Yard chores vary in vigor, ability to burn off calories

Gardening burns calories. How many? It depends on the gardener and the job at hand - or hand in muddy glove.

Garden work “is great for stretching,” says Beth Phelps, of the Pulaski County Master Gardeners. “It’s not going to be cardio, probably. But for stretching and bending, yes. Most of the time gardening, your head is below your rear end.”

Say the gardener weighs in at 170 pounds and does an hour’s worth of general lawn and garden work - raking, planting, pulling weeds. The effort takes about 320 calories, according to The Weather Channel’s calculator for outdoor activities.

An hour of shoving the lawn mower cuts down about 440 calories.

Big jobs consume more calories. Shovels, rocks and wheelbarrows go through calories twice as fast as weeds, seeds and puttering around. Puttering is a favorite garden activity - better as a way to lose stress, though, than to lose weight.

Vegetable gardening is give and take. Spade up a spud, for example. Digging expends hundreds of calories an hour, but they come back. A big tater packs on 200 calories and more, not counting butter, bacon bits and sour cream. But an hour spent peeling and boiling potatoes - cooking in general - peels away about 160 calories.

Better as a way to lose the eggplant-shape is an hour of hard pedaling on a mountain bike: 800 calories cast off, according to the calculator.

Better still - use the bike to pull a plow.

ActiveStyle, Pages 28 on 04/14/2014

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