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Healthy Living

Clean house = lean body

───   12:30 Thu, 11 Feb 2016

Clean house = lean body | News Article

Doing your everyday housework can burn the equivalent of a lengthy gym session. We reveal the top calorie burning chores.

Doing an hour of vigorous housework gets our blood pumping and bodies sweating as much as a gym workout, but what chores burn the most calories? MuscleFood.com decided to find out, and the results will make you view cleaning in a whole new light.

"We were really surprised by what we found, who would have thought that something as effortless as making the beds gives you the same workout as walking for a mile," Darren Beale from MuscleFood explained.

"For many of us, fitting exercise into a busy schedule is tough, especially when you have these chores to fit in every week. Now you don't need to feel as guilty knowing that whilst you're cleaning the windows you've worked off that muffin you ate earlier."

Coming in top with a whopping 560 calories burned is daily washing up for 15 minutes. This burns the same amount as a 2,500 metre swim. Who needs to get their hair wet when you can just get your hands a little soapy?

Next is three hours of ironing, which may sound like a lot, but doing a big pile of clothes in one go can work off 420 calories - the same as a Zumba class.

An hour of cleaning windows or mowing the lawn produces similar results of around 330 calories, meaning you could happily skip 20 minutes of HIIT training or 40 push-ups.

If you haven't got time for a long slog when it comes to cleaning, 15 minutes of bed making could be your answer. Burning 65 calories, it's the same as a one-mile power walk. Or try dusting, which will get rid of 25 calories – the same as two minutes of planking.

So instead of costly gym memberships and dreaded spin classes, get your feather duster, vacuum cleaner and mop out, ladies and gents. A clean house and a lean body, what's not to love!

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