Does grocery shopping count as exercise?

Have you ever tried HIIGS (High Intensity Interval Grocery Shopping). I did once. Never again. The bill was like $500 and my cabinets are still full of weird foods I can't even pronounce.

Um...is there a website where I can check out how to do HIIGS exactly?

Depends - do you have kids? If so, I would bump that baby up to cardio!

Have you ever tried HIIGS (High Intensity Interval Grocery Shopping). I did once. Never again. The bill was like $500 and my cabinets are still full of weird foods I can't even pronounce.

Thanks.....I can't stop laughing!

Ok people, I'm sorry, but GROCERY SHOPPING IS NOT EXERCISE!!! Neither is folding laundry, watering the plants, putting milk in your cereal or pressing the gas pedal EVEN if you are pushing it really hard and speeding!! Basically, if you have to ask...guess what...IT'S PROBABLY NOT EXERCISE!!!

Wait, so are you telling me HIIGS would be a waste of my time???

Do what works for you and don't worry what others say. I log it, but I also recognize that off all the things I log, that particular exercise comes the closest to not being exercise. Plus my goal is set to 3 times a week, though I exercise on most days. The most important thing I have learned this time around is to do what works for me, not what others say I should be doing. I am losing much slower than others but I am losing...and I am prepared to do what I am doing forever without any problem.

I added 30 minutes of slow walking (2.0 mph) to my exercise today, but I was grocery shopping. I was pushing the cart and walking, do you think this is accurate?

Only if you're one of those extreme couponers that spends 7hrs grocery shopping and then gets $4000 worth of groceries for 15cents!

Ok people, I'm sorry, but GROCERY SHOPPING IS NOT EXERCISE!!! Neither is folding laundry, watering the plants, putting milk in your cereal or pressing the gas pedal EVEN if you are pushing it really hard and speeding!! Basically, if you have to ask...guess what...IT'S PROBABLY NOT EXERCISE!!!

Uh oh! Someone's been poking PatientBear w/ a stick!:noway:

I don't because I don't break a sweat and my heart rate doesn't increase a lot. It's not real exercise unless you are out of breath/sweating/higher heart rate.

I don't because I don't break a sweat and my heart rate doesn't increase a lot. It's not real exercise unless you are out of breath/sweating/higher heart rate.

You know, I just don't agree with this. It is dismissive and unfair to people who are just getting started and aren't as fit as you clearly are.
That might be your definition of exercise but it doesn't mean you don't burn calories doing things where you don't break a sweat.

If someone does something that burns calories (like walking or shopping) and that is extra activity over and above their regular daily activities then that has not been accounted for in their daily calorie allowance and it may well be appropriate to log that as exercise.

You don't know every single person's particular situations, so it isn't helpful to make dismissive, blanket statements.
What is helpful is that people understand how their calories are accounted for - so if they are already covered in their daily activity then they shouldn't add them as extra exercise.

Okay, I hafta throw my .02 in here. I'm going into a lot of detail with this, but hopefully it will clarify the issue a bit. Hopefully.

The way I see it, it should count only in *the* very narrowest of all possible contexts.

When I started MFP "for real" the first of June, I was just coming out of months of being pretty much disabled by knee pain. For about 6 months, I wasn't able to even do my own grocery shopping. I used Peapod & Shop-Rite's online ordering and delivery service. My husband was doing all of the housework except for dishwashing, cooking, and whatever else I could accomplish while seated in a rolling office chair.

I had been given some cursory treatments, but was told my only real hope was total knee replacements because of the athritic damage - "bone on bone" is how the ortho referred to it.

Fortunately, I discovered The Spine Center/Center for Pain Management. An anesthesiologist gave me a series of injections in my knees over a period of three weeks. They were a cocktail of cortisone and anesthetic and they were miraculous for me.

I was finally able to gradually begin doing my own shopping again, although at first it left me exhausted for the rest of the day.

So, when I started here in June, just about the same time I started back shopping, I counted it as exercise because I was going from vitally zero activity to being able to get around again. I also counted housework that I had not been able to do during those months of disability.

Notice the key here is that I'm using past tense. Even though it hasn't even been three months yet, I have been working hard to steadily increase my activity level. I started going back to the gym. The first time I got on the elliptical crosstrainer a few weeks ago, THREE MINUTES made me feel like I was gonna have a heart attack. Today I was able to do a full ten minutes on it, really "hoofing it" and then did 20 minutes of stationary bike sprinting, then half an hour of circuits on the nautilus equipment. Needless to say, I do not count grocery shopping or normal housework anymore.

And I'm not one of the thin folks who have reached their goal and are accustomed to workouts. I still weigh 303 pounds as of this morning, but by working hard these past couple of months, I have lost 31 pounds and started building my fitness level. I am on the verge of giving up my walking cane that I've been using for nearly a year.

So. My opinion -- take it or leave it -- is this. If you fall within the kind of narrow circumstances I was in, I would say you're justified in counting the grocery shopping as exercise. But only temporarily, until you can do better.

If you're counting it under less stringent conditions, the only person you're cheating is yourself.