Monday, April 18, 2016

Fitness Monday: Housework = Workout


It's been a while since I've posted a Fitness Monday post because honestly, I've fallen a bit behind in the health and fitness department. You know the tried and true excuse, "I'm too busy to workout". Well, there is some truth to that, I have been very busy but I'm going to make sure I have time to exercise.

However yesterday I did manage to squeeze in an unexpected workout. In what should have been a lazy Sunday catching up on my TV shows the day quickly turned into a Sunday Spring Cleaning Workout. From moving furniture around and lifting boxes coupled with vacuuming, dusting and general bouts of cleaning I got in a total body workout. I still have more cleaning and rearranging to do including finding space for several boxes of books I recently ordered. I now have a corner that could double as a small warehouse with all of those boxes.

I'm writing this post because something that I never really realized is that cleaning is a good work out. According to Shape magazine "doing chores burns calories, strengthen muscles and stretches the body and is just as beneficial as a regular workout". My muscles still ache a little bit from cleaning and yesterday evening I was so tired that I nearly fell asleep while watching TV.

Although I'm certainly not going to give up exercising in favor of just doing chores however, I'm not going to disregard my daily (and weekly) chores either. Because even if I'm short on time I can at least count them as a way of staying healthy.

Maybe I'll start looking at chores in different way. Perhaps I won't dread doing them as much if I can see the health benefits.

No comments: