Today is my official "clean the house" day, i'm assuming i wont have much time to exercise... but... the house is fairly dirty so this should be a MAJOR chore. My question is; how good of an exercise is cleaning? I don't want to feel guilty for not exercising, but if i get a decent workout from cleaning, i should be okay, right?

< how cute!!

According my dietpower program, general housekeeping burns 71calories per 20 minutes. I didnt really "clean" today, but I did spend 1 hour re-arranging my room.

well, here's a calculator I found.

According to the calculator above, if you weigh 150 pounds, here's how many calories you would expend (approximately as everyone is different):

Cleaning house, General: 237 calories per hour
Cleaning, light, moderate effort: 170 calories per hour
Cleaning, heavy, vigorous effort: 306 calories per hour.

So is this going to be the same as exercising? Well it really depends on WHAT kind of exercise you do and how vigrously you do it...for example:

Walking, 3.0 MPH, moderate pace - 236 calories per hour
Stretching, hatha yoga - 272 calories per hour
Bicycling, 12-13.9 MPH, moderate effort - 544 calories per hour
Running, 5 MPH (12 minute mile) - 544 calories per hour

There are exercise calculators all over the web - here's what I got from the one at this link - again the calories are based on 1 hour of activity at 150 pounds.

Activity Calories burned
Sleeping 63
Reading 72
Sitting 72
Talking on phone 72
Standing 81
Driving 144
Ironing 153
Shopping 162
Cooking 180
Housework 198
Archery 234
Bicycling - leisure 270
Showering 288
Calisthenics - moderate 306
Badminton 306
Aerobics - low impact 414
Rearranging Furniture 450
Stair Step Machine 477
Aerobics - high impact 477
Backpacking 477
Jogging 477
Bicycling - Mountain 576
Elliptical trainer 774
Running 12 mph 1,521

Summing up - unless you lack the modern conveniences to do your housework such as a washer and dryer or vacumn cleaner, and have to pump water from a well, and so on... (there's a great book on the history of housework titled Never Done which is definitely worth a read!) then I'd say that housecleaning is NOT the equivalent of exercise...but that's just IMO.

Thank you both very much. I guess I'll just have to be VERY careful with what i eat today

Damn.