I drove to work with some certainty that I’d be plowing. The thermometer read ‘8’ and so I knew it would be unpleasant. I wasn’t disappointed.
There was only 2 inches on the ground, but it had to shoveled, plowed and salted. Add in time on the tractor, which is an open cab affair, and by 8 a.m., I was frozen. I moved inside to again free up some frozen pipes and then tried to find something inside to do.
Justin arrived and we reinstalled a wall between two stalls, which is lots of heavy lifting and had the sweat flowing. Then it was taking a 200-pound copier down a flight of stairs and so by the time I’d left for home, I’d burned a decent amount of calories.
Once home, I grabbed my shovel and spent an hour in the driveway cleaning it down to the concrete. By the time I went inside, I was reasonably spent and not ready for a workout of any kind.
It is good to look over the daily activities because you will often note that they can actually achieve the purpose of burning as much, or more calories than you consume in a day. With the proper amount of lifting, as in shoveling a drive and throwing the snow, the muscle toning work required of good physical fitness can be achieved as well. The heart rate needs to be elevated and to qualify as work in the physiological sense, weight must be lifted and moved. It is one of the reasons I look for the opportunity to move something further and without the aid of machinery. I could snow blow the drive or cut the lawn with the tractor every time, but I know the calorie burn available and hate to pass it up. Nutty? Maybe…but it’s working.
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