How your seasonal chores count toward your fitness goals

Seasonal chores are functional exercises that can burn more calories than some traditional fitness activities. In fact, raking leaves can burn more calories in an hour than a brisk walk or weight training session.

As the seasons change so do some of your inside and outside chores, especially if you live in a four-season climate. For those in the northern United States, heading into autumn usually means raking leaves, packing up summer clothes, and pulling coats and other warmer clothes out of storage.

Regardless of climate, many people decorate their homes and landscapes for fall and the upcoming holidays, so lugging boxed decorations out of storage and spending time decorating are on many folks’ seasonal agendas.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that those seasonal chores are functional exercises that can burn more calories than some traditional fitness activities. In fact, raking leaves can burn more calories in an hour than a brisk walk or weight training session.

What’s more, because seasonal chores, like raking, are considered moderate-intensity cardiovascular exercise, time spent preparing for the fall season counts toward the recommended 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week.

According to the physical activity calorie calculator on the American Council on Exercise’s website, a person with a body weight of 170 pounds (77 kilograms) would burn 308 calories doing an hour of yard work, such as raking. Comparatively, walking briskly at a pace of 3.5 miles per hour burns only 293 calories for that same 170-pound person. For those focused on indoor seasonal chores, using the same body-weight metric, an hour of housework at 231 calories is the equivalent of an hour of basic weight training.

The calculator gives you an idea of potential caloric burn, but keep in mind that these numbers are only estimations since your individual metabolism in any exercise session is influenced by many factors, including age, biological sex, body composition, fitness level and intensity of effort. Using a wearable fitness tracker that includes this personal information in its calculation will give a more accurate, individualized number.

When you go to the gym to work out, you carefully consider the weights you use and the time you spend exercising. You also gauge the overall demands on your body versus your fitness level and what you believe you are actually capable of doing. For instance, if you have only ever used 10-pound dumbbells for overhead pressing, you would know better than to switch suddenly to 50 pounds because you would likely hurt yourself.