July 17th

By Mutt Mulligan

Get active in your own backyard  

We are all spending more time at home during the pandemic, and it turns out that staying active is as simple as doing work in your own backyard. The number of calories you can expect to burn doing chores in the yard varies depending on many factors (age, size, muscle mass). But working in the yard will definitely burn more calories than snuggling up on the couch with a bag of chips and binging another show!

On average, here’s what you might expect to burn per hour while cleaning up your yard, courtesy of WebMD.com.

• Mowing the lawn: 250-350 calories/hour
• Gardening (planting flowers, pulling weeds): 200-400 calories/hour
• Raking and bagging leaves: 350-450 calories/hour
• Heavy yard work (think hauling dirt and moving rocks): 400-600 calories/hour

Spending time in the natural safe space of your own yard is good for your mental health, as well as your physical well-being. Gardening can improve memory performance and attention span by 20%. Additionally, people who gardened for at least 30 minutes a week had lower BMIs. They also exhibited higher levels of self-esteem, better moods, and lower levels of tension and stress.

To learn more about the many benefits of taking care of your yard so it can take care of you, go to TurfMutt.com.