean he would gain 1,529,350 pounds every Christmas. If he walked instead of rode in his sleigh –Rudolph is probably well-trained enough to take the lead without Santa’s hands on the reins — he’d have to circle the earth 1,183 times to burn off the extra calories.
What If Santa Snacked On Veggies Instead Of Cookies?
If Santa had a cup of carrot and celery sticks rather than cookies and milk he’d have just 50 calories at each house — which adds up to 4.6 billion calories. Since he would burn off 13 billion calories by walking, he’d actually lose all of his weight and disappear.
Maybe the best idea for him would be a nice combination of veggies at most households and cookies and low fat milk every thousand or so households to keep him in caloric balance!
