Gardening + Women = Exercise

No matter what your age, as women we think about our bodies and how to constantly improve them. Men too, I’m sure, but women’s bodies change more with pregnancy and childbirth and therefore need more attention.

Women are multi-taskers. We are the queens of multitasking. We eat a sandwich at our desks so we can check our email at the same time. We catch up on voice mail while we drive our kids to practice. We cook dinner while we help our kids with homework and have a load of laundry going as well.

Women often forget to take care of themselves while caring for others and our homes. Women need to reevaluate our necessity to stay in shape, physically and emotionally, so we can manage all of our jobs, inside and outside of the home. It may seem like an indulgence to spend an hour or two at the gym when there are so many things on our plates. But there is a perfect solution.

Gardening.

With gardening you can increase your strength, your flexibility, and your endurance. Gardening helps cleanse your mind of the days tasks while helping you get more fit physically. With every new exercise routine some caution should be taken so as to not get hurt. Here are some tips to help you through your new program.

1. Start slow. If it’s an effort to get off the couch then you shouldn’t go all out on your first day in the yard. Even 10 minutes in the yard is better than nothing.

2. Stretch first. Touch your toes a couple of times (okay, I can’t do that one without bending my knees a lot), reach for the sky, twist your body side to side, do a couple of squats. Basically think of this as your ‘warm up.’

3. Lift carefully Always use your legs to help lift heavy bags of mulch or soil. Wheelbarrows and dollies are our friends. So are teenage boys that need to get away from the X-Box. It doesn’t hurt to enlist the help of family members. You can always strike up a conversation about school. Again....multi-tasking.

4. Breathe deeply. All that fresh air is yours for the taking. Breathe it in to help calm your mind while you are getting your body in shape. The sweet smell of lavender or rosemary can change your mood from grumpy to great with just a few sniffs.

Calories Burned Per Hour

Cultivating/Digging/Planting Trees = 300 calories

Planting flowers = 250 calories

Weeding = 250 calories

Raking leaves = 300 calories

Trimming shrubs = 300 calories

Putting away tools (walking) = 200 calories

Stacking wood = 340 calories

5. Rest every 30 minutes. That doesn’t mean you can eat a candy bar or down a full strength pop. Sit on that pretty garden bench and admire your handiwork or contemplate your next task while you have a cool glass of water.

When you’re preparing dinner with the vegetables you planted, weeded, watered, and fertilized, you will be multi-tasking again by nourishing the inside of your body with something that helped you nourish the outside of your body.

Best,

Bee Fisher Kocher

Bee Fisher Kocher and her very handy husband, Brian, own Fisher’s Gardens in Olde Reynoldsburg. Bee gets plenty of exercise taking care of two kids, a husband, two dogs, a home, a business, while tending a 12’x20’ vegetable garden at home.