What constitutes exercise to you?

Exercise is anything that gets your heart rate up. I am annoyed when people claim to exercise and work so hard at the gym or taking a walk or whatever but they don't get exerted enough to sweat. They don't like it. lol... and this is why I have lost 47 lbs and they have lost 5 MAYBE.

I totally agree with you. If it does not get the heart rate into the aerobic zone, then it really isn't exercise. Even weight lifting gets the heart going.
All that regular cleaning stuff( not to include the really heavy work like scrubbing floors) is normal everyday activity and in my opinion is included in your BMR.

Hi
In don't log anything that is something I would have done in my daily routine as exercise. For instance I walk to work and back every day and I don't count this. But if of an evening I get off my butt and go my treadmill or exercise bike I do count this. Like you say it doesn't feel like exercise unless you get your heart rate going!

Everyday chores are NOT exercise~ at least, to me, they're not.

HOWEVER~

I have counted things like a BIG day of gardening where I sweat profusely for calories burned~ but NOT the entire time~maybe HALF the time.

Yes, anything that gets your heart rate going... moving in ways that you are normally not accoustomed counts, such as housecleaning and gardening count for that same reasoning.

Personally, I rarely count house cleaning as exercise, but sometimes (especially when doing heavy duty yard work), I'll put my heart rate monitor on and see how many calories I expend. Usually I expend quite a bit if I'm mowing the lawn, raking leaves, gardening, or on my hands and knees scrubbing my kitchen or bathroom, lol. I do A LOT of cleaning and household chores on a daily basis and since I do them every day, I just include that in my BRM. I don't think those are good substitutes for high intensity workouts such as an aerobics class, running, weight lifting, etc. But it's good to add those non-exercise activities that you complete, especially if you completed them on a day when you normally rest.

I think one of the biggest problems is that folks tend to overestimate calories burned doing household chores. I've used my HRM and then compared my calories burned with what the site's pre-programmed activities tell me IT thinks I burned... There's usually a huge disparity between what my HRM tells me and what the website tells me, my HRM being much more on the conservative side. Hence, if I'm planning on adding my time/calories spent performing household chores of any kind, I plan to use my HRM to accurately record what calories I burn. There's nothing worse, in my opinion, than logging an overestimated calorie expenditure in your diary and then eating those allegedly burned calories back...

Anyways, for some folks that might be what they're comfortable with for now, but I agree that real weight loss and fitness is not going to come from walking your dog every day or doing dishes. I do believe, however, that for those who are trying to stay active and are not quite at the gym bunny (pardon the expression!) level of enthusiasm for fitness, doing SOMETHING is way better than doing nothing at all.

exercise is any physical activity that is outside the realm of normal daily activity. That doesn't mean it has to be part of your routine per say, but it has to be something that you don't normally do physically. Of course actual "exercise" counts as exercise, but so would something like mowing the lawn (unless you're a landscaper), stacking logs, even walking the mall (if you don't do that 2 or 3 times a week).

This doesn't mean that all exercise is the same, it just means that you're doing something to increase your body's mechanical output and energy needs. If the body doesn't expect it, it won't account for it ahead of time, and THAT is exercise. There is (of course) a threshold for which your body won't really account for things, I.E. even if you exercise hard every day, that's still exercise, as while the body will increase it's performance levels to account for that exercise, it won't expect you to work at 85% HRMax every day, even if that's what you do. It will however, become more efficient at getting there and working in that range.

SIDE note: this is why I don't really like walking as a long term form of exercise. It's ok as a stepping stone for most people (certain segments of the population are exempt from this), but as a method of exercise, walking is high stress on the joints for a very high diminishment of return of energy expended. I.E. after a few weeks of walking, even fast walking, your body becomes accustomed to it and efficient at it, expending less energy for the time invested, better to "graduate" to higher exercise and cardio levels to keep your increases moving upward.

All those activities count as some form of exercise, the problem is how much you eat! Also it's not like that is super great exercise. For example, before starting my diet I actually tried to walk more places, instead of driving there. Of course that wasn't really "working" for me. Now that I'm actually watching what I eat, burning 200 cal just by walking somewhere is a good help and I'll take all the help I can get! Nevertheless, I do understand your point. You burn around 1200 cal everyday just by being alive. When you get into a diet, most diets estimate that you move as a normal person! You can't just start counting every calorie you burn just by getting up and walking to the bathroom because them you would have to assume that, by the end of the day, you have to eat less than what you consumed by exercising.

To me, exercise is when you take an activity up with the intention of getting some physical benefit from it, calorie burn, training aims, muscle toning etc. So when I'm doing the cleaning and giving it some welly, like washing my car over electing to take it through a drive through wash. I'd count that as some exercise... but it wouldn't be part of my workout. If that makes sense. Just bonus! As I set my levels to sedentary on here, I count it in when I feel like "Hmmm, that got me a bit warmer and was a bit of work!" Even if it may seem like an ordinary day to day task. However, I work out hard too at the gym and out running so yeah, I do proper "Phys" too!

Exercise is anything that gets my heart rate up or works to tone my muscles. Just because my heartrate isn't in the "cardio" zone that running at the gym gets me to (like over 160 - profusely dripping sweat) doesn't mean it isn't exercise. When I take the 8 flights up to my office - I say it's exercise even though I'm not soaked in sweat at the top. Raking and shoveling to me is exercise. Lifting my little dumb bells at home is exercise even though some people lift their children that weigh more about 100 times more than I lift dumb bells in a day.

Not everybody's routine is the same and not everybody's idea of "excercise" will match yours. I say whatever works for you.