Can you cheat your way to fitness?

You might want to read this article while standing up. Or perhaps while strolling around the room. Because the sad fact is that most of us spend far too much time sitting on our bottoms staring at screens.We drive everywhere, avoid the stairs, pack our houses with labour-saving devices and email colleagues rather than walk down the corridor to talk to them. We are a slothful lot and the most common reason given for not doing enough exercise is lack of time.But what is enough exercise? Most health experts recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity a week. Any activity will help but it has to be moderate, vigorous or high intensity if you really want to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and obesity.If you're not that keen on going to the gym or playing sport (and surveys suggest less than 20% of us are), then can you cheat your way to 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity by doing regular weekly chores? And if so, which ones count?To find out, the Trust Me I'm a Doctor team recruited eight volunteers, all different shapes and sizes, and fitted them with activity monitors. Then we asked them to do a range of indoor and outdoor tasks.We started with four typical household chores - ironing, vacuuming, dusting and mopping.After our volunteers had completed each activity, exercise scientist Dr Andy Blannin collected their data and graded each on a scale of one to 10, using something called a MET score.MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) is a measure of energy consumed per hour. A MET score of one is the sort of energy you would expend watching TV.Anything which gets a score above three counts as moderate activity. Above six and you are in the realms of "vigorous".Ironing and dusting, not surprisingly, scored modestly, with MET scores of 1.3 and 1.5 respectively.Vacuuming and mopping, though hardly Olympic sports, scored just above three METs, making them moderate-intensity. While doing these activities our volunteers were burning three times more energy than when they were just sitting.(BBC)Bakudaily.Az