Lose Weight Doing Housework
The Top 100 Weight Loss Tips marches determinedly onwards with another article, which is number 77 in this growing series.
In this post, I'm going to be very unpopular indeed. But its all for a good cause, which is to help you to lose weight, of course!
You may or may not like to hear this. But if you can learn to love doing the housework, or at least the parts of it that involve moving your body, you can easily make it a part of your own personal weight loss strategy!
How to Lose Weight Doing the Housework
By housework, I mean the general tidying and cleaning of the house that is done pretty much every day. You may or may not believe it, but that despised chore called housework can become your best friend in your battle with your waistline!
That's right, housework is like any other form of weight loss exercise in that it makes your body burn calories. The more you do and the more labor intensive the work is and the longer you do it for, the more calories you will burn!
So next time you're sweeping out the kitchen or laundry room put your full attention onto imagining it as a work out for your body. You can put on some motivational music to get you in the mood and then you can move your body to the dance rhythm of that music while you make a point of deliberately making each broom stroke into becoming another calorie consumed!
It doesn't stop there! Get out that vacuum cleaner and be purposeful about vacuuming up the pet hair and other debris from the carpets and rugs and imagine that you can watch your weight visibly reduce as you go. More calories disappear with every swish of the cleaner's head! If you're sweeping up, then go about it like you would use a home treadmill to burn calories and be purposeful with each step you take.
Got to mop? Then put some real effort into really wringing the life out of that mop head and imaging that you are watching those spare calories drain into the bucket!
Make it Fun!
You know I'm going to say this and you may not agree right now, but it can actually be fun! Or at least you can pretend to make it into a kind of an alternative workout. Use your imagination to visualize the calories being used up with each motion you make and make up some fun ways to do the visualizations.
As you run up and down the stairs, imagine you are doing an doing a exercise with a stepper machine and getting the benefits from that.
A cleaning cloth, some window cleaner and you swiping away at the grime can become an aerobic arm and torso exercise as you swing your hips in time with the music as your body arches and twists with each swirl of the cloth in your hand, like it's some kind of crazy turbulence training workout!
Ok, it might sound pretty stupid and for heaven's sake don't let your neighbors catch you doing it or they'll thing you've gone crazy! But being positive about losing weight is all about using whatever tricks and techniques you can pull out of the hat to make it work.
If housework is something you hate doing, turn it around and make it into something that is helping you to lose weight! You'll surprise yourself at how creative you can become in making a chore into a free workout that kills two birds with one stone!
100 Weight Loss Tips number 76 follows in the next post!
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Posted on Sun, 19 Jul 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 2 Comments
2 thoughts on "Lose Weight Doing Housework"
Lou says:
Oh yeah, just looove doing housework! I guess I never thought of it as being a good way to keep fit. All it does to me is wear me out, but I guess I could try pepping things up a little next time and play some cool music as I go. Can't do no harm!
sandra says:
sounds good, I think I pretty much do all that while I'm cleaning up....and truthfully it really did work out for me, I have toned my body up so well with cleaning just my household, also looking after my 1 year old baby... I pump up my music, dance around the house, I think I dance more then I clean, I'm into belly dancing so I go crazy... lolol... the reason I'm sharing this info is because I used to look up websites about losing weight and always looked for comments from people who have tried the workout, to give me a heads up...so I want to give the next women a heads up and say "IT WORKS!"
I hope this helps....I always tell myself you gotta put some ass into it...
FYI....I used to be a gym teacher... and I can admit this is the best workout for mums, or women always too busy for gym or other workouts...
try listening to EYE OF THE TIGER... always hypes me up...