Dancing off your extra weight

IIf you’re one of the millions of overweight Americans, losing weight is probably not your favorite subject.  What if you could dance your way to a better weight and better health?  I recently took a dance lesson to see if you can really get a workout from dancing.  The answer: Yes.

The idea of burning hundreds of calories with an hour of dance sounded right up my alley. I asked Certified Dance Instructor Ralph Hunn to show me some moves.  “Most people think dancing is a natural thing,” said Hunn. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re musically inclined or athletic, everybody has to learn it, it’s that simple.“

So we decided to try my favorite dance, Disco and of course, it’s great exercise.  Weight loss and muscle tone aren’t the only benefits of dancing.  A study by the New England Journal of Medicine found frequent dancing can reduce your risk of dementia by 76 percent, compared to zero percent reduction by playing golf.  So should you dust off your dancing shoes and shed a few pounds?

If you’re body mass index is more than 25 percent, you’re overweight. If it’s more than 30 percent, you’re obese.  94 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese.  The stats for the southeastern states don’t rank well.  North Carolina ranks 16th in the country in overweight/obesity rates and South Carolina ranks 6th in the nation.

If hitting a treadmill makes you want to grab an extra candy bar and forget it, try dancing, you can burn hundreds of calories an hour.  A hour into our lesson, we worked up a real sweat.

Of course pricing for lessons vary, depending on where you are in the country.  For most of the southeast, lessons with a dance company can run between $75 and $100 dollars an hour. You can also find lessons at local community centers and the YMCA for much less.