Weight Loss At Home Doing Regular Chores
Burn Calories Doing Household Activities
Are you avoiding your daily exercise schedule due to lack of time? If you do not have the time for a gym visit or the necessary morning and evening walks, here’s a perfect solution to your problem. You can burn calories and tone muscles by tweaking a few ordinary household activities. These aren’t difficult things to start. It just takes commitment. Modest steps add up. Burn 50 extra calories a day and lose 2 kilograms a year. Burn an extra 200 calories a day, and that’s 9 kilograms a year. Here are six ways to get started.
Home Activities:
Activity: Tube Toning
Works: Stomach Muscles
What To Do: As you watch TV, sit on the edge of the couch or armchair, brace yourself with your hands, and lift your legs straight out in front of you. Hold for a count of 10. Do as many as you can. Don’t worry if at first you can only lift your legs a few inches off the ground. As this becomes easier, slowly move your extended legs to the left and right. This helps work the muscles on the sides of your abdomen as well. If these exercises are too difficult, try this: Slowly exhale as you lift your feet off the floor and bring your knees into your chest. Then extend your feet outwards just a little bit. Repeat.
Activity: Leg Up On Stairs
Works: Legs, Buttocks
What To Do: Few things are as suited to shaping your legs and derriere as your home’s staircase. Each time you head upstairs, do it in slow motion until you feel the muscles in your legs begin to fatigue. When this gets easier, take the stairs two at a time if you can or stay with single stairs but go even more slowly.
Activity: Bag Lug Shrugs
Works: Shoulders, Biceps
What To Do: As you’re bringing in groceries, do some shoulder shrugs and bicep curls. Get two bags of roughly equal weight and hold one in each hand. As you make the trip from the car to the kitchen, slowly shrug your shoulders as many times as you can. On the next trip, try and do bicep curls.
Activity: Cleaning Cardio
Works: Heart, Lungs
What To Do: Turn non-strenuous tasks into an aerobic workout simply by adding speed. Bustle through chores a quickly as you can, moving immediately from cleaning glass and dusting to sweeping without a break. You’ll finish chores in record time, and you’ll be amazed at the cardio workout you’ll get.
Activity: Kitchen Counter Pump
Works: Calves
What To Do: While you’re cleaning vegetables or scouring away at scorched pots, make the most of your time by doing some heel raises. Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Push up so that you’re standing on your toes. Hold the position for a few seconds, then slowly lower your feet to the flat position. Repeat until you feel your calf muscles burning slightly.
Activity: Wet Laundry Squats
Works: Lower Back, Larger Leg Muscles
What To Do: Squats work almost every muscle in your lower body. Place wet, heavy laundry in a basket to transfer to the dryer, but before you get there, do about 10 squats. Hold the basket in front of you, close to your body to reduce strain on your lower back. Place your feet shoulder-width apart, toes angled slightly outwards. Keep weight on your heels and slowly descend into the squat by pushing your hips back as if you were easing into a chair. Keep feet flat on the floor. Stop when your thighs are parallel to the floor. Slowly stand back up and straight. Repeat.
Yard Activities:
Don’t limit your fitness efforts to the interior of your home. You can burn a surprising amount of calories even as you spruce up your garden.
Lawn Work: Your lawn is like a gigantic green aerobics classroom. Pushing a petrol powered mower burns about 300 calories an hour, more if you really hoof it. Raking the clippings scorches another 340 calories per hour. If you own a ride on mower, use a push mower for the first 30 to 45 minutes, then finish the rest with the ride on. Best yet, buy one of the old-fashioned spinning reel mowers, available at stores that stock garden equipment. You’ll burn 25% more calories than with a regular mower.
Drink Like A Fish: Nutritionists advise drinking at least 8 glasses of water per day. Meet your daily quota by keeping a pitcher full of ice cubes and water handy while you’re working outdoors. Take a break anytime you feel yourself getting too hot and pour yourself a glass. Also take drink breaks at the first glimmers of thirst, whether you feel hot or not. Not only does this keep you safely hydrated in the warm weather, you also actually burn a few extra calories by heating that cold water upto body temperature.
Cooling Down: A cool down is part of any proper workout and it should be part of your garden work as well. So leave all the pleasant, easier tasks for after you’ve finished with the mowing, hoeing, lugging and raking. Trim weeds and bushes, tidy the garage, and just generally putter away at any finishing touches on the house or the garden. Do a few light stretches as you go to keep your muscles from stiffening and aching the next day. Even a short stroll around the garden to admire your handiwork will do the trick.
