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Want to shed a few pounds before Christmas? Forget sweaty gym workouts. An hour doing suduko is the new way to burn calories. No, we didn't believe it either.

Brain trainers say that giving your brain a workout by doing a crossword puzzle, word game or suduko can burn off the calories contained in a chocolate hobnob, reports The Telegraph.

Tim Forrester, a mental agility expert from brain training website cannyminds.com, said doing a brain workout burns calories in the same way as a physical workout does.

"Our brains require 0.1 calories every minute simply to survive. When we do something challenging such as a puzzle or a quiz we burn through 1.5 calories every minute," he said.

The Telegraph go on to explain that the brain is made up of millions of neurons which communicate with other neurons, transmitting messages to the body and that these neurons produce chemicals called neurotransmitters to relay their signals.

Apparently these neurons extract 75 per cent of the sugar glucose, available calories and 20 per cent of the oxygen from the blood to create neurotransmitters.

So doing a tricky crossword puzzle or sudoku means your brain will need more glucose and so burn more calories.

Will you be giving up the gym and doing some brain training instead? Leave a comment...