Does anybody add house cleaning to exercise?

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SunLove8
SunLove8 Posts: 693 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I was just curious if anybody added house cleaning to exercise. I've been cleaning like a mad woman all day for 6 hours (I have a 6 bedroom + regular rooms like the kitchen, bathrooms ect., plus stairs) and I entered the mintues in and it gave me a riduculous amount of calories burned such as around 1500. Is this cheating? :)
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  • Panda86
    Panda86 Posts: 873
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    I only add anything that is above and beyond my usual daily cleaning, and then I only add it under the "light cleaning" category. I don't think that's cheating.
  • Tennessee2019
    Tennessee2019 Posts: 676 Member
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    Yes!!! Type in cleaning & decide from there.
  • possumracer
    possumracer Posts: 3
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    Not at all. Calories burned are calories burned. No matter how you do it. I don't know about 1500. That seems like a lot but I would give myself a hundred or two at least.
  • redefiningmyself
    redefiningmyself Posts: 476 Member
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    I have a desk job and don't hardly move out of my seat most days. So when I do big clean ups like you are describing, or something more unusual then I include it. I don't include daily regular stuff - like cooking or doing the dinner dishes.
    But that's my preference, everyone has a different idea of what's best.
  • MisdemeanorM
    MisdemeanorM Posts: 3,493 Member
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    Sometimes I do, but I've noticed that since I have my activity level set to somewhat active that it covers most household cleaning so unless I am breaking a sweat and getting my heart rate up I don't log it.

    Also, be sure on an activity like this, especially a long one, to subtract what you would have burned anyway if you just sat on the couch - somewhere between 60 and 100 calories usually or you will be double logging your calories.

    Lastly, if you counted it as 6 hours straight of vigorous cleaning that would mean non stop high heart rate cleaning - so stopping and folding some laundry or dusting or something lower vigor than say scrubbing the floor - you would be overestimating the burn for those times.

    I would log it, but I would log it in as about 500 or 600 and not 1500. (roughly 100 to 125 extra calories per hour)

    - Anything you do outside of your normal daily activity (as set in the MFP settings) SHOULD be logged since it is calories burned that are not yet accounted for - just make sure you take into account the above so you're not overeating or overestimating.
  • fuhrmeister
    fuhrmeister Posts: 1,796 Member
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    I totally did last weekend when I was cleaning like crazy. I put 2 hours..b/c I worked my butt off for that long but I cleanied most of teh day.
  • messyhare
    messyhare Posts: 366 Member
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    Sometimes I will clean as an exercise in itself - I will do everything while jogging, high stepping as I do the dishes and adding in squats etc and then I log what my hrm says minus some of the calories it says I burned. Other times, if I have spent hours like you are stating, I will log some as exercise but not nearly what my hrm states or what mfp states. I don't log my normal cleaning though unless I'm adding in the jogging etc...

    I don't think it's cheating when I do it because HELLO its hard work!!!
  • fdgrafius
    fdgrafius Posts: 21 Member
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    Don't know how many dudes will reply to this, but my wife and I sometimes do "Power Cleaning." I have a heart rate monitor and I will do my best to keep my heart rate up in the Fat Burning Zone for however long. Since this becomes a measurable activity, I count it. The problem with using the online "guesstimates" is that they are best guesses based on other users info., so it’s kind of difficult to get an accurate calorie read on something like cleaning. I'm not sure if that helps.
  • emmyvera
    emmyvera Posts: 599 Member
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    if it is the daily regular stuff then - no. if it is the weekend clean up and i'm spending a good amount of energy and building sweat, then yes. there are times when i just zoom from one thing to another and go for an hour. i'm sweating when i'm down - i love counting those! it is a real workout!

    i also sit at my job during the week most of the day. so a big clean up is being more active and should count for something.
  • CombatVet_Armywife
    CombatVet_Armywife Posts: 300 Member
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    I also only add anything beyond normal cleaning or anything that would qualify as 'rigorous' cleaning.
    Come to think of it, the only cleaning I add is when I scrub my bathrooms and that's only because it turns out to be a heck of a workout....I sweat more scrubbing my bathrooms than some of my other exercises.
  • neelia
    neelia Posts: 750 Member
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    I do not add calories for cleaning. I was fat when I cleaned before, which means I must not have been burning much. Now if I did a ridiculously hard clean, like scrubbing tubs or something...I would consider it...but only put in 1/2 the amount of time.
  • ropedancer
    ropedancer Posts: 115
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    I typically do. Not so much if I'm just making the bed and picking dirty laundry off the floor, but lately I've been doing more heavy duty cleaning to prepare for the holidays. I've scrubbed pots, dusted, swept floors, scrubbed the tub and sink, etc. I would consider this "moderate" effort as it never got to the point where I was out of breath, but I got warm (especially while scrubbing that tub!).
  • SunLove8
    SunLove8 Posts: 693 Member
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    All what you said makes sense. I did hard core cleaning and up and down the stairs I don't know how many times and even broke a good sweat. I think I'll add is add moderate and cut the time in half, but still get in another excise for today. Thanks!! :)
  • DawnOf1969
    DawnOf1969 Posts: 726 Member
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    No I never log anything besides good old-fashioned exercise. I figure what I burn while cleaning is just a bonus. But I never log anything that wasn't specifically intended as exercise.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    I was just curious if anybody added house cleaning to exercise. I've been cleaning like a mad woman all day for 6 hours (I have a 6 bedroom + regular rooms like the kitchen, bathrooms ect., plus stairs) and I entered the mintues in and it gave me a riduculous amount of calories burned such as around 1500. Is this cheating? :)

    You will have to back out the calories you would have burned at rest to get the extra calories burned from exercise. To do this take your Maintenance calories divide by 24 to get cals per hour then divide by 60 to get cals per minute then multiply by the number of minutes exercised. so if your maintenance calories are 1800 this would give you 1.25 cals/min (1800/24/60) so over 6 hours you would have burned 450 calories at rest (1.25*60*6) so you should enter 1050 in MFP not the full 1500. this 450 would already be accounted for in your daily caloric goal on MFP. If your maintenance calories are even higher than you would deduct even more from the total.
  • mamagooskie
    mamagooskie Posts: 2,964 Member
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    I only add it if it's out of the ordinary. Like I don't calculate sweeping or vacumning, laundry etc. But If I decide to rearange an entire room and basically make it spotless floor to ceiling and it takes like 5-6 hours then yes I'd count it.

    I have a HRM though so I could wear it and see how much I've burned compared to an average day and decide from there if it was worth calculating or not.

    I also base it on sweat factor. If I'm sitting and sorting through stuff (technically cleaning) I wouldnt' count it, but If I am moving, lifting, wiping, and actually getting my heart rate up then I'd consider it.
  • Cina04
    Cina04 Posts: 609
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    nope I don't add house cleaning - I'm a SAHM so it's what I'm suppose to do anyways whether I'm in shape or out of shape! lol

    I just keep in mind that I can consume a bit more cals for the day. =)

    I use to add cleaning and grocery shopping but than I thought about how food cals may not be 100% correct so I consider them my safety net cals. So if I happen to be over my cal count for the day, I know that I have some cals to fall back on. But if I were to input those cals it'll probably have me eat more than I should.
  • catcrazy
    catcrazy Posts: 1,740 Member
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    I might do if I was doing a whole house spring clean (some hope!) Exercise comes in many forms, if you have set your activity level as sedentary but then do 6 hours of moving furniture and carpet washing you would be burning more than the norm and If youre only on 1200 calories then that would probably leave you mighty tired and hungry. That IMO is worth logging, general day to day housework isnt as far as I'm concerned and i'm less than sedentary due to a lung condition and on 1200 cals
  • KittMahan
    KittMahan Posts: 106
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    I do.

    I've read research that showed that people who do strenuous housecleaning and believe that it is exercise actually increase the health benefits of doing it. The study was conducted on Latina housemaids who worked in hotels. There were two interesting findings from the research.

    First, the more you believe that the work is actually a workout the more health benefit you gain from the work.

    Second, you wont burn any extra calories by sitting around imagining that you're cleaning; you have to actually do the work.

    I count my cleaning if I do more than a half hour, if it's fairly strenuous, and if I think about it and decide that it's exercise while I'm doing it, per the research above.

    It was reported on NPR, last September I believe, though I don't have the link to the report.
  • fasttrack27
    fasttrack27 Posts: 324
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    If I cleaned the house I would, but......
    Actually, I was gonna go chainsaw and clean up the trails on our property soon and was wondering about adding that. It's hard work! I say yes if you worked that hard - plus it will help ease the pain a little!

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