A British shopping centre has come up with a brilliant marketing pitch to women customers: you can burn as many calories on a shopping trip as in a workout at the gym. A study by the Golden Square Shopping Centre shows that the average female shopper will walk 2.02 miles while choosing her purchases. If she makes five trips a month she will have walked 10.1 miles, or 121.2 miles a year. Since walking a mile burns off an average of 100 calories, women will work off more than 200 calories per trip, or 12,120 per year. The study revealed that 39 per cent of women believe a serious shopping excursion demands the same sort of physical energy as a gym session.

Men’s trips tend to be shorter and less frequent, only burning off 8928 calories a year. But Brits on average browse through 25 shops every month, or 300 a year, amounting to over 18,000 stores in their lifetime. Golden Square has started a programme called Get Up and Go, which encourages shoppers to drop a dress size by just doing ordinary activities such as shopping and mall walking. ~ Telegraph (UK), August 6