What constitutes exercise to you?

lacroyx

to me excercise is moving about, whether walking, dancing, lifting, jogging and breaking a good sweat for at least 30 mins.

sonjavon

I really think it depends on where you're "starting" from. There are those who, as a rule...didn't really clean their house very often or not all at one shot... cleaning could very well be exercise to them. There are times when I consider cleaning to be exercise... for instance, when I'm preparing for a party and spend 4 hours moving furniture and cleaning under it, scrubbing, sweeping, mopping, etc... yeah, it's exercise... and I have the HRM to prove it! LOL. But for general cleaning - I don't count it.

I think it's important though, to respect where people are starting. We each have our own journey and because we're an online community... we will never know someone's whole story. People may not be comfortable sharing just HOW sedentary they have been.

gemco

i see where the OP is coming from. i've read threads before where people have said they log things like normal housework or walking to the shop - ie stuff they've always done and wasnt helping them lose weight before. the danger is MFP way over estimates the calories for these things. i can see how it could be tempting to log 20mins of housework to balance the books, but it's ultimately cheating yourself and giving a false sense of achieving something. thinking 'i should be losing weight here, i'm following the whatsit'.

for the most part though i think people just log things out of the ordinary for them and only half or less of the actual time. not everyone is thinking about how their diary looks to other people when they log so wont clarify it. if someone's regularly logging washing up and wondering why those 700 calories arent melting away the fat then yes i'd shake my head. otherwise i assume they've had a busy day with something.

fteale

Um, I said originally they weren't losing. I'm also not criticizing. Just stating my own personal opinion.

I'm glad that whatever it is you are doing works for you. I only wish that my normal routine had worked for me. I could have saved thousands of bucks on a gym membership as well as laid in bed on cold mornings rather than get up for my run.

It's not about normal routine, I have made that point 3 times now. I only log cleaning if I am doing something like bailing several cubic meters of water out of my kitchen, and who is to say when other people log housework it isn't because they are doing something exceptional? That is the only point I am making here.

ajbeans

I count reading this same thread over and over as exercise. Because every time it gets brought up, which is at least twice a week, my heart rate gets up. :laugh:

Why do you care what other people log? How does it affect you? If you can't support them, get off their friend list. I do log everyday cleaning like vacuuming, mopping, straightening up, whatever. I eat back whatever calories MFP gives me for that. And I had lost nearly 30 lbs doing so (I gained some back recently due to illness).

If it's working for them, why do you care? If it's not working for them... then again, why do you care? How does it affect you in any way? Some people are extremely overweight and cleaning is a major calorie burn. It counts. Some people are extremely sedentary, so walking through the grocery store is a big deal for them. It counts. And some people, like me, just need the extra incentive to clean up the kids' messes for the 8th time today, so we log the calories and enjoy an extra healthy snack. That counts too. It's nobody else's business.

JRhinoC

Cleaning, shopping, doing chores, these things would not be elevating your heart rate if you were healthy and in shape. These things are part of an active lifestyle, not exercise. By becoming active, the only thing you're doing is putting your body into a position it should have been in from the start.

People can claim these things are exercise all they want, that's up to them. But when their body realizes that it was meant to be able to move this way to begin with, the calories burned from these activities is going to come to a crashing halt.

So, if people want to lie to themselves, fine, let them. But when they wonder why it isn't working anymore...