Another Great Reason to Garden

I hope by now that all of my fabulous my readers are aware of my support for ecotherapy as a way to reduce stress and bring about feelings of achievement and hope. Okay so it didn't work out that well for me yesterday but on the whole I do find it extremely therapeutic.

If you don't understand what I am on about read the page above entitled 'Allotmentherapy ~ the wisdom of plants'.

I've always known it can be a tremendous workout too as evidenced by many a sweaty t-shirt and long afternoon nap. But yesterday I learnt about this side in more detail: the amounts of calories we burn off doing different gardening tasks.

I know we all wear crappy clothes when we're knee deep in the mud and compost, I know that secretly (like me, you too dream of a pair of funky dungarees to work in), you maybe don't even wash your hair some days and make up seems like such a joke but...what about those date nights out? We want to feel good then too, don't we? Well our plots/gardens want that for us too - to burn calories, to get fitter, to look sexier!!!

These eye opening statistics are brought to you by the Gardening Express website and I for one love reading them :)

***********'Weight watching Brits can burn almost 1,500 calories simply by spending a few hours doing the garden. That's according to a new study by online garden centre GardeningExpress.co.uk who asked a group of amateur gardeners to keep a record of their gardening chores over a week.'
'Among the weight busting activities were hedge cutting and clearing, mowing, edging and raking the lawn, digging over flowerbeds and watering.  Others which happen less frequently but were noted by the group included painting the fence and shed and trimming trees and big shrubs.' I for one am the mowing, digging over and painting type of person so but I fear I may need to more of the other stuff....let's see'Chris Bonnett from GardeningExpress.co.uk said: “The group of gardeners we followed were fitting their gardening activities around jobs and other household chores so while this gives a good indication of how much you can burn, you can certainly burn even more calories than this.“Gardening is great exercise for lots of reasons – clearly you can burn calories, it’s great for toning and you’re out in the fresh air enjoying all that nature has to offer.” 'So get out there, do something good for your soul and that tummy - then you get to eat an extra biscuit with your tea. That's what research like this is all about, right?! :) ***********Oh and don't forget my giveaway - there is slowly, more being added to the package - now some seed packets are happening too with some fave seeds for you :) So that's a book,  a book plate (like in school prize days), my photographic greetings cards and seeds!Just gotta leave a comment below and a way to contact you!Much loveCarrie