The accidental exercise plan
Turn your household chores into a major workout with a little help from Helen Legh.
If anyone had glanced through my kitchen window this morning they’d have seen a wild haired woman in her nightie leaping into the air wielding a feather duster and shaking her bootie like it was going out of fashion. It’s an enduring image I know, but this is my new fitness regime.
To be honest, I’m not really doing anything I wouldn?t normally do, and that’s the point. I’ve given up the slaving on a treadmill, the back achingly difficult yoga, the taking on of Jade’s Dance Challenge (I failed). I came to the conclusion it had all been in vain when I realised you can burn off as many calories doing accidental exercise as you can sweating in a gym.
The evidence
The average woman in Britain spends over 12 hours a week on housework. Trying to get your regulation three sessions in at the gym on top of this, and having a life as well, is a pretty tall order. So why not make the most of these housework hours for their fantastic calorie burning abilities.
Naturally if you’re the kind of person who?s a bit slapdash with the squeegee mop, you’re not going to be easily working off a double chocolate muffin without breaking into a sweat. With accidental exercise, it’s all about doing what you?d normally do, but putting your back into it. You might look a bit daft but it’s a damn sight less daft than paying money per month for a gym membership you rarely use.
Some accidental exercise calorie burners: *
- Dusting- 173 calories
- Sweeping the garage- 236 calories. The same as a water aerobics class
- Walking the dog-207 calories
- Washing the windows-180 calories
- Painting, Papering, plastering-266 calories
When you find out that an hour of simple childcare (standing, dressing, feeding) burns 246 calories an hour, just 40 calories less than an hour of low impact aerobics, you’ve got to wonder why you ever bought that exercise bike/clothes horse. You’re doing the activities to get you fit already. You just need to step up the pace a little!
So how can you use your muscles even more doing your daily chores?
- Your weekly (or daily) trip to the supermarket is a hotbed of opportunity. Wear a pedometer at all times. Your target each day is 10,000 steps. Always make sure you park at the far end of the car park and you’ll easily up that step count before you’re even through the door. (Naturally you’ll also be wearing your wrist and ankle weights you bought as part of last years New Year Workout pack. What do you mean no? Well just make sure you’ve got heavy jewellery on; it all adds to your resistance!)
- Ironically, picking a trolley with a wonky wheel might be annoying as hell, but it is definitely going to give you more of a workout as you struggle to negotiate the aisles.
- Got a toddler who’s just started walking? Want to run around? What better way than to take them off the reins. I know, I know, you might not get much shopping done.
- In my house we have something called ‘The Bottom of the Stairs Fairy’. When something needs taking upstairs, it’s left on the bottom step and a pile accumulates until someone (the mysterious fairy) takes everything up in one go. Get the fairy to do some overtime-get yourself up and down the stairs more often. Find excuses to go up and down, taking one thing at a time. And hours going up and down the stairs burns off a humungous 516 calories. And you’ll have the calves of Elle McPherson!
- When you’re dusting or vacuuming, find the fastest, loudest dance music you can stomach and dance your heart out to it whilst working. The faster the beat, the more energetic you’ll be. Singing along works out your lungs and gets your heart rate going too. Just don’t do it at 6 am unless you’ve got headphones on.
- Mowing the lawn is an easy one, but weeding is surprisingly good exercise too, especially if you use the random chaos weed technique; spot a weed, pull it, spot another weed on the other side of the garden, pull that one, spot another one back again, and so on. Stretch down low to pull them, but make sure you look after your back and bend correctly.
- My husband’s always on at me to clean my car. The incentive for me to give it a really good wash and polish with a chamois and some wax, rather than take it to the car wash is the fact that if I do I’ll have burnt off enough calories to have a couple of glasses of wine, guilt free. Worth it every time.
While some of these exercises may be a little tongue in cheek, the reality is, the more time you spend tweaking your essential household activities, the more of an accidental workout you’ll get and the smugger you can feel about exercise without ever setting foot in a gym.
*(all based on an hour’s activity by a female in her thirties of average height, weighing 12 stone)
