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What types and methods of cleaning will help you keep your figure in shape?
Regular cleaning of a house or apartment can replace an hour-long workout at the gym of moderate intensity. To do this, you should use special cleaning techniques that help burn calories and strengthen different muscle groups.
Exactly what types and methods of cleaning will help you keep your figure in shape, says RBC-Ukraine, citing the advice of Dr. Duston Morris for the Washington Post.
How to lose weight by cleaning
Duston Morris, a professor of health promotion and healthy behavior at the University of Maryland Integrative Health, says cleaning your home can burn calories and strengthen muscles throughout your body just as well as working out at the gym.
An hour of moderate-intensity exercise (such as brisk walking or strength training) can burn an average of 300-400 calories. But the same amount of energy can be burned during regular house cleaning.
There are two ways that will turn your usual home routine into workouts. The first is to add movements – such as lunges or squats. The second is to take a more conscious approach to doing household chores and put more physical effort into them.
“If you’re using house cleaning as a way to increase movement and physical activity, do it for 20-30 minutes every day. One day focus on laundry and dusting, the next day on cleaning the bathroom, other days on vacuuming and sweeping.” “, the specialist recommends.
What exercises should you do?
- We wipe off the dust. Experts recommend starting cleaning by wiping off dust. If you do this for half an hour, it burns an average of 80 calories. These exercises work the shoulders and arms, especially when cleaning in hard-to-reach areas or high places. If you want to make it more challenging, add lunges or squats while moving around the room. For every minute of squats, you burn about 8 calories, so in 10 minutes you can burn 80 calories. You can add lateral leg raises while wiping down high shelves.
- Cleaning the tiles in the bathroom. Within half an hour, this type of cleaning will burn as much as 100 calories and work the muscles in your hands, arms and shoulders. You can also add squats and standing calf raises, and squat holds will give you an extra challenge.
- Kitchen cleaning. Washing dishes can burn approximately 105-160 calories in half an hour. Moving heavy dishes, mopping floors – trains the upper body. You can add incline push-ups, leaning on a tabletop. By the way, leaning on an elevated surface and doing push-ups is much easier than traditionally doing push-ups from the floor.
- Wash. This is a great way to get your heart pumping. You can use push-ups when folding clothes – on a bed or sofa to get into an incline position. You can do 5 push-ups between every five folded items of clothing. Doing laundry can burn 50 calories in half an hour through activities such as squatting while loading and unloading the washer and dryer, transporting laundry around the house, and folding clothes.
- Washing floors. This is another additional mini-workout. Vacuuming works your core muscles and burns 80 calories in half an hour. The arms and shoulders will also be involved. Changing the position of your hands on a vacuum cleaner, mop or broom will mean that you are working different muscle groups.
- Cleaning the rooms. Moving larger items like sofas, beds, and coffee tables will not only work your biceps, triceps, chest, and back, but will help ensure you don’t miss a speck of dust.
