According to a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine , this statement responds more to a myth or urban legend than to reality. The only work that so far has scientifically measured the energy expenditure of having sex revealed that, in a sexual encounter of about six minutes (which usually lasts on average, according to the researchers), only 21 calories are burned , the same as spend the same time walking.
In addition, the aforementioned study was limited to men and was carried out in 1984, without currently existing data on the caloric consumption of women during sexual intercourse, as explained by David Allison, an expert in Biostatistics at the University of Alabama.
