The housewives need to be careful now! Their voluble claims that housework is an exercise will now fall on deaf ears as research says that calling housework an exercise maybe categorized as a mistake. This was exposed through the research mentioned in the BMC Public Health, Biomed Central’s open access journal. Well, weight loss is the criteria that is held under the scanner here.
Exercise must!
Researchers say that housework may not be the right kind of exercise as the people who incorporated their house work tasks in their personal records of vigorous or moderate physical activity showed more weight than the other people who did other types of exercises for the same amount of time.
Follow an exercise pattern
Nearly 150 minutes of vigorous or moderate exercise need to be incorporated in the life of an individual on a weekly basis, announces the UK Department of Health.
The study included a sample of about 4600 people who had to jot down the intensity and amount of the physical activities that they indulged in for recreation, at home, during work, and while travelling . The researchers found out that the housework contributed to a major chunk of the total amount of activity reported by them. Surprisingly, the people who did the maximum amount of housework activities were heavier than the ones who indulged in the other moderate exercises.
Taking a judgment on the activity levels of the general population about 43% people said that they did the recommended amount of exercise or maybe a little more. On a weekly basis, two thirds of these 43% people did about 10 minutes of housework according to the data gathered by the Sport NI Sport & Physical Activity Survey (SAPAS) by the University of Ulster.
Is it that the people who are doing the housework, hogging side by side to compensate for the efforts they put in? Or is it that the amount of exercise is miscalculated by the people? Maybe, feel the researchers or else why would housework be inversely proportional to leanness?
Data analysis
This analysis of data, showed that individuals who incorporated the housework into their weekly exercise regime showed more disposition towards being heavier.
Leader of the study, Prof Marie Murphy spoke about this theory stating “Housework is physical activity and any physical activity should theoretically increase the amount of calories expended. But we found that housework was inversely related to leanness which suggests that either people are overestimating the amount of moderate intensity physical activity they do through housework, or are eating too much to compensate for the amount of activity undertaken.”
It was noted that the older generation and the women indulged in more house work. This resulted in only 20%of the women following the activity recommendations recommended by the UK Department of Health .
Noting the fact, Prof Murphy further stated “When talking to people about the amount of physical activity they need to stay healthy, it needs to be made clear that housework may not be intense enough to contribute to the weekly target and that other more intense activities also need to be included each week.”
