exercise

tweeladee

why is there no listing for any housework? I work up way more of a sweat running the vacuum, sweeping, dusting, scrubbing the kitchen floor than I do at the gym where I am limited by dr's orders for what exercises I am allowed to do. I try to figure it out using a time frame for some of the other exercises. I bet I'm not the only person on here that feels this way.

AnnPT77

There are some entries for housework. Search "cleaning" for a couple of examples.

Mostly, I'd advise not logging housework as exercise. If you follow MFP's recommended approach, they intend that we include routine household chores in our activity level setting.

Sure, if I do some giant multi-hour once a year attic or garage cleaning, I might log something, but probably not a big amount. Otherwise - routine stuff - no.

Even vigorous exercise burns astonishingly few calories. Housework is for sure active, but likely to amount to sadly few calories, realistically. Plus logging it can double count some activity level calories - even "sedentary" assumes some activity calories. If double counting happens, weight loss may be slow to nil.

Wishing you success with your goals, sincerely!

tomcustombuilder

Consider the amount of house work you do within your activity level then add your actual exercising

springlering62

Choose an activity level that takes it into account, otherwise you’ll run yourself ragged trying to clock every little thing as exercise. My mom considered it “exercise” every time she went to the grocery store- before her health failed due to lack of same.

I’ve never logged it because my feeling is, if housework were exercise I’d have been stick thin, because I’ve always been an obsessive cleaner.

At best it provided me some NEAT points and kept me from being as big as I should have been. But as a weight loss aid? Nah.

I do have a friend who carefully records housework and has lost and maintained weight, but in reality, it’s due to diet.

ninerbuff

House work really isn't exercise per se. If it was, then anyone that does it shouldn't have to be worried about exercising. But that's not the case. Also most house work doesn't require a lot of strength.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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frhaberl

I agree with the posts above. Even on a heavy cleaning day I usually have to go for an intentional walk to hit my step goal, so I consider everything except those intentional walks to be part of my base calorie burn (which I did bump up to the level above sedentary since I was losing at a faster pace than predicted by MFP’s calculation at sedentary).
If you really want to try tracking the calories burned doing housework and have a fitness watch, you could probably get the calories burned from your fitness watch. I’ve found that my Apple Watch has a lot more exercise options than MFP and it uses heart rate to help provide more accurate estimates than a generic calorie burn calculator would. The only caution I would have (already stated by a poster above) is that you may see slower weight loss than expected if your base calories already account for the level of activity that includes housework.

zebasschick

i log cleaning and house work only if it's active and continuous and keeps my heart rate at the same level as using my bike. regular housework, as others have stated, is already included in the MFP calculations.

Theoldguy1

You realize working up a sweat doesn't correlate to burning calories. Heck most people know can sweat sitting on the deck drinking beer on a warm day.