Is cleaning your house a tedious chore for you? Do you look with horror at the clouds of dust in the corners and the mountains of dishes in the sink and don’t know how to force yourself not to shirk your household duties? Or, on the contrary, do you disappear all day at work or study and have barely enough free time for cleaning, and not a minute left for maintaining physical fitness? You can substitute any reason that suits you here to look at cleaning from a new perspective. By adding a little sport to your usual activities, you can have a great workout with a vacuum cleaner and a mop at the ready.
The coach answers: how to maintain daily activity during self-isolation in an apartment
To begin with, make sure you have some time. Simply washing dishes or dusting will not cause your body to burn calories. Clean the entire house. Create an atmosphere - turn on upbeat music to lift your spirits, wear sportswear - a T-shirt, leggings/shorts and sneakers. This will not only put you in the right mood, but will also help you avoid injuries.
Washing dishes
This is a great way to warm up. While you're stressing out your arms scrubbing caked-on stains off your plates and pans, don't forget about your feet. Place your feet shoulder-width apart and rise onto your toes. Hold this position for 10 seconds and slowly lower down. Repeat 10 times, do several approaches with minute breaks. Another option is to dance. You can burn about 50 calories in 30 minutes this way.
Photo: istockphoto.com
Does cooking help you lose weight?
Cook while standing, use kitchen appliances to a minimum, and then an hour at the stove will destroy 90-100 calories. It is important not to taste anything during the process, otherwise you risk consuming more calories than you burn.
Helpful advice: To increase energy expenditure, increase the intensity of your movements and the speed of doing housework. To make it easier to keep up the pace, turn on your favorite music. This way you can cope with routine responsibilities faster, get a boost of energy and good mood.
Wiping dust and polishing furniture
This “exercise” uses the muscles of the arms, shoulders and abs. When wiping dust, do not be lazy to rinse the rag more often - this way you will take more steps. And push it harder - this will put a strain on the pectoral muscles. You can get extra weight by dusting the bottom shelves in a squat—a great workout for your quads and glutes. When polishing furniture, use wax - rubbing it requires more energy than using a spray. This burns about 130 calories per hour (even more with additional squats).
Washing and ironing work together
A washing machine is now found in almost every home; it makes life much easier and saves time. But there are things that have to be washed by hand the old fashioned way. This is great for burning calories. When washing clothes by hand, you can lose up to 120 kcal per hour. Hand washing curtains and blankets takes up to 220 kcal per hour, which replaces 30 minutes of work in the gym.
Hanging your laundry after washing allows you to additionally get rid of 25 kcal in ten minutes.
Clean linen requires ironing. If you iron while standing, you can get rid of 157 kcal in an hour. When performing the same work while sitting, the figure decreases to 100 kcal. Add folding laundry after ironing, that's another 120 kcal per hour.
As a result of all manipulations, you have a result equivalent to a full-fledged water aerobics workout.
Ironing
A very useful exercise that can be varied in the same way as washing dishes. Try using the iron while standing alternately on your left and right foot - this will not only engage your muscles, but also develop coordination. Place the laundry basket on the floor and do classic squats when you reach for a new item.
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Going to the store is an element of strength training
When shopping in large supermarkets, where you have to walk for a long time from shelf to shelf with a loaded cart, you can burn from 200 to 260 kcal per hour.
The more you buy, the more calories you will burn. It is important to calculate your strength: you will still need to transport your purchases home! For best results, try to load the heaviest items into the cart or basket first: you will get additional stress on your arms, legs and back muscles.
If you need to buy a lot of products at once, go to the store 2-3 times. The effect of cardio training with weights is guaranteed. Walk home to and from the store at an above-average pace.
It has been experimentally proven that half an hour of carrying bags, the contents of which can feed a family of three three times a day, burns 190 kcal.
Our dictionary
Montignac is a French nutritionist. It offers a typical moderately low-calorie diet, very close to the so-called Mediterranean diet. Montignac excludes foods with a high glycemic index from the diet and almost prohibits saturated fats. The Frenchman recommends focusing on fiber, vegetables and fruits, mushrooms, and choosing fish rather than meat. Eat bread only at breakfast, and exclude bread at other meals. Breakfast Montignac suggests starting with juice or fruit on an empty stomach - that is, filling the stomach with low-calorie foods. The diet turns out to be effective from the very first weeks of following it, since preference is given to foods rich in appetite-reducing fiber.
Low carbohydrate diets. Their essence is that when the intake of carbohydrates, a source of energy, into the body is sharply limited, the body begins to process accumulated fat reserves. These methods include the Atkins diet. One of its varieties is the so-called Kremlin diet, popular today in Russia. You can eat as much meat as you like, but strictly limit your carbohydrate intake; first of all, you should avoid sweet, flour, potato dishes, bread, and rice.
However, low-carbohydrate diets have serious contraindications for those who suffer from chronic diseases of the heart, blood vessels, stomach, and kidneys.
Vacuum cleaner
Few people like to vacuum all their rooms. It's long and boring. But you shouldn't feel that way about this part of cleaning, because this kind of "exercise" will help you burn about 170 calories. This is a very decent figure. You can increase the load by additionally lunging forward with your legs alternately. It’s not easy, yes, but the result will be excellent.
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#2 Children are the best trainer
Photo source: pixabay.com
A wonderful way to spend time actively and beneficially for your figure is to pay attention to your children. Moreover, if you are unlikely to go to clean someone else’s apartment, then you can borrow children from relatives or friends without any problems - they will be only too happy!
In half an hour spent with children, you can lose a lot of extra calories:
- active games – 190 kcal;
- bathe a child – 94 kcal;
- walking with a child: walking and light exercise – 98 kcal, going up/down stairs – 130 kcal, walking with a stroller – 75 kcal.
In general, about 108 kcal per half hour is spent on caring for a preschool child, so don’t be lazy. There will be benefits on all fronts - the child is well-groomed and caressed, and the figure is chiseled!
Table of calorie consumption for various activities
All human life processes, even rest and sleep, are associated with energy costs, which are measured by the number of calories burned. Each daily activity is performed for a certain time and burns a certain number of calories. The daily need to restore expended calories is determined by summing the product of the standard amount of calories burned for each type of activity by the time they are performed.
Energy is spent on the functioning of all body systems (basic metabolism - on average 1 kcal/hour per kg of human weight) and on physical activity that maintains the vitality of the body (additional energy consumption for physical labor and exercise - on average 1500-2000 kcal/day + 290 -1060 kcal/day for muscle effort to cleanse the body). The amount of additional energy consumption depends on the age, gender, weight of a person, his physical and mental state. Energy consumption for muscle efforts of athletes training 1.5 hours a day is divided into 5 load zones: very low, low, medium, high and very high.
To determine the daily amount of calories burned, it is convenient to use an online calculator. It is enough to select in the appropriate sections of the calculator the types of activities during the day, the time spent on each of them in hours and minutes, your own weight in kg, and the calculator displays the total number of calories burned per day.
Using an online metabolism calculator, you can more accurately take into account a person’s individual characteristics when determining daily calorie consumption, because its columns include the level of activity, gender, weight, height and age of the person.
Gardening - outdoor fitness
If you have a garden, you are a happy person! In an hour of gardening you can easily burn up to 330 calories, shape your figure and lose excess weight. Weeding, planting, working with a shovel, hoe or rake, harvesting, watering: loads for every taste await you.
Housework cannot completely replace sports. But any housework requires a significant amount of effort and calories, and since there is no end in sight, good housewives have the additional opportunity to always look slim and fit.
Shopping
Pushing a shopping cart for 30 minutes burns 100 calories. The heavier the cart, the more calories you burn. In England, they even developed a new Trim Trolley in supermarkets, which trains muscles. First of all, it makes sense to pay attention to the additional wheel of the cart, which makes pushing the cart much harder. Another innovation is the dashboard with a screen, indicators and buttons. In addition to a timer, speedometer and heart rate monitor, the cart's interface shows shoppers how many calories they've burned moving around the store and offers an arm workout. It follows that during a 40-minute shopping trip, a consumer with Trim Trolley will burn 160 kilocalories. Their number can increase to 280 if the wheel resistance level is increased.
Photo portrait
Eh, I'll lose weight! In California, a company is thriving that provides overweight clients with their unusual photographic portraits: in them the person looks like he has lost about 20 kilograms. Moreover, the company’s employees do not engage in any embellishment: the person in the photograph does not at all resemble Hollywood idols, he still looks like himself, only slim and fit. The mood of a person who tortures himself with all kinds of diets and cruel restrictions increases significantly - looking at such a portrait, he purposefully moves towards a very real ideal.
Ironing
Ironing clothes is not an active activity, but in fact it is a very energy-consuming activity. An hour of ironing will cost you 88 calories. Try a trick and get your body to move more by using hangers. They ironed the shirt, hung it on a hanger and put it in the closet. And so on every thing. You won’t notice how you walk 10 thousand steps. Boring, but it works.
How many calories are burned when cleaning an apartment?
Habitual activities in the apartment also bring benefits. Of course, the area here is noticeably smaller than in a private house. However, if you spend about 1-2 hours daily, then within a month you can noticeably tighten your body and get rid of extra pounds.
| Kind of activity | Calorie consumption in 10 minutes |
| Bed making | 15 |
| Washing dishes | 17 |
| Ironing | 27 |
| Sweeping or mopping floors | 35 |
| Handwash | 45 |
| Window cleaning | 30 |
Of course, women’s daily work is preparing dishes for their beloved family. In 1 hour of peeling vegetables, cutting food, beating, stirring, 150 to 200 calories are burned.
On a note!
To bring even more benefits to the body, it is recommended to create a sauna effect while cleaning. To do this, you must first take a hot shower, apply a thick layer of mask to your body and wrap yourself in cling film.
By the way
Pear or apple? In the world, only 38% of people have normal weight, the remaining 62%, alas, cannot boast of this. Women often gain weight in a pear-shaped manner, gaining excess fat in the hips, while men gain weight in an apple-shaped manner, growing a solid abdomen. If we talk about health, then it’s better to be a “pear”. Fat accumulated in the abdomen can disrupt the normal functioning of the thoracic and abdominal organs and, as a result, metabolic processes. Excess weight is often the cause of sexual dysfunction.
How to use the procedure for weight loss
Experts advise taking hot water baths in courses consisting of 10 procedures. Between them you need to make an interval equal to a week. At home, it is recommended to start with a temperature of 36 degrees; when the body gets used to it, you can gradually increase the temperature. In order to monitor the weight loss procedure, you will need to purchase a special thermometer. Stay time is from 15 to 30 minutes, depending on how you feel. Before diving, you should not eat heavily; after eating, at least an hour and a half should pass.
How many calories are burned when cleaning an apartment in 1 hour?
Calorie consumption when cleaning an apartment depends on many factors. These include the type of activity and intensity of action. An important factor is a person’s weight. The larger it is, the more energy the body spends on movements.
| Person's weight (kg) | Approximate calorie consumption for 1 hour of cleaning |
| 50-60 | 180-200 |
| 60-70 | 200-210 |
| 70-80 | 210-230 |
| 80-90 | 230-250 |
| 90-100 | 250-270 |
However, in order to achieve even greater efficiency, it is recommended to use several tricks when tidying up your apartment:
- When cleaning the floor, it is recommended to lunge forward deeply each time to move the mop or vacuum cleaner. It is recommended to tense your buttocks. If you need to rinse a rag in a bucket, you need to sit down. The back should always remain straight.
- If you need to wipe dust from shelves located above your head, it is recommended to periodically stand on tiptoes. This is a very good workout for the calf muscles. If possible, you can remain standing on one leg, while the other should be moved to the side and back.
- While mopping the floors, it is better not to sit on your feet, but to stand on all fours and perform the “cat” yoga movement, rounding and straightening your back. In this case, the muscles of the buttocks, as well as the back and abs, will be involved.
Experienced housewives also advise making as many movements as possible. For example, do not use a laundry basket, but take the laundry out of the washing machine one by one and hang it up.
Cleaning an apartment or private house is something that housewives do every day. A few simple rules will make this type of activity as effective as possible for your health and body.
