Kirstie Alley's "Dancing with the Stars" gig: Key to chubby star's shrinking body?
(CBS/AP) Is Kirstie Alley dancing her way to weight loss? When the famously flabby "Dancing with the Stars" contestant - and former "Fat Actress" star - reprises her opening-night dance on Tuesday's show, she'll be wearing a costume that had to be taken in a whopping 38 inches.
Still, the star seems reluctant to fess up about just how much weight she's lost.
"There will be some reveal of that at some point, but I really didn't care," she said. "It was like, keep whittling, whittling, whittling. And the other thing that's really more significant to me - I mean, I love the whittling, I like being skinny - I'm really strong and really agile and it gave me a new life."
Is dancing alone the reason behind Alley's shrinking frame? Hard to say. But there's no doubt that cutting a rug is a terrific way to burn calories. For a 160-pound person, an hour of swing dancing or doing the twist can burn 350 calories, according to WebMD's Fit-o-Meter. Faster-paced aerobic dancing can burn up to 509 calories, and even a snooze-inducing slow dance can burn over 200 calories an hour.
Dancing has other health benefits as well, including better balance and coordination. It can even sharpen the mind and stave off some effects of aging. A 2003 New England Journal of Medicine study linked dancing to reduced rates of dementia in people over age 75. The study's authors suggested that the complex nature of dancing - the need to memorize moves and the good feelings that come from the social interaction - might benefit the brain.
As Dr. Ferdinand Venditti, professor of medicine at Albany Medical College, told the AP in 2006, "You don't get that from walking in place on a treadmill."
Timeline: Past "DWTS" competitors and champions
