FYI, Changing Your Bed Sheets Burns an Impressive Amount of Calories

We wash our clothes when they get dirty, wipe down the kitchen bench after cooking a meal and vacuum the floors regularly. But after a long hard day at work, you don’t even think twice about washing your bed sheets. In fact, all you want to do is tuck yourself between those linens and put on a good movie or read a book, right? 

However, did you know humans naturally produce approximately 98.4 liters of sweat in bed every year? This moisture, especially at high humidity, creates a breeding ground for fungi, bacteria, dust mites, and debris to accumulate quickly if your sheets aren’t washed on the reg. 

Whilst changing the sheets purely for hygiene purposes should be the driving incentive, you’ll be pleased to know performing the chore of undressing and dressing your bed actually counts as a mini workout. 

“Changing the sheets is a great full-body workout for your abs, glutes and upper body,” exercise physiologist Veronika Larisova tells Bed Threads Journal. 

“According to WebMD, stripping beds and remaking them for 30-minutes torches around 187 calories.” 

That’s equivalent to a 45-minute walk, 25-minute jog or if we’re talking food, then it can (nearly) burn off a slice of margherita pizza. 

How to burn more calories changing the bed sheets

There are a few tricks to increasing that calorie burn, according to Larisova:

1. Engage your core as this will help activate your abdominals.

2. Add in 10 squats in between each task to target those glutes.

3. Engage your pelvic floor. Do this by imagining your pelvic muscles are an actual floor and you want to lift it one level up without holding your breath or clenching the muscles.

4. Wear ankle weights.

5. Sing to engage your diaphragm (this also helps reduce cortisol levels by stimulating the vagus nerve).

And it’s not just changing bed sheets that count as a mini-workout; gardening can burn an impressive 400 calories per hour and 30-minutes of ironing can torch 157 calories. 

Keen to find out more? Here’s a full list of the household chores that are better than a HIIT workout.

Veronika Larisova is an exercise physiologist and co-founder of Beauty Food. Follow her on Instagram @veronikalarisova.