I just found an interesting factoid in one of my vintage Home Economics Books, Family Meals and Hospitality from 1949. I mentioned in an earlier post, that I am hard at work on a second book - working title Dangerous Curves (my first was Storm Clouds Over Party Shoes, Etiquette Problems for the Ill-Bred Woman). As part of my research, I am obliged to scour my vast collection of old books aimed at women. It makes for some very interesting reading to say the least.
Anyways, in amongst the many chapters in Family Meals and Hospitality which cover such topics as entertaining on a post-war budget, feeding the convalescent, and preparing appetizing yeast breads, was a little chart showing how many calories are burned while engaged in various household chores. For example, mopping burns one and a half calories per pound of weight per hour. Scrubbing comes in somewhere between two and three. Hand sewing provides a tragic one half calorie per hour per pound of weight.
Now, without doing any math or running a white-gloved finger across my horizontal surfaces, you can safely surmise that there are very few of these type of calories being burned here in my home. My only hope against the ravages of menopausal weight re-distribution (unwanted chin hair alone must account for some of my gains in the past few years) is that typing rapidly burns one calorie.
I am working as fast as I can.
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