Many people think that household chores are not intense enough to be considered exercise. But those who always do housework daily would say otherwise. Different chores around the house have varying intensities. This means you get to burn more calories doing yard work than cooking. But which tasks prove to be among the best calorie burners out there?
The following are just examples of chores you can leverage at home that can equate to a full-blown workout.
Lawn Mowing
This type of yard work can be your next favorite workout. You get to maintain your lawn in its pristine state and burn those calories away without hitting the gym. But before you go buying a riding mower, consider the good old push mower first.
How many calories you can burn will depend on your weight, the equipment used, and the intensity of the job. With a riding mower, an average person can burn between 175 and 225 calories every hour. But with a push mower, the average calorie burned is between 350-450.
You’re using the muscles on your shoulder, back, core, leg, and butt when using a push mower. This helps you improve your core strength, build your deltoid muscles, and shape your butt.
There might not be any running, jumping, or biking involved. But traditional push mowers demand that you push the mower with all your might while strategically moving the mower in your lawn. This can be a good workout that requires patience and strength.
Snow Removal
Many people dread having to remove snow on their driveway during the winter months. Not only is this hard work. It is also responsible for many deaths and injuries during the snow season.
The number of calories burned when shoveling snow will depend on your own weight and the amount of snow you’re carrying around. According to Harvard Health Publishing, if you weigh about 155 pounds, manually shoveling snow for about 30 minutes can help you burn up to 223 calories. But if you often do snow removal yourself, you should be a lot more careful.
Shoveling show requires you to use multiple muscles. When done the right way, you can work on your abs, butt, back, shoulders, and thigh muscles. This is why many consider such an activity to be an extreme workout during winter.
According to studies, snow removal increases the risk of heart attack and snowfall. This is since the sudden intense activity, and the cold environment can cause blood vessel constriction. If you are already 55 years old and above or have a medical condition, it would be best to let someone else shovel the snow for you or choose snow-plowing services instead.
Cleaning the Bathroom
Your bathroom requires cleaning at least once a week. But if many people are sharing the bathroom, then it is best to clean this at least two to three times a week. This is to ensure the bathroom is squeaky clean and to boost your exercise regimen as well.
Scrubbing and wiping the bathroom from the ceiling down the floor for an hour allows you to burn at least 256 calories. What more if you have multiple bathrooms to clean inside the house? That’s roughly the amount of calories you can shed for walking the treadmill in the same amount of time.
You’re engaging multiple muscles when you clean the bathroom, including your gluteal, calf, and core muscles. If you want to shape your buttocks and lower leg while engaging your core, then consider bathroom scrubbing to stay on your list.
Hand Washing Your Clothes
You might already have that energy-efficient washer and drier back home. But if you have plenty of time you can dedicate to washing clothes, why not consider hand washing your laundry? This includes multiple activities that can engage your whole body.
Hand washing clothes can mean going up and down the stairs to gather all your dirty clothes and cleaners. You could be standing up and squatting down multiple times while scrubbing, squeezing, and rinsing clothes. Lifting the wet, heavy clothes and hanging them one by one is another tiring activity that doubles as an exercise.
Manually doing your laundry is an excellent way to tone your thighs, arms, abs, and butt. You can burn at least 296 calories per hour by washing clothes by hand.
These are but some of the best housework you can focus on for better health and fitness. You get to keep up with your chores and keep the house in a cleaner condition while hitting your target number of calories to burn each day. You can concentrate on the activities that engage the specific body part you want to tone. The more household chore you do each day, the more calories you can burn. Just imagine how many calories you can burn off if you keep up with more tasks each day.