For your home and body: how many calories you can burn when cleaning

Is cleaning the house a tedious chore for you? Do you look with horror at the puffs of dust in the corners and mountains of dishes in the sink and do not know how to force yourself not to slack off from household duties? Or on the contrary, all day long you disappear at work or study and free time is barely enough for cleaning, and to maintain physical fitness is not left a minute? You can substitute any reason that suits you to look at cleaning from a new angle. By adding a little sport to your routine, you can get a great workout with a vacuum cleaner and a rag.

First, make time for yourself. Simply washing dishes or dusting won’t make your body burn calories. Clean the whole house. Create an atmosphere – turn on upbeat music to lift your mood, put on sports clothes – a T-shirt, leggings/shorts and sneakers. Not only will this put you in the right mood, but it will also help you avoid injuries.

Washing dishes

This is a great way to stretch. While you’re loading your arms, scrubbing dried stains off plates and pans, don’t forget about your legs. Place your feet shoulder-width apart and rise up on your toes. Hold in this position for 10 seconds and slowly lower yourself. Repeat 10 times, do several approaches with minute breaks. Another option is to dance. This way you can burn about 50 calories in 30 minutes.

Dusting and polishing furniture

This “exercise” involves the muscles of the arms, shoulders and abs. When dusting, don’t be lazy to rinse the cloth more often – you’ll take more steps that way. And squeeze it harder – this will put a strain on your pectoral muscles. You can get extra weight if you dust the lower shelves in a squat – a great workout for your quadriceps and glutes. When polishing furniture, use wax – it takes more energy to rub it off than a spray. This burns about 130 calories per hour (more if you do more squats).

Ironing

A very useful exercise that can be varied in the same way as doing the dishes. Try using an iron while standing alternately on your left and right foot – this not only engages your muscles, but also develops coordination. Place a laundry basket on the floor and do classic squats when you reach for a new item.

Cleaning the floor

Moving the vacuum cleaner hose back and forth trains your abs, and it’s also a great way to do deep lunges. In hard-to-reach places – under sofas, beds or nightstands – you can vacuum in a squat. This activity will burn 190 calories per hour. Do not mop the floors with a mop, but with your hands, so you will burn 240 calories per hour.

Washing windows

This is one of the most energy-consuming parts of cleaning – you can burn 167 calories in 30 minutes. Again, vary your cleaning by going up on your tiptoes and down, and you can give yourself an extra workout by squatting in between windows.

Carpet beating

Do you have carpets that you need to beat the dust out of? This is a great time to do it, as you’ll spend 250 calories in 30 minutes.

Cooking

Cleaned up and worked up an appetite? Half an hour of cooking will help you burn an extra 150 calories. Peel, chop, and whip vegetables. Especially a lot of energy is spent when kneading dough.

How did a woman lose 35 pounds just by doing housework?

Do you still find it doubtful that cleaning will help you get rid of extra pounds? Then here’s a real example – a housewife from Texas Talitta Coleman lost 35 pounds by doing ordinary household chores!

To lose weight, the girl began to eat right and added physical activity to cleaning and other household chores. For example, instead of just lazily walking around the house with a vacuum cleaner, she simultaneously squats or tiptoes.

It’s much easier to exercise that way, and since you’re not going to the gym, you don’t have to worry about how you look. You develop a habit and stop noticing that you’re cleaning that way.

Coleman scrubs the floors with her hands, and in a squat as well. “If you do it like I do, your leg muscles will burn! Front, back and buttocks.”

Coleman lives on a farm, keeping horses and cows. She has turned unloading animal feed into a leg workout – she carries heavy bags on her shoulders while doing deep lunges.

Another of Coleman’s tips is playing with pets. “When you’re running back and forth, playing with dogs, my heart rate jumps up, my breathing goes down. I start sweating and having fun at the same time, it doesn’t feel like a workout,” Talitta says. Moveable games with children have a similar effect.

“To lose half a pound a week, you need to burn 500 calories a day,” says the girl. She doesn’t need a gym membership for this – there are plenty of things to do at home, with the help of which you can kill two birds with one stone.

Video rights belong to Graham Media Group, Houston, Inc. You can view the video on KPRC 2 Click2Houston’s YouTube channel.