Get in shape with chores at the house

For weeks now I’ve been reminding myself that I must get back into the gym, yet even the slight pressure building up around my belt line has so far not been enough to make me actually do it.

There are many reasons I haven’t, of course, and I can easily convince myself, especially while lying on the couch in the evenings, that each one of them is valid.

After all, who wants to spend time inside a sweaty gym during the glorious summer and picturesque autumn, a period so brief here in Maine that we’ve come to regard it as the winter thaw?

And with November just begun and the precious daylight fading fast, there are just too many chores that must be completed before the snow flies.

According to a recent health story in The New York Times, however, my single-minded focus on the neighborhood gym as the only proper venue in which to wage my battle of the bulge may be a bit shortsighted.

Instead of thinking that I really should get down to the gym after I’m done raking the leaves from the lawn, for instance, I should take some satisfaction in knowing that even routine household chores like raking leaves can do a body good, and without all the red-faced huffing and puffing.

Fitness experts have been trying for years to convince people of the calorie-burning potential in mundane activities, if only because they offer the easiest ways for the chronically indolent among us to introduce some form of steady exercise into their days.

“For too long we’ve thought that being active means going to the gym, no pain no gain,” a kinesiology professor at Boise State University told the Times, adding that a redefinition of what it means to be active is an important step in helping Americans to change their sedentary habits.

One Netherlands researcher, the Times reported, has found that healthy adults who spent more time doing moderate exercise throughout the day actually burned more calories than those who only worked out in short, intense bursts at the gym.

The reason, according to his studies, is that people tend to significantly limit their physical activity once they’ve left the gym after a tough workout.

While not diminishing the obvious benefits of the treadmill or cross-training machine, more and more physiologists are encouraging people to think about “integrative exercise,” which is a fancy term for simply incorporating into our days as much bodily movement as possible through activities that don’t even require a pair of gym shoes or a membership to the local fitness club.

A college professor cited in the Times story attempts to stay fit when he goes to work each day by jogging back and forth from the parking lot to his office, and another person said she does yoga in the shower. Other fitness-minded people eschew elevators and escalators in favor of the stairs, bench-press their children at home instead of dumbbells at the gym, or weave healthful exercise into their routines by carrying their toddlers on their backs instead of in strollers.

One woman has even taken the act of tidying up the house – a true calorie-burning task in its own right, like gardening and pushing a lawn mower – one step further by speed-cleaning with two hands and lunging like a fencer when she vacuums the rug.

On the Web site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which lists about 200 common physical activities by intensity level – light, moderate and vigorous – even the most sedentary folks can find something to get them moving without so much as breaking a sweat.

They can throw darts or shoot a pistol, for example. They can play table tennis or miniature golf if they like. Strumming a guitar is in the light category, while playing an instrument in a marching band reaches the moderate level.

I was delighted to see that standing in rivers while waving a fly rod was on the list, an activity of moderate intensity that has done more than anything else to keep me from those sweaty workouts at the gym once springtime rolls around.

Not that I needed another excuse, mind you.