The House Cleaning Workout

Most people hate cleaning their house, and we have to admit we are both guilty of not putting our clothes straight in the laundry and the floors in our rooms often look like a floordrobe. However post Loser we have made cleaning the house a workout and we get the job done quicker and out bodies benefit from it. Cleaning the house doesn’t replace a workout at the gym but it does get the heart rate up and burn calories. Here is a list of how many calories you could burn on average a year just by cleaning the house.


• Dust and Polish (2,288 calories per year) Use some elbow grease and destroy those dust kitties and you will burn 170 calories per hour ( for a body weight of 70kg)

• Cleaning the Bathroom (2,896 calories per year). Everyone’s most hated chore is cleaning the bathroom, but it has to be done so why not make it a game and try to get it done within 20 mins. Get in some squats whilst cleaning the shower screen. You can burn 231 calories an hour by just making your bathroom sparkle.

• Vacuuming (6,800 calories a year). Teneale pretends she is allergic to the vacuum but if you push the vacuum around the house instead of just standing in one spot it can be a real workout. Try doing walking lunges whilst moving from room to room and you can burn about 238 calories an hour.

• Ironing (6794 calories a year), this is a favourite chore as it can be done in front of the TV. If you iron through your wardrobe and maybe even throw in some squats or a dance you can burn 156 calories an hour.

• General tidy up. (4,541 calories a year) This chore needs to be done daily, but don’t worry about making it efficient, every time you get up to put something away the more calories you burn. Don’t put off putting those heavy boxes away as they can be a part of your weight training. If you aim to have a tidy house you can burn 170 calories an hour, more if you pick up the pace.

• Sweep and mop the floor. (5117 calories a year) Don’t be lazy and really scrub those marks off under the dining table and stretch whilst cleaning and you can burn 258 calories an hour.

Now stop putting it off, pump up the music and get cleaning.

Excuses

When I found myself filling in the application to be a part of The Biggest Loser, I thought to myself how had I allowed my weight get to this. Everyone has put on a few kilos without realising but I had managed to gain over 40kg in a space of two years, and I honestly had no idea how. It is often said hindsight is a beautiful thing, and now looking back I know exactly where my lack of control over my weight began. EXCUSES. Eating pasta every night for dinner and following it with apple crumple or ice cream, was what made the fat accumulate around my tummy and butt, however it was the excuses I gave, that made me think it was ok to eat chocolate whenever I felt like it and not do any exercise.


It didn’t matter if no one listened to my excuses, as long as I heard them; it gave me a free pass. When you only have to convince yourself that your life is ok, then it is easy to live a life of comfort. Who has told themself the diet will start on Monday, for only Monday to come and go and the diet has not started because you have thought of some excuse to start another day?

So what were my most common excuses?

• I’m too busy to find time to exercise

• I’m a uni student, I am meant to be eating pasta to save money

• I’m tired, I’ll exercise tomorrow.

• Gym memberships are too expensive, so I can’t afford to exercise

• Apple crumple has apples in it; surely it can’t be that bad for me.

• That girl can eat a whole packet of chips and she is skinny, so I should be able to have them too.

• I can’t....... run, do sit ups, go swimming as people will think I’m a beached whale. ( or anything else I thought I wasn’t capable of doing)

Even though I thought all these excuses were very valid, I now know that there are no excuses that are good enough to ignore weight gain. I now value myself a lot more to make excuses. Sure they still come up; I am probably more imaginative now trying to think of something that I can almost convince myself that I do not have to go to the gym. But the bottom line is don’t give yourself an excuse to eat bad foods, or not exercise , if you are going to the effort to make an excuse then you know deep down that you are just hurting yourself.

Make eating healthily and going to the gym just part of life, just as brushing your teeth, or having a shower is. It becomes routine, you just have to make it a part of your routine and do it as if you are on auto pilot.

Now what are some of your most used excuses? Write them down here and make it the last time you will ever use it.

Is good food really worth it?

The biggest struggle we find with our weight comes down to food.

We were both born with a major sweet tooth and our downfall in the past has been due to over indulgence in all things sweet e.g to many ice creams, lemon meringue pies and deserts.

We know not all of us have sweet tooth's or are huge lovers of food, but reality is if you struggle with your weight you probably do not have a great attitude to food. You are either not eating the right foods, eating at the wrong time or simply over indulging. However is it worth it?

We know even though we love food we can only truly remember a handful of meals that have been worth the calories.

Now that we have a healthy attitude to food the meals we enjoy the most are made from amazing fresh produce.  They are not only low in calories but also rich in nutrients. We will share some of the beautiful meals we enjoy in these blogs and hope you will share some of  your recipes with us too.

Next time you have a sweet craving instead of reaching for the ice cream or block of chocolate, sit back and think what you really want? Will having a nice lite yoghurt with strawberries satisfy your craving?  Or is chocolate really the only thing that will satisfy you?
If chocolate is what you really 'need' instead of fighting it allow yourself that treat, but have a piece of good quality chocolate instead of a whole block. Make your treat worth it.

We aren't saying you can never have a treat again, but ask yourself the question first "is it really worth it?

How do you deal with your cravings?

So how do you lose weight through exercise and diet?

Through our experience on the show, we have constantly been told that the simplest way to lose and maintain your  weight is to ensure energy in = energy out.
Sounds simple but what does this mean exactly.

To maintain your weight, you need to ensure everything you consume is going to be burnt off or used by your body to function.  We all have a natural BMR which is the amount of energy we burn through doing nothing.  This amount should be your basis for you daily calorie intake.

To work out your BMR  use the below equations, or simply use one of the many online calculators available, such as the one on Michelle Bridges Website.

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )

Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) - ( 6.8 x age in years )

 
 Seems like a difficult equation but once you practice it it gets easier ( trust us we hate numbers)

Now that you know your BMR you can work out how many calories you need to burn a day to ensure weight loss.

To loose weight you need to ensure you are in calorie deficit. This means BMR + Calories Burnt - Calories consumed = your expected weight loss

e.g if your BMR  is 1500 and you burnt 800 calories through exercise and at 1200 calories your equation would be

1500 + 700 - 1200 = 1000

Therefore you would be in deficit of 1000 calories  for that day. If you did this every day for 7 days you would be on track to loose 1kg a week.

In order to loose a kilo you need to be in a calorie deficit of approximately 7000 calories.
That is a lot of calories you need to cut down on and burn to loose 1 kilo. No wonder weight loss is so hard.

Please don't  let these numbers scare you.

When Teneale was in the house she freaked out by these numbers and tried to ignore it, but knew in order to loose weight she needed to get her head around it.
Dave ( David Dobbie) was the king of calculations in the house. He could estimate how many kilos he was going to loose each week to 0.1 of a kilo and his success throughout the show demonstrates how important this can be.

It is something we all need to be aware of in order to lose weight and keep it off. It makes you appreciate every mouthful of food as you know just how hard excess calories are to burn off.

So what exercises work best to burn calories?

We have included an Exercise Calorie Expenditure Chart to give you an overview of what exercise burns how many calories. However keep in mind the best exercise for calorie burning is the exercise you enjoy. You need to find something you can stick with and make sure you have fun while your doing it.

Let us know your thoughts on this and whether there is anything else you need to know to get your calculations right !

PLEASE DOUBLE CLICK TO ENLARGE

How do you say no to temptation?

 According to the Australian Better Health Initiative ''1 in 2 Australian adults is overweight. And, irrespective of your height or build, if your waistline is getting bigger it could mean you are at increased risk of chronic diseases like some cancers, heart disease and type 2 diabetes."

A scary statistic in itself and something we should all find motivation from to keep our waistlines under control and say no to desert when out for dinner or no to the yummy canapes being offered at social functions.

But how do we find that extra piece of motivation to say no to all those yummy foods that seem to be offered to us everywhere we go?  Resisting temptation is one of the hardest things you will face in your weight loss journey and finding the willpower to say no can seem as impossible as winning lotto. However if you remind yourself how many calories that little mouthful of yumminess is worth and how many hours you will need to put in at the gym  to burn in off, it may make it that little bit easier to say no.

The best thing is to be prepared. Ensure you are eating a healthy meal before going out to occasions where you know you might be faced with temptations. That way you are full and won't be looking for anything to eat that may stop your tummy from grumbling.  But what else can you do?

We found the best thing to keep us on track with our calories in  our weight loss journeys was to keep a food diary. This way you can hold yourself accountable for every thing you eat, even that fun size mars bar you had at work when 3:30itis hit.

We both feel that the best thing about keeping a food diary, was to calculate how many calories we had eaten in comparison to how many calories we had burnt through exercise, and what we could expect to lose by the end of the week. We will show you a simple calculation  in a later blog that shows you how you can estimate your own weight loss. It is really simple and made us wonder why we hadn't known this earlier.


So food diaries are one thing to keep you on track but how do you find that willpower to say no when offered what looks like a slice of heaven on a plate?
Teneale's answer for this is imagining eating a big blob of lard instead of a mouth watering chocolate. Because really this is what you may as well be doing. Inside that treat is loads of fat that is just going to go straight to your love handles and make you want to cry when trying on that dress, that's suppose to impress, and its just too tight. Imagining eating a whole tub of butter doesn't seem so appealing?

Elise's solution is to tell herself that she is allowed that slice of cake, however she is not allowed it at this exact moment. If she still has the craving for that cake tomorrow , she will have it but count it into her calories well in advance.
Elise finds that  when she does this, the urge for that cake diminishes as it was purely having it there in front of her that the temptation was there in the first place. When the realisation of how many calories were in the treat, and the impulse is no longer there, the calories and energy she will need to burn to get rid of them often outweighs that fleeting desire.

What works for you? How do you stop yourself from eating what we all know we shouldn't but you think tastes to good to resist?

Teneale Weighs In

Teneale weighing in at Finale. This is just the begining of a lifetimes work of keeping my weight under control and staying motivated

Elise Weighs In

Elise at the finale of the Biggest Loser achiving her weight loss goal, but her journey is not over.