Cleaning as Exercise?

For me, it is not logged very often.If I am rearranging furniture, cleaning the bottom of the pool, scrubbing walls, etc. If it make me break a sweat for a significant amount of time, I will log it. However, I only log for HALF of the time...I don't want to cheat myself in the end. I could log it every day if I wanted to, I run a daycare...and if you have ever had to follow 5 kids and clean up after them all day long, you would understand the sweat in that. But, I just set my activity level to active.

I guess in the end of it all, I don't particularly care what people are logging...if they are losing and staying healthy then they are doing something right. Not my business.

If I don't feel like exercising, then I don't exercise, and I don't use something else in its place.

As a general rule I don't log routine cleaning as exercise. But if I know I'm going to do something above and beyond the norm (like vacuuming every square inch of carpeting in my 2000+sq ft 4-bedroom 2-story house, including the stairs and moving furniture AND vacuuming the furniture), then yeah, I will wear my HRM and log it.

What does it matter to anyone else what I log anyway? It's my fitness quest, not anyone else's. If I want to log brushing my teeth, I will.

Normal household duties? I don't log them.

The massive cleaning I do before the inlaws visit (we have seven cats and they're allergic, so I have to clean EVERYWHERE)... I log that. If I'm moving the couch and dining room table, taking down the curtains, climbing a ladder to get the ceiling fan blades, etc... that's work.

But when I first started, I logged everything. I was coming out of a major depression where I was very sedentary. I logged the walking I did while shopping. It motivated me to do more. "If I can burn XXX calories strolling the mall for an hour, what if I went for a long power walk for an hour?!" That motivated me to be a more active person, and switch my settings from sedentary to lightly active, so I no longer logged everything.

In short... if what someone is doing is working for them, don't knock it. If they're on here complaining they're not losing weight and they're logging 300 calories burned in 20 minutes of dusting the china cabinet... then you can say something.

I count cleaning as an exercise, but I don't record the full time. Eg - if I am having my weekly big top to bottom clean of the house I would log 2 maybe 3 hours, I have actually cleaned for 5+ hours. I still go to the gym when the kids are at school ( can't go when they have holidays as I have no-one to care for them during the day).
I have reached my target weight and lost 3 dress sizes and I am now successfully maintaining so I am guessing that logging cleaning and eating back calories did not do me any harm!

I definitely don't do it for normal household chores (vacuuming, dishes, etc), but lately I've been counting it because I'm packing to move, so I'm hauling boxes around, tromping up and down stairs, up and down a step ladder... Those are the type of things I count under "cleaning".

It depends how hard you are cleaning.

I count cleaning not the full amount of time and I always put it as light cleaning even when i'm moving furniture to clean behind it. I'm burning calories so why not? I also do walking, tae bo, elliptical and have started doing C25K.

I don't think it matters how people burn calories as long as they are. Some people live in the middle of nowhere and going to a gym isn't an option.

At least people are doing something that's physical and that's better than nothing.

I logged it a couple of weeks ago because I cleaned out the sheds in my backyard. Moving heavy stuff, rearranging, scrubbing, that kind of stuff I think is a benefit to my day as far as being active. Doing dishes and vacuuming and such that I do every day? No at all. Basically if its burning under 100 calories I don't bother to log it. I think it depends on what kind of shape you are in though. Like if somebody is normally pretty sedentary it's not going to take as much for them to burn off a few calories than others who are more active.

And I diffidently agree with what all you are saying. But I am saying as the aspect of using as an excuse though. Because I know people personally who do it, why I brought it up in the first place. I know when you sleep your burning calories, your burn calories no matter what you do.

I also believe in pushing people to their hardest. It has helped my friends out tons of time. And if SOME people have the mind set that all they have to do is clean everyday to get that 200 to 600 calories then they will be just fine I disagree.

IMO, people log the calories burned during housework, child care, and yard work because they are, in fact, burning calories. I would not dream of passing judgement on someone--implying that they are using their cleaning activities as an excuse for not formally exercising. Yes, one can get in shape with eating a healthy diet, walking, cleaning, gardening, playing with kids, etc., without ever stepping into a gym or using an exercise video. In fact, when you think about it--exercising in a gym appears to be a fairly recent phenomenon. Our ancestors who most likely made their living doing manual labor had no need for "exercise".