Kat Brown, a Lose Baby Weight Motivating Mum, who has lost 23kgs following the Lose Baby Weight plans, exercising to lose weight and choosing a healthy eating diet plan, explains incidental exercise.
Here is Kat’s before and after pictures too – you can read her story here

It’s time to revisit and embrace exercising incidentally. We’re talking about the little things you can do as part of everyday life. The key to losing weight, and keeping it off, is regular activity that keeps your body moving. No matter how time poor you might be, these kinds of activities slot into your day and don’t require workout gear or a water bottle.
The National Physical Activity Guidelines even advocate the idea of breaking your workout up into small blocks of ten minutes. Studies have found that accumulated blocks (think three ten minute blocks during the day) can be as beneficial as a continuous stint of exercise.
Incidental exercises are all the little movements we do throughout the day going about our regular routines.

We don’t always have to follow a specific exercise regime for it to be included into our daily calorie burn.
Also It can often be very hard when you are a busy mum to try to “fit in” our daily exercise and incidental exercises are often overlooked, I know I never believed that I did any incidental exercise at all.
Some good examples of the incidental exercises I do regularly are:

• Housework and vacuuming
• Mowing the lawns
• Doing the gardening
• Playing with my kids
• Doing the supermarket shopping
• Parking as far away from the shops as possible
• Standing instead of sitting while the kids eat their food

 
These are all easily achievable to the busy mummy and my kids LOVE to help me do all of them! A great sneaky workout for you and an enjoyable activity for your kids- win win!!
So if you’re looking to burn a few extra calories jump up and chase your kids around- you will all love it! Xxxx

And the great thing is that even the smallest of movements can burn off calories – things like housework, walking the dog, playing with the children and cooking can all burn calories.

Check the expenditure chart below to see exactly how many calories you burn off doing all sorts of activities.

Activity	Calories Burned
Digging in your garden	Digging the yard is a vital chore when you’re gardening. Just 30 minutes of digging can burn off 315 calories, and it works your arms, thighs, calves and shoulders – and if you do it for over 20 minutes, you get your heart rate up and boost your cardiovascular system.
Cleaning windows	You can burn lots of calories just cleaning your windows – and depending on how tall your windows are you can burn off even more. Cleaning windows for 30 minutes burns off around 125 calories and works your arms and shoulders.
Walking the dog	Walking the dog offers some great resistance exercise – take your pup out for a long bracing walk and you can burn off up to 200 calories an hour.
Cooking/food preparation	Preparing food can actually burn over 100 calories per hour – especially if you’re doing lots of washing, chopping and lifting of pots and pans.
Playing with the children: Softball	Just messing around with the children in the park throwing a softball around can burn off 180 calories per 30 minutes of continuous play.
Playing with the children: Jump rope	Jumping rope is a brilliant exercise for burning calories – jumping rope continuously for 30 minutes actually burns off 365 calories.
Washing the car	It may be a bit of a surprise, but washing the car is a great way to burn off calories – washing it for 30 minutes will burn 140 calories and will help to tone your arms and stomach, especially if you have a tall car.
Playing on a games console	Playing interactive games on a console such as the Wii or the Xbox Kinect can help you to burn loads of calories whilst having fun – half an hour of medium intensity exercise on the Wii Fit can burn off 150 calories.
Scrubbing the bath	Baths are a bit of a pain to clean, but what might make the job a bit sweeter is the knowledge that scrubbing away the scum for half an hour can burn off a massive 200 calories.
Running up and down the stairs	This easy exercise is something most of us will do many times a day – half an hour of going up and down the stairs will burn off 285 calories.
Going bowling	Bowling with your friends is a great way to spend an evening – and knocking down those pins can burn 210 calories per hour.
Kick boxing	If you have the energy to spend an hour at a kick boxing class, you can expect to burn off a massive 500 calories.
Vacuuming the house	Vacuuming is a chore no-one likes doing, especially when you have to vacuum the stairs. But vacuuming the whole house for an hour can burn up to 210 calories.
Planting a herb garden	Planting a herb garden with the children is a fun activity that everyone can do together – spend just half an hour digging and planting and you’ll burn off 120 calories.
Mopping the floors	Mopping the floor is yet another job that can be a bit tedious, especially lugging the mop bucket around the place. But spend half an hour making your floors sparklingly clean and you can burn off 100 calories.
Ironing	Ironing, surprisingly, burns off 70 calories per 30 minutes. Up the amount of calories you burn off by pressing down firmly with the iron and dance around at the same time. Make sure you swap arms occasionally so you get the same muscle tone in both arms.
Watering the plants	Watering the plants in your garden or indoors with the use of a watering can that needs to be refilled frequently can burn off a massive 100 calories every half an hour.
The Post Pregnancy Exercise DVD	Even though the work out sessions are broken into bite sized chunks of 10 and fifteen minutes, per hour you will burn between 450 – 550 calories per hour. The DVD is very time effective and even on one ten minute session you will feel the burn!! – you can view it here
Carrying shopping	Carrying shopping bags can really work your arms and improve tone. You can burn up to 190 calories every half an hour carrying shopping, and even more depending on how heavy the shopping is.
Dancing	Having a dance, whether you have a boogie with your children or whether you go to a dance class, can help you to burn off 320 calories an hour. All the more reason to go dancing!

Kat Brown

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Eliza lost 22kg (48 pounds) on 4 Challenges

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Lauren has lost 46kg (101 pounds) on 6 rounds

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