Skip the Gym and Move by Making Yourself Move at Home

This week’s Minneapolis StarTribune article “Front & Center” by Courtney Rubin details how competitive fitness classes have become. Type A exercisers race to establish front row positioning, either reserving their spots online or arriving 20 minutes early.

Blue Zones recommends avoiding the gym altogether and moving naturally as one of its Power 9® principals for living longer, better.

You can burn considerable calories just tinkering around your house. In his book Blue Zones, Dan Buettner recommends inconveniencing yourself. By making life a little tougher, you can easily add more activity to your days. Get rid of the remote control, the garage door opener, the snow blower, and power lawn mower. Be ready to use as many of these as possible: bicycle, comfortable walking shoes, rake, broom, snow shovel. Check out the graphic below which shows just how many calories you burn in 60 minutes of household activities (Illustrated by GreenPal).

It looks like those in the Northeast will be in fine shape with all their snow shoveling.

Wiring & Plumbing: 136 calories
Push mowing the lawn: 400 calories
Painting the fence: 238 calories
Repairing appliances: 238 calories
Carpet installation: 238 calories
Laying tile flooring: 238 calories
Cleaning gutters: 272 calories
Building a fence: 340 calories
Roofing: 340 calories
Raking leaves: 384 calories
Refinishing wood floors: 238 calories
Shoveling snow: 546 calories

Illustrated by GreenPal