26 Ways to Spring Clean Your Body

Use lawn maintenance as exercise

After a winter of being sedentary inside, warm spring weather is the perfect reason to get active outside. Besides its obvious positive physical effects, recent studies show exercise can have mental benefits as well. But if the idea of jogging makes you want to run back inside, that’s okay. Simple tasks you probably need, or want, to do in your yard can have unexpected benefits. “Spring cleaning the lawn with weeding, mulching, and law moving can help you to increase the amount of walking you do each day,” says fitness and nutrition expert Erin Palinski-Wade, RD, CDE, author of Belly Fat Diet for Dummies. “Planting and maintaining your garden is a great way to boost your overall step count as well as increase the amount of bending and lifting you do.” According to fitness guru Jillian Michaels, gardening can burn up to 256 calories an hour, and lawn mowing 160 per half-hour. Here are 10 ways gardening is one of the healthiest things you can do.