Calories are a big subject in the fitness world. If you’re trying to lose weight, gain weight, or maintain your current weight, tracking your calories and making sure you consume and burn the right amount every day is the ticket to success. It’s all about those calories! Your body burns calories in a number of ways, even while at rest! Sitting here thinking about burning calories is actually burning calories, although not all that many. Aerobic exercise is the most effective way of burning calories, and gardening is one such exercise. But how many calories does gardening burn? Is it really a good workout?
How does gardening burn calories?
As mentioned above, aerobic exercise is the most efficient way of burning calories. The act of moving your muscles requires your body to expend calories. The more you move, the more calories you’ll burn. Gardening may not seem like a very rigorous activity, but a day of working outdoors in your garden can really charge up your body’s calorie burning.
Other factors difficult to control for are outside temperature. If it’s cold or fairly hot outside, your body may burn additional calories while working to self-regulate your internal temperature, keeping it at a safe range.
How many calories does gardening burn?
Determining just how many calories gardening burns is a little bit difficult because it depends on your weight and what you’re doing. If you’re kneeling on the ground, knees resting comfortably on a pad, and gently planting petunias, you aren’t burning as many calories as you would be if you were shoveling heavy soil for 8 hours. But if you roughly average out every activity associated with gardening, it winds up being that you will burn 2 calories per pound of bodyweight per hour.
| Bodyweight | Calories burned |
| 100 pounds | 200 calories |
| 120 pounds | 240 calories |
| 140 pounds | 280 calories |
| 160 pounds | 320 calories |
| 180 pounds | 360 calories |
| 200 pounds | 400 calories |
| 220 pounds | 440 calories |
| 240 pounds | 480 calories |
| 260 pounds | 520 calories |
As you can see, gardening can really add up the number of calories you burn in a day, of course depending on how rigorously you’re gardening. If your goal is to burn lots of calories while gardening, throw in a set of pushups every once in a while or run a lap around your garden to get your heart beating a little bit harder.
Keep Reading: 5 Benefits Of Having A Garden
