Many people fall into a diet slump when getting ready for a move. They assume that because they are a little extra busy, they do not have to prepare healthy meals and snacks, and can reach for chips or order a pizza instead. All this does is affect your blood sugar, causing you to rise and fall. Not to mention, you may think that since you are “temporarily” eating unhealthy, you can skip the morning run and evening yoga practice, as well.
This does not have to be the case. As long as you have the right mindset, you will continue to eat healthily and exercise. In fact, you can actually burn an impressive amount of calories engaging in activities related to your move. That is, as long as you don’t sit down every chance you get. Put on a moving playlist, hit shuffle and burn some extra calories while you get ready for moving day.
Packing and Lifting Small Boxes and Items
You might be quite surprised at how many calories you will burn while you are packing up your kitchen and figuring out what to donate and pack out of your closet. In a 30-minute power packing session where you focus on staying in one room, the average female burns 120 calories while a male burns 150 calories. Face it though; if you are a female going through your closet then chances are pretty good that you are trying on a lot of things to decide if you should keep them. Surely this extra exertion should burn as many calories as the guys.
Packing and Walking
If you are like many, staying focused in one room is a struggle, and your packing session will be at least an hour at a time. After all, if you are going to break a sweat, you might as well make it worth your while, right? Well, a female packing and walking from one room to the next will burn approximately 270 calories an hour. A male is closer to 330 calories.
Tour and Paperwork
Whether you are going to look at an apartment and fill out an application or if you are closing on your house and signing a ton of documents, this burns calories too. You have to figure at least 45 minutes of walking (probably a lot more), and 20 minutes of paperwork (again, probably much more).With this scenario, female burns around 245 calories while males are close to 310 calories.
Cleaning and Sweeping
Whether you are cleaning your new place from top to bottom before you unpack, or you are power cleaning your old place in hopes of getting most or all of your security deposit back, you will be burning a ton of calories. Figuring at least two hours to clean, 600 calories will be burned if you are female and 720 if you are male.
Moving Day
On moving day you will do a little of everything. Just for the sake of creating an example, this sample day consists of four hours of packing and lifting light items and boxes, three hours of walking, two hours of cleaning, 20 minutes of paperwork, and 30 minutes of eating pizza (yes, eating burns calories). The average female will burn 2,510 calories while a male will be around 3,100 calories. Of course, you will probably work from the crack of dawn until late at night so these numbers can easily double.
If you notice, none of these estimates even include doing any heavy lifting. Moving is exhausting enough, and strains your body; there is absolutely no point risking injury by trying to move anything heavy. This is what professional moving companies are for, and they are a lot more affordable than you might think.
