Scrub those extra pounds off! Cleaning the kitchen takes more calories than dancing, study programs
- Ten professional cleaners were given Fitbits and assigned five houses each
- Cleaning the kitchen burns more calories than cleaning any other room
Scrubbing the kitchen can be one of those chores that you might be tempted to put off.
But it’s not just the dirty oven that benefits from being made spotless.
Rushing through the kitchen for 50 minutes burns more calories than ballroom dancing or a bike ride of the same duration. And it burns more than cleaning another room, a study found. Cleaning a kitchen burns an average of 276 calories, a bathroom only 173 and a bedroom only 154. Ten professional cleaners were given Fitbits and assigned five houses each. The data collected suggests that cleaning the kitchen for an average of 50 minutes burns more calories than an hour of ballroom dancing (219) or an hour-long bike ride (292).
Professor Amanda Daley, a professor of behavioral medicine at Loughborough University, commented on the findings of the American cleaning service Homeaglow, saying that housework “makes your heart beat faster”. But it doesn’t really help you lose weight because it often only uses a relatively small number of muscles.
So Joe Mitton, a personal trainer from Cambridgeshire, suggested, “Instead of bending over to clean something, squat down and hold the squat.”
Blasting through the kitchen for 50 minutes burns more calories than ballroom dancing or a bike ride of the same duration (file image)
