Would you log gardening as exersize?

jessleon1984
jessleon1984 Posts: 50 Member
edited November 13 in Health and Weight Loss
Also if your cleaning houses for work?

Replies

  • jenglish712
    jenglish712 Posts: 497 Member
    Nope.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    Nah me either
  • prattiger65
    prattiger65 Posts: 1,657 Member
    It depends. How vigorous is the work as compared to your normal day? How do you currently have your activity level set?
  • jessleon1984
    jessleon1984 Posts: 50 Member
    Really? I'm sure it must burn allot of calories?
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
    Only weed whacking
  • elphie754
    elphie754 Posts: 7,574 Member
    Depends on the type of gardening. Watering your potted plant on the deck? No I wouldn't count that. The type of gardening found in the Gone series where you have to out run worms? Yeah, I'd count that. Anything in between it really depends. I would count cleaning but maybe not eat all the exercise cals back.
  • jessleon1984
    jessleon1984 Posts: 50 Member
    I have it set as lightly active but everyday I clean and garden for hours and feel like I'm burning allot of calories
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    edited February 2015
    I've seen people log 500 calories for housework. All I can say is that they must pump it out at Olympic speed lol
    I don't log housework or gardening, whatever I do burn is just a little added bonus
  • jessleon1984
    jessleon1984 Posts: 50 Member
    I have it set as lightly active but everyday I clean and garden for hours and feel like I'm burning allot of calories
  • obscuremusicreference
    obscuremusicreference Posts: 1,320 Member
    edited February 2015
    If you clean houses for work, you have probably already set your activity level to reflect that, so no.

    We're doing a pretty big project on the yard, lots of digging and planting and moving paving stones, so I count a portion of that time. If I stick to raking leaves, it doesn't get counted.

    Remember that MFP tends to overestimate exercise calories.
  • jessleon1984
    jessleon1984 Posts: 50 Member
    Ok thanks :) I think il log half of what I burn
  • SexyKatherine73
    SexyKatherine73 Posts: 221 Member
    I log mowing as it take 5 hours and when I do MAJOR spring cleaning.
  • RebelDiamond
    RebelDiamond Posts: 188 Member
    Nope, I don't count it. I just leave it as a bonus. Almost like calorie insurance haha (just in case I forgot something along the way)
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
    What's your rate of loss over the last 6-8 weeks?
  • elphie754
    elphie754 Posts: 7,574 Member
    SexyKatherine73 wrote: »
    I log mowing as it take 5 hours and when I do MAJOR spring cleaning.

    How big is your yard?!?
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    edited February 2015
    elphie754 wrote: »
    SexyKatherine73 wrote: »
    I log mowing as it take 5 hours and when I do MAJOR spring cleaning.

    How big is your yard?!?

    Lol that was my first thought.
    It takes me less than 10 minutes to mow my lawn. The lawn in the garden.... I mean :wink:

  • SexyKatherine73
    SexyKatherine73 Posts: 221 Member
    I live on a farm, and yes its a huge area
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    I don't count them but I wear a Fitbit and get step credit while doing those activities. That is enough for me.
  • bwogilvie
    bwogilvie Posts: 2,130 Member
    rabbitjb wrote: »
    What's your rate of loss over the last 6-8 weeks?

    This is the key question. When you log food and exercise, you're estimating. Only your real weight loss (or gain, or maintenance) reveals how those estimates match up with reality. If you're not losing weight as fast as you want, you're either overestimating exercise, underestimating calories eaten, or overestimating daily activity. (There will also be a little individual variation, but less than many people assume.)

    If you do log gardening, and you're not losing as quickly as you want, stop logging and see what happens. If you log and you're losing at your desired rate, then you're OK.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    I'm always cleaning stuff...fixing stuff...doing yard work...taking care of the kids, etc. this isn't "exercise"...I include it in my activity level as part of my daily. If I happen to have a big day in the yard I chalk it up to owing myself a couple beers.
  • Merkavar
    Merkavar Posts: 3,082 Member
    Depends.

    Mowing the lawn, walking around in a decreasing square for 20mins. Not really getting the heart poundig so no.

    Digging a giant garden where your sweating an diggin for 2 hours then yeah probably record it.
  • Amanda4change
    Amanda4change Posts: 620 Member
    Anything I did (like housework, yard work) on a regular basis while getting fat I don't log. When I went up to my moms at Thanksgiving and hauled brush and downed trees on her front acreage for 8-10 hours on two days I counted it (though I cut the calories burned given by MFP in 1/3).
  • Linnaea27
    Linnaea27 Posts: 639 Member
    It depends. Put your activity level in as lightly or moderately active to account for your cleaning work. Gardening can be logged as exercise, but only if you are digging, doing heavy lifting, pitch forking stuff rather than just being on hands and knees weeding or standing around watering things. If your gardening is very strenuous, sweat- and sore muscle-inducing work, then log more than half of that time-- last spring when I was putting in my garden and working hard for hours at a time, I only logged some of it and ended up losing a bunch more weight than I meant to. Of course, if you're not at your goal, losing a little faster than planned for a short time is no big deal!
  • ChickenLittle1121
    ChickenLittle1121 Posts: 32 Member
    I think it really depends on how vigorous the gardening was, and how out of routine it is for you. If, say, you were planting a new garden, and digging for hours and whatnot, and it's something you don't usually do, then I'd log it (but likely only half of what MFP says). If you did all that, but it's an everyday thing for you, then you should probably include that activity in your "activity level" thing under your profile settings, and not log it separately.

    As an example, I spent 45 minutes today digging my car out of 16 inches of snow. That, thankfully, is not an everyday thing for me, so I logged it as half that amount of time, just to give me a little confidence boost! :)
  • pjcfrancis
    pjcfrancis Posts: 121 Member
    Gardening can be really good exercise, if you are doing something vigorous like digging a garden, but if you're kneeling and weeding, probably not so. My yard is very steep so hauling the weeds and debris to the compost area at the end of the yard is like climbing two flights of stairs.
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