What if I told you that you’re burning calories throughout the day just in your regular activities? If you can up the intensity of everyday chores, you can burn more calories throughout the day AND have a clean house!
Here are 10 chores that will burn 100 calories:
1. You could catch up on your DVR episodes of "Mad Men," but spending that 60 minutes washing and drying a sink full of dishes like a Betty Draper-esque housewife will be much more beneficial to your calorie count. Try multitasking entertainment and chores to burn 100 calories.
2. Bored of your morning beauty routine? Pinterest a new hairstyle, because holding your arms up to blow dry, straighten, and style your hair for 35 minutes will burn off 100 calories of breakfast.
3. You really should call your mother more often. Talking on the phone while walking around the house for 35 minutes will get you brownie points and burn enough calories for a 100 calorie brownie.
4. Wouldn’t that couch look better on the south wall? Moving furniture around your living room for 25 minutes is a great 100-calorie workout, especially if you have an uber heavy hide-a-bed in your living room.
5. Mowing the lawn for 20 minutes can burn more calories than a power walk, but there’s a catch; you have to mow with a push mower. You may feel like you’re living on the frontier, but a push mower will turn your backyard into a bootcamp!
6. Can you even remember the last time you cleaned the bathroom? It’s time. Scrubbing down the bathroom from floor to ceiling for 35 minutes burns as much as a 35-minute walk on the treadmill, and it’s much more productive.
7. Wash the inside and outside of your windows for 30 minutes to burn off 100 calories. If you lived in the Empire State Building, for example, you’d burn 4,200 calories cleaning windows. That would be nearly a pound and a half of calories burned off!
8. It may scare the dog for the rest of the day, but vacuuming burns about 100 calories per 60 minutes. Go for every rug and upholstered surface in the house to burn calories and help with your seasonal allergies.
9. Moving laundry from washer to dryer, folding and organizing your closet for 45 minutes will actually help your clothes fit better. If you use an old-timey clothes wringer instead of a machine you can really get your arms working, but good luck finding one that isn’t in a museum.
10. Lighten up! Tidying up activities such as changing out light bulbs, shredding junk mail, hanging pictures, reorganizing books for 30 minutes will work on your waistline while de-cluttering your house. Clutter makes it more difficult to relax if your own home, and relaxing helps bring down levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that holds on to fat in your body. Clean, burn calories, and de-stress — what could be better?
Want to burn even more? The American Council on Exercise promotes the use of weights to increase exercise benefit. You can add this to your everyday life by using ankle or wrist weights. Just adding weights can burn 25-50 percent more calories during your everyday activities — no gym required!
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