Just wanted to add a site I am using that helps get an idea of amount of calories we burn for things as simple as washing dishes all the way to jogging.
I have been doing the walking briskly~(Indoors since It's super cold and I have asthma~Plus noone has to see me other than my family~& I ran out of exscuses LOL.)~I am just going from one room to another 60 minutes a day(3 X 20 minutes.I plan to go up to 90 mintues .Anyways,I hope it helps everyone as much as it helps me.(Yesterday I ate a piece of christmas fudge and walked an extra 40 mintues just to burn it off.LOL IT WASN'T WORTH IT>NO MORE FUDGE FOR ME.I am on 1400 calories a day and That was my only goof up this month.Anybody who needs to chat just message me. I am online most days And I am Determined to lose My unwanted weight.GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!! ONLY 4 DAYS TO GO!Sorry for all typing errors ect!http://www.caloriecontrol.org/exercalc.html

UPDATE:POSTED THIS DECEMBER 21st Of 2008. So Just a little over a year ago. ~I ignored the posts that said they didn't think it made any difference basically...Anyways I had only lost 13 pounds When I posted this...Now it is January 2nd 2010 And I have lost a grand total of 93 Pounds! SO THIS WORKS!!! ALONG WITH COUNTING CALORIES!!!

That's interesting. I put in the info for a normal night at a club, and apparently I would burn 2863 calories in 4 hours (because I never leave the dance floor) That almost makes up for the amount of calories I would have consumed with the alcohol. lol

Good idea, Lori. You know, for years I read how doing these "everyday things" wasn't the RIGHT type of activity and didn't help weightloss. How discouraging for a stay-at-home mother. Now, of course they have recanted those thoughts are recognizing that YES, time spent washing floors and cleaning bathrooms DO indeed, count.

Good for you to walk off the fudge. That's the way to do it. If you really want the splurge next time try to work it into your daily intake. You could also "save up" for it a couple of days prior. Fudge is decadent and I have a hard time staying out of it if it's here. That being said, my girls and I are making a batch for Christmas as it's one of their favorites. We use the "Fantasy Fudge" recipe on the back of the Marshmallow Creme jar.

Okay, here's the thing. If you have your tracker set correctly for your daily activity level, then the calorie burn it gives you takes into consideration all those little activities that you do all the time. So it's not like you can give yourself extra credit for doing the dishes, folding the laundry, and so on. If someone got obese while doing those things, it indicates that those activities aren't enough... eh?

The purpose of exercise isn't just to burn calories, although it does that! The point is that muscle burns fat for energy if it is worked for a certain length of time--so you're not just burning cals, you're burning fat! And, this increases metabolism generally, so that you're burning calories even after you've stopped exercising.

Jay

Yes~The best Kinda fudge! Off the Kraft! Enjoy it THIGHS BE GONE.
THEN RUN IT OFF! LOL~

Lori, sweetie, you're preaching to the choir here. I would suspect that most of us on this board are familiar with those facts, so just parroting them back to us doesn't do anything to convince us.

On the other hand, please respect that many of us (Jay and myself included) have lost significants amount of weight and have maintained that loss for a while and therefore we know how different it is to put those facts into practice, and how everyone's body is different.

Yes, it's true that 3500 cals = 1 lbs of fat. Yes it's true that if you increase your daily activity in *any* way, in combination with diet, that you will lose weight.

But the human body is not a computer or a calculator. And there are a lot of things other than just calories in vs. calories out that effect weight loss.

And yes, it's good to know that the chores you do every day *can* help you lose weight. Certainly it's good to, say, vacuum the house vs. sitting like a lump on the sofa with your laptop (she says, doing exactly that).

Jay is correct that when you estimate your daily calories, most calculators take into account that people do regular things every day - get up, do dishes, sweep the floor, etc. So re-adding those items to your daily total can skew your count in a bad way.

Jay is also correct in her comment that burning calories isn't the ONLY purpose of exercise. There are benefits to getting a solid block of structured exercise in that simply doing more household chores isn't going to help you with. And eventually just adding in a round of dishwashing is NOT going to make a huge big difference in your weight loss.

The other thing that I'd like to point out is that a lot of people get tied up in the minutiae of calorie counting and try to justify everything they eat with everything they do - I washed the dishes 2x today, so I can eat another chocolate. Or I vacuumed the stairs, so I can have an extra T of peanut butter. And when you start to micromanage like that, most people wind up giving themselves too much credit. Because whose to say that how you wash dishes and how I wash dishes burns the same amount of calories. Perhaps you wash all of yours by hand and scrub the pots vigorously and I just rinse mine and put them into the dishwasher. Do you think that by doing that we burn the same amount of calories? Probably not.

Also someone who is fit and in shape is going to burn MORE calories doing the same activity than someone who is not - because muscles are more metabolically active than fat. So now, when you calculate that you washed dishes 2x today, are you making sure that you're calculating your calories based on your current fitness weight?

I do think that someone who does something that is not part of their normal routine - like shoveling snow or scrubbing a floor, or spending an hour cleaning the bathroom hard - should give themselves some calorie benefit there. But just washing dishes? Nah, I can't get behind that.

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Wow You all are being kinda rude.I aint preaching. I was trying to be helpful to the stay home moms like myself.Who need help getting motivated..To let them know that every thing we do does count.It took me a few weeks to start walking~because I wanted to burn more than a few calories it stated from washing dishes. Everything we do burns calories. I have been down smaller myself before~Please encourage people rather than discourage that is what this site is for. ENCOURAGEMENT.I was only triyng to share A website I found helpful~If you disagreee Just do not use the website~it's not the site for you. Sorry i Have offended you 2 lady's I was only trying to MOTIVATE & ENCOURAGE ~since this site & the one I Posted Done just that for me
THATS ALL~AGAIN MY APOLOGIES

Um. I'm not sure how to respond to your post. You seem to take everything awfully personally.

No one was attacking you. No one was being rude to you. And no one here was "offended".

Yes, this is a site for support. It's also a site for discussion. Part of support and discussion is ... well DISCUSSING. And telling people "if you disagree just don't say anything" is not a discussion, nor is it being supportive.

What, exactly, do you want from this board? Do you consider that to be support everyone has to agree all the time? Because I don't consider that to be supportive. Sometimes being supportive is offering another point of view for you to consider.

.

A difference in perspective or a disagreement is not the same as being rude. It is important that we do share our different perspectives because what one person finds helpful can trip up another person. Encouragement does not mean agreeing with everything a person says regardless. Pointing out problems we've encountered or seen other people encounter is not discouragement.

Some people find pharmaceuticals helpful in weight loss - many of us have found them to be ineffective and even dangerous. If someone here is singing the praises of a drug, that others of us have found to have been ineffective or resulted in illness, injury or side effects - it is not discouragement to share our experiences.

And that is what Jay and PhotoChick have done - shared their experiences regarding the topic.

I've spent the vast of majority of the last 36 years (since age 5) on the diet/exercise/weight loss rollercoaster - and I have a lot of opinions, and I share them all here. Positive and negative, and I trust that everyone here is mature and intelligent enough to decide for themselves if my opinion has any merit to them. The praises AND criticisms of all are voices are vital to making informed and educated choices and decisions. If all we ever said to one another is "whatever works for you, that's great" well, I personally wouldn't find that very useful. I can be my own cheerleader, but to encounter a perspective opposite my own, and to hear others points of view that disagree with my own do not offend me. I'm grateful for the opportunity to see both sides of any issue - because it helps me judge the information.

Besides which, the term "preaching to the choir," is a term that means essentially "you're arguing a point, that we all agree with." It is not a term of rudeness or dissent.

However, the point that some folks can get carried away with the minutia of calorie-counting (both of food and activity) is a very valid point, and worth bringing up in any discussion. Without it, some folks might believe they are doing something wrong if they're not documenting every calorie "burned" in activity. Because activity calorie calculators are notoriously inaccurate, many folks make the mistake of thinking they can "burn off" overindulgences without realizing that they're not "doing the math" correctly, because "the math" is a lot more complicated than such calculators imply.

Jay and PhotoChick's (and maybe even my) posts are just an addition to the conversation to give another perspective and more information on the dangers of attempting to reduce weight loss to mathematical equations, because, much of the math is NOT, in fact, available to us (we cannot determine based on any of these charts what OUR bodies are actually burning, because while you can determine an average - the range is actually quite wide).

Hey Lori, I'm sorry if you felt attacked. I certainly didn't intend that.

It's OK to try whatever you think will help you lose the weight. You'll find out soon enough with your own experience whether it's working.

My point wasn't that chores don't burn calories--they do. It's that the usual daily chores are not exercise as most people understand that word. But I'd rather see someone be more active generally than worry about definitions.

Hang in there!
Jay

Hey Lori -

I applaud your enthusiasm ...even if I agree with Jay, kaplods and Photochick that counting normal stuff you've always done probably won't help too much. But if you are using it as a reason to bump up the time you are moving around? That is ALL GOOD, girl! BTW - my house could use a cleaning tornado like you.

I also think it's great you are researching this stuff - it's all part of the learning process - and you are on your way.