If, Tim Forrester, a mental agility expert working on the brain training website www. cannyminds. com is to be believed, finally it is possible to lose weight by burning calories, all from the comfort of one’s armchair!

According to researchers, an hour of doing Sudoku, crosswords or any other brain-training exercise helps burn more calories than found in a biscuit. While, a two hours of brain activity burns up the same amount of calories a bag of Maltesers (175 calories) or a packet of Hula Hoops (186 calories) contain.

Apparently, our brains made up of millions of neurons that communicate with each other and transmit messages to and from body tissues, require 0.1 calories every minute just to survive, and doing something challenging like a puzzle or a quiz burns 1.5-calories every minute. These neurons extract 75% of the sugar glucose, available calories and 20% of the oxygen from the blood to create these neuro-transmitters.

To relay signals, the brain’s neurons produce neuro-transmitters, chemicals that required glucose, calories and oxygen in order to work effectively, meaning more exercise of the brain, means more burning of calories.

Anything from doing crosswords, Sudoku, KenKen or even reading, or really concentrating on a difficult poem, gets the brain to fire on all cylinders, using up energy, which is where the burning calories come in. Mental exercises like puzzles and quizzes burn an average of 90-calories per hour, more calories than contained in a jammy dodger (85 calories) or a chocolate hobnob (79 calories).

Giving the brain a workout burns calories in the same way a body workout does.