Many daily household activities could actually be as good for helping you lose weight as a regular fitness routine, according to a recent study. This looked into the effects of normal household chores such as gardening and home repairs on people’s wellness and wellbeing, and showed that being active with various daily chores may dramatically reduce your chances of having a heart attack or suffering from a stroke.
Not only that, sex may also be considered a type of exercise, according to the study. The researchers found that men can burn around 4.2 calories for every minute of a sexual workout, and women can burn 3.1 calories a minute.
This all goes to prove that getting into a good fitness routine, and sticking to it, is just a case of finding something that you enjoy and that works as part of your daily life.
Don’t cancel that gym membership just yet, though, as a bit of light cleaning is not going to fulfil your entire calorie burn requirement for the week. This is one of the dangers of calling daily activities ‘exercise’, as it may lead people into a false sense of security, where they go about their lives convincing themselves that they are actually doing exercise, when in fact they are not active enough to keep themselves healthy and to burn enough calories.
In other words, whilst the chores and the sex do count as exercise, they are probably not going to be all the exercise you need. You should schedule in some traditional workouts too, and make sure that you think carefully about how you are going to maintain this schedule long term.
Getting hold of an exercise buddy is an excellent way to make sure that you stick to a fitness routine, as you feel indebted to them to go to the gym, even when you don’t particularly feel like it, and the company can also make it seem more fun and less like a chore.