Beadmaking, the slimming workout for the naughties
Monday morning
A new day, a new week and I decided to have a little bit of a tidy up (don’t get too excited, I did say little). I’ve come across my old Filofax with a very interesting calorie counter insert that I used many moons ago and on the back pages are a list of all sorts of exercise and how many calories they burn a minute. Hmm, this could be worth a look, a quick scan down the page reveals…archery, 3 cals, hmm, not really very keen on that, what about athletics? During training count 7 cals, not bad, badminton, now here’s one I like, it says ‘with average effort you would run about a lot’, 5 cals. Basketball, did that once and ended up in casualty with 2 sprained fingers, don’t think I’ll be trying that again in a hurry, ‘Lots of very fast running, jumping and stretching….7 cals’. What’s this below? Beadmaking!????? no it can’t be! beadmaking, on a list from 1987, oh, oh, how exciting, what does it say? quick! Real bends and stretches ….huh? with sheets and blankets ….what? ooh look, it’s bedmaking. humph. Oh and it’s 3 cals by the way. I guess the nearest thing would be knitting, which uses 2 per minute, no matter how fast you ‘click’ those needles.
I don’t like housework, but I always thought its redeeming feature was that it used up calories, unfortunately the numbers used really don’t seem to corulate with the amount of energy and boredom expended alas. Try this, ‘cooking, does not involve much strenuous effort & consists mostly of arm movement…….2 cals’ well it does when you are not very able bodied and every step around the kitchen is a huge effort. Cleaning cupboards and drawers together with dusting, ironing, polishing small things, washing up, veg preparation, hoovering without moving furniture gets a low 2 cals, and you may just burn 3 per minute if you mop the floor, clean windows, decorate the house, polish furniture vigourously, scrub floors (with a will – does this mean I need to make one or find someone called Will?), hoovering when you move the furniture, washing clothes by hand (like that’s going to happen) and shopping with a light load (5kg or under). I think with this low level of housework calorie expenditure I may just make sure I sit around relaxing for twice as long as I do already as I can burn 1 cal per minute watching telly or surfing the net. I know what I’m doing today. Tee hee.
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