Here’s How Much You Workout With Household Chores

Doing household chores may the most boring job in the world for most of us but did you know how many calories you lose doing them? We may think of running away from simple tasks that seem laborious and repetitive but many of these tasks are as good as doing a heavy-duty training at the gym. So if you have been going on guilt trips instead of getting a gym membership, fret not because what you are doing every day is making you fitter too. You only need to calculate and do the tasks in a more extensive manner to see a visible difference in your body weight and looks plus supplement this with a good diet to achieve your fitness goal. Also, add in some cardio workouts like running, swimming or cycling and you are good to go. These estimates are suited for a woman weighing approximately 60 kgs when she is doing these activities at a brisk pace.

Making The Beds/ Jogging On The Treadmill

Making beds for half an hour where you shake the quilts or blankets, puff up the pillows and take off a sheet only to place a new one is equivalent to running on the treadmill for 12 minutes. Making beds is a good upper body workout that you should be doing every day even if it means rearranging the bed a little. You can extend that to arranging the furniture like sofa sheets etc. as well.

Dusting/Salsa Dancing

If there’s one task that seems too momentous to take on over the weekend then it has to be dusting. Even if you keep dusting your home in bits every day, thorough cleaning of the house can be pretty exhausting. Reaching onto those hard-to-reach corners, squatting to get the dust below the furniture or reaching up to clean the fan or wall hangings stretches your body. In fact, dusting for half an hour is equal to doing the salsa dance for 10 minutes. Imagine that! So if you are unable to join dance class due to paucity of time, know that keeping your home spic and span can help you out too! Plus, cleaning is meditation. Period.

Scrubbing The Bath/Ballroom Dancing

Scrubbing the sink, toilet bowl and tiles of the bathroom and washroom is a tiring task that needs to be taken up from time to time. In fact, depending on the quality of water supply you may need to do it more often too. As irritating and strenuous it may seem, cleaning the bath for half an hour helps you lose as many calories as doing a ballroom dance for 45 minutes. If cleaning everything on your own seems like a daunting task and there’s no scope to join dancing classes with your partner, bribe them into going for cleaning sessions with the promise of getting fitter for free.

Carrying Shopping Bags/Playing Golf

Not all of us can join the gym to do some weight lifting or take up a sport. What we have to do on a regular basis, however is lifting grocery bags and shopping bags. You may not believe this at first but it’s a good exercise to bend the knees and lift those bags while ensuring that you have even weights in both hands. And this is equal to playing golf for 40 minutes.

Climbing Stairs/Skipping

In our busy lives, we often absentmindedly end up taking the lifts instead of the stairs everywhere we go even if it is possible to go up/down a few flights of stairs in a building. Ever seen those steppers at the gym where you have to step up and down to tone your muscles? Well, climbing up and down the stairs is something that you can do any time and doing it for half an hour in total is equal to skipping a rope for approximately 20 minutes. Now that’s a good lower body workout for you.

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Ironing Clothes/Step Aerobics

Ironing clothes is another activity that we have delegated to the local presswalla but ideally it is something that we can easily do on our own. A good upper body workout, ironing for about half an hour burns as many calories as doing step aerobics for 11 minutes. Just remember to take a break and do a change of hands while you are at it.

Washing The Car/Practising Yoga

Have you have been giving the car keys to someone else to wash your car? If yes, then it’s a sure shot sign of laziness, if nothing else. Any idea how therapeutic it is to clean the car all by yourself? And it makes you lose some calories too. Your arms and abs get the much-required workout as you thoroughly try cleaning the interiors and exteriors of your car. Do it for 30 minutes and you will be burning as many calories as burnt during a 32-minute session of yoga.

Preparing Dinner/Playing Tennis

Making the dinner right from chopping, frying to serving and more takes time and efforts girl. Doing it every day for 30 minutes or so means that you are burning off calories equivalent to playing tennis for nine minutes. The tossing, turning and other actions during cooking give you a good upper body workout and while you are at it, jiggle your body and bust a few moves to avoid standing up for a long time and hurting your knees.

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So now that you have a fair idea of how intensive household chores can be, stop delegating and start doing them on your own with as much enthusiasm as you would at the gym to see a difference. To know more fitness tips or fitness mantra of celebs, keep reading Her Zindagi.