Burn Calories the Old Fashioned Way

Hundreds of years ago before elliptical machines, The 30 Day Shred or personal trainers, Americans managed to stay fit by simply living life. They walked to the market, carried buckets of water from the community well, and tended the crops. Even the small children were involved. It was a thing of beauty.

On a good day, they burned a ridiculous amount of calories running home to stop the bleeding after the small child stabbed a sibling with the sharp, pointy farming tool.

All that has changed. We work while seated at a desk. We spend hours a day in the car. We get pizza delivered to our doorstep. Which also happens to be a thing of beauty, really.

I actually burned a ridiculous amount of calories this week at the ball fields. No, I don’t play ball. I run my 3-year-old all the way from the far, far, far end of the fields all the way to the OTHER end of fields to go to the restrooms (approximately a day’s journey, by horse). Not once, not twice, but thrice per game. Why, oh why can’t someone erect a small facility with a toilet and a sink somewhere in the same time zone as the field on which my daughter plays softball? Is that really too much to ask?

Anyhoo, in the spirit of my American forefathers and foremothers, I’m tending my crops today. As soon as I’m done here at the coffee shop on the internet posting on my blog while sipping my non-fat vanilla latte, I’m hopping into my GMC and going to Lowe’s where I will purchase pretty potted annuals. I will then drive my GMC to my two-story home in suburbia where I’ll hang my potted plants on hooks and transfer them into faux-ceramic urns. If I manage to break a sweat, I may shower before getting back into the GMC and retrieving my younglings from their private school, where they spent their day seated at desks in air-conditioning while eating pizza for lunch.

Total calorie burn for me: 12—only if I take the optional shower.
Total calorie burn for my younglings: negative 400. (Which is actually a calorie SURPLUS, because we all know that two negatives always make a positive…except, of course, in issues of morality.)

Yep. Exactly like the pioneers, we are.

But if I actually do some weeding, digging and planting, I could burn about 268 calories in an hour! That ain’t too shabby in exchange for some time in the sun and pretty landscaping. If I got out the heavy yard tools, I could burn 385!

How do I know? By using the handy-dandy Fit-O-Meter. Go there where you can type in over 600 activities and all levels of duration. It’s a great tool to have on hand to find how many calories you burn in everyday activities. And it only takes five minutes.

Total calorie burn for five minutes of typing: 8

Just one more way, Fitness Friday Girl is serving the blog community.

Thanks for never missing an adventure!