Burning Calories with Everyday Activities

People who are too busy working and running a household to hit the health club or the treadmill can stop feeling guilty. A decade of cardiovascular studies by a creative research team offers a simple, natural alternative. Their findings make it easy for anyone to look at their daily tasks and build solid exercise into their normal routine.

Over the past decade, a Medical College of Wisconsin Cardiovascular Research Center team at the VA Medical Center-Milwaukee has proven that gardening, housework, mowing the lawn, washing the car and climbing stairs are all great ways to burn calories and reap the health benefits of physical activity.

The team began scientific studies of the energy demands and cardiac response for common household and leisure activities in the late 1980s. Their goal was to give doctors more precise guidelines by which to recommend safe activities for patients with various levels of heart disease who were returning home and going back to work. Lois Sheldahl, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine at MCW and Director of the Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Unit at the Milwaukee VA Medical Center, was principal investigator.

"If we know how much energy it takes to do a task, we can give better advice on whether it is appropriate for heart patients to do it," she says.

What her team found has great value not only for heart patients but also for everyone else. They have scientifically determined the energy expended, or number of calories burned, for many common household, leisure, and occupational activities.

Snow shoveling was the first task studied and similar research techniques have been applied to the other tasks studied since. Subjects included healthy men and women, as well as those with heart disease. They wore a special breathing device to measure energy expended/calories burned and their heart rate and blood pressure were monitored as they shoveled snow on the VA Medical Center grounds.

Since then, the researchers have extended their research to home, work and leisure tasks, measuring the energy expended by everything from mopping, shopping and painting to office, light manufacturing and construction work, tennis and golf.

"In 1996, when the US Surgeon General recommended that adults burn at least 150 calories per day in physical activity, over half of all Americans were not achieving that level," says Dr. Sheldahl. "This expenditure represents a total of only about 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity a day and could lower their risk for heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis."

"Once this level is achieved, health professionals encourage further participation in an aerobic exercise program to expand work capacity and endurance," she said. "In fact, there is probably an added benefit in disease prevention if some of these normal activities are done at a little higher intensity, giving them aerobic value. This could be a simple matter of taking a brisk walk on a level grade for 15 to 25 minutes, three or four times a week."

Other members of Dr. Sheldahl's team are Nancy Wilke, an Occupational Therapist at the VA Medical Center, and cardiologist Felix Tristani, MD, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at MCW. Their research has been supported by the Social Security Administration.

While making rehabilitation safer for heart disease patients, they have provided everyone else with an easy, accurate guide to burning their daily quota of calories while doing what comes naturally.

Posting this chart on the broom closet, garage or refrigerator door may not only bring new gusto to home and leisure tasks. It may also help reduce exercise anxiety.

How to Burn Approximately 100 Calories (Estimated for a 120 to 150-pound healthy person)
Activity	Time in Minutes
clean/vacuum/mop floor	25-35
wash dishes/iron clothes	45-50
mow lawn (self-propelled mower)	25-30
mow lawn (manual mower)	12-15
garden (spade/roto-till)	10-20
rake leaves	20-25
wash/wax car	20-25
wash windows	20-30
paint (brush)	35-40
shovel snow	10-15
blow snow	15-20
stack firewood	15-20
walk (brisk)	15-25
tennis	20-25
golf (walk course)	20-25
cycle (5.5 mph rate)	20-30
cycle (9.4 mph rate)	15-20
aerobics (medium)	20-30

Dr. Sheldahl cautions that these guidelines are for healthy individuals. Heart disease patients should confer with their physicians before starting any new exercise regimen.

Each year, Medical College of Wisconsin physicians care for more than 180,000 patients, representing nearly 500,000 patient visits. Medical College physicians practice at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital, the Milwaukee VA Medical Center, and many other hospitals and clinics in Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin.