Bonus Burn For Cleaning The House

A while back I posted that you need to workout hard to make a change. Push yourself outside of your comfort zone. That was the “bad” news. Now for some good news. When you workout before doing other things, you can actually burn more calories than you would normally – for doing the same things.

Let me explain. I walk Thing Two every day and burn 140 calories each walk. We don’t exert ourselves but take a leisurely stroll and smell the breeze. He pees on every blade of grass for the walk, but I just enjoy the thinking time. I know the calorie count is pretty accurate because I throw on my heart rate monitor from time to time and it’s always about the same.

I’ve started doing 15 – 20 minutes of intervals before the walk. That 140 calorie dog walk quickly turned into a 200 calorie dog walk. I’m not walking faster or further. It’s the same dog walk but since I got my heart rate up, it stays up for a while and I burn more calories. That 60 extra calories adds up quickly.

In fact this past Saturday after my carb adventure, I decided to run sprints before the walk. It was freezing so I ran like the wind for those 20 minutes. I sprinted as if I was Jesse Owens running after an egg nog latte. OK, like Adrianne running after an egg nog latte. My heart rate was way up. Then I walked the dog and burned… 277 freaking calories! Bam! Same dog walk, same effort, 137 bonus calories.

How’s that for a benefit of working out? Imagine the possibilities. You could workout before cleaning the house, before walking your dog, or before grocery shopping. You’d be doing those things anyway but you’d get the bonus of extra calories burned off. Bonus calories for cleaning the house? Yep, not bad if you ask me.

I’ve changed to sprints for this week to keep myself entertained for my cardio workouts. When I run for time, I try to measure progress in distance. Did I go further in the same amount of time? Each time, I’ve managed to get further in distance. You can easily do these intervals on an exercise bike or elliptical too if you prefer an inside workout instead.

Sprints

I set my Rounds iPhone app for 20 rounds of 30 seconds of work/30 seconds of rest and include a 1 minute warm up. I slowly jog for the warm up. Once the rounds start, I run as fast as I can for 30 seconds then walk for 30 seconds. For efficiency, I do 10 rounds then turn around so I end up back at home. The time flies by and gets the workout done in 21 minutes flat.

I’m also glad that the egg nog lattes are leaving soon. I didn’t have a single one this winter. First time ever that’s happened. I didn’t even miss them for the most part. What’s your favorite latte flavor? Do you get a seasonal one, with a syrup, or just latte flavored?