Growing Your Own and Losing Weight

No this is not an article on how to raise pot and lose weight,  it is about growing your own food and getting some exercise while doing.  An added benefit has been some quality time with both my wife and son as we work together to completely redo our backyard.

For the last 4 nights (with many more to follow) we have been working on moving what would be a dump truck load of dirt around the yard.  Because our back yard was part of the Boise river many, many years ago, it is full of rock of various sizes.  We have to shift the rocks out as we prepare it to go into some raised beds we are doing square-foot gardening with this year.  There is also the digging out of spots to put the new sifted dirt into the raised bed area.

Come to find out the approximate calories per hour for a 150 pound person (not me) is 350 calories per hour.  For me it is closer to 460 but we will use the 350 number to illustrate a point.  One hour of digging would then equate to the following food intake to put things into perspective:  The numbers on the right under the Cals column are the calories per serving.

These numbers from Calorie Count at About.com

Translated, it means that it would take a 150 person two hours of shoveling to burn off a Big Mac or 1.3 cups of a Grande from Starbucks.  We wonder why 15 mins on a treadmill and a few other exercises don’t cut it for weight loss.  It all depends on energy in versus energy out.  I tease my wife that each night I have earned the right for a donut.  Truth is donuts are once in a while treats these days and figured into the total for that day.  Unlike in the past where it was nothing for me to eat 6 or more in one sitting and eat the rest of my meals that day.

Lesson for the day, it takes a whole lot more effort to burn off calorie dense food than it does the few minutes that it takes to eat it.

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