Plastic surgery blog:Burn Calories While You do Your Housework

A new ABC news story seems to infer that housework is the new exercise. According to the news story fitness expert Christine Lusita of Zen Pen Fitness puts a new twist on something most of us abhor: cleaning the house. Its a great opportunity to do functional movements that we do in our everyday life, and we can apply it towards exercise as well, said Lusita. Strategically using your entire body to rub and scrub things to spic and span also increases your metabolism. We can burn tons of calories. For an hour of softball, I burned 96 calories, yet, I spent an hour of window cleaning, and I burned 144 calories. So its definitely not a waste to clean, said Lusita.  According to the news story, if you scrub, sweep and mop your own floor, you could burn up to 450 calories. Calories burned depends on how much you weigh and, of course, the amount of effort and energy used. These numbers are based on someone cleaning for 30 min., weighing in at 130 pounds. Mopping alone burns about 146 calories, and its an effective way to tone muscles also. Sweep away 167 calories or vacuum for about 140.  Any way that we can get exercise and burn calories is welcomed as most of us struggle to maintain a healthy weight. One important point patients who are considering cosmetic surgery procedures like breast augmentation and abdominoplastysometimes don’t know, is how vigorous housework can be. Dr. Kim explains to patients who schedule cosmetic surgery procedures that recovery can be delayed if patients exert too much energy exercising too soon, or engage in heavy duty housework before Dr. Kim has released them to do so.