Calories Burned During Exercise

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With the weather warming up to do more activities outside maybe its time to switch up some of your cardio and not just slave away on the treadmill or elliptical in the gym.  How about taking your exercise outside and just do some daily chores around the yard or other outdoor activities to help burn some calories.  While you burn calories in the gym for your workouts you can burn just as many and sometimes more calories while doing projects around the house or playing games outside.

For example, rather than hiring a mowing crew to mow your yard, get out your mower and get mowing.  For a 185lb individual mowing for 30 minutes they will burn roughly 200 calories; which is equivalent to doing moderately intense calisthenics for the same time period.  Raking leaves for 30 minutes will burn 178 calories, painting the house will burn 200 calories, and weeding the garden will burn 205 calories.

Harvard Health Publications has posted a list with these and many other activities with the amount of calories that would be burned in a 30 minute time period.  The following link is the compiled list:   http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Calories-burned-in-30-minutes-of-leisure-and-routine-activities.htm .

Keep in mind that these are all averages of individuals within the listed weight ranges.  If you are a calorie counter this chart will help you keep track of how many calories you have been able to burn throughout the day with your daily activities.  While household chores and playing games outside are great don't neglect hitting the weights in the gym to help with building lean muscle and gain all the benefits that weight training offers.  One of the only things that burns less calories than watching television is sleeping.  So put down the remote and get moving around with projects around the house or get outside to play volleyball or other games with friends.

To Drink, Or Not To Drink. That is the Question.

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A lot of people come across this dilemma when a social interaction comes across, and if you want to be physically active as well, it makes this decision even harder.  The negative effects of alcohol on the body are well documented, but it seems most people know about those, but what about the positive effects?  Even though there are not many of these, the biggest one deals with sleep.  Low-dose consumption (See website below) appear to increase total sleep time and reduce awakening during the night. The sleep-promoting benefits of alcohol dissipate at moderate and higher doses of alcohol.

Now I am not saying that I promote going out every night and having a few drinks with friends.  Continuing to do that, your body gets used to consuming alcohol on a regular basis, and it will want more, resulting in drinking problems/alcoholism.  I also have attached a website that explains that if you continue to drink moderately to heavily (two or more drinks in an hour) and the long term affects on different parts of your body.

No matter where you go, alcohol is always going to be socially acceptable.  You can go out and have a few drinks, and still live a healthy and physically active lifestyle.  As long as you keep the drinking in check, I say go out, have one or two drinks.  Be safe though, do not drive drunk, or let your friends do as well. At the end of the night, everyone deserves to get home safe.

How much is 1 drink?
http://www.healthcorps.org/sites/default/files/sacramento-charter-high-school/documents/whatisonedrink.pdf

Alcohol affects on the body:
http://www.bloodalcohol.info/how-alcohol-affects-your-body.php