Sheena Patterson of Oxford Garden Design on why gardening is good

I know I can’t be alone in regretting the number of calories I consumed over the festive season.

This week, with the leftovers finally finished off, reality hit home for me and probably many other Oxford Mail readers.

According to studies, the average person consumes 6,000 calories on Christmas day alone, which is the same amount that a Tour de France cyclist needs to sustain a day’s racing.

No wonder so many waistlines expand over the Christmas holiday and why so many of us head off to the gym for a couple of guilt-driven sessions before the resolution, and stamina wear out.

But instead of donning that fancy lycra outfit and heading for the nearest gym, after your calorific overload how about popping on some wellies and heading for the back garden?

Regular tasks that are essential for maintaining a garden, such as weeding, composting and raking leaves keep you fit and give you the added advantage of being in the open air.

According to a poll of a hundred gardeners carried out by NetVoucherCodes.co.uk, an average gardening Brit spends five-and-a-half hours a week tending their precious plot.

Here’s a guide to the calories that can be burned while you are working away in the garden:

* Weeding (digging out the roots rather than spraying with herbicides!) burns around 330 calories an hour. This works your upper and lower-body muscles.

* Mowing the lawn or pushing a wheelbarrow for an hour will burn 300 calories.

* Digging and shovelling is great for building upper-body strength and burns 250 calories an hour.

* Turning compost over on a cold winter’s day will burn off around 300 calories and hour and keep you good and warm.

* Top of the list of calorie burning activities was handling heavy electrical equipment such as hedge trimmers at 400 calories an hour.

* No need to let snow be an excuse to stop the outdoor work out, shovelling snow can burn 243 calories an hour, heavy snow 364 (but I confess to be unclear on how that is defined.)

* Chopping wood (men look very sexy doing this) uses up 243 calories n Even bagging leaves is 162 calories.

After all that physical exertion and fresh air, you should sleep like a log! I’ve often maintained that gardening is good for you and now there are good scientifically proven reasons for women to encourage their men to garden.

It has been shown that regular bouts of gentle weeding, digging and mowing can revitalise a man’s flagging sex drive. As little as 30 minutes of gardening, five days a week, is enough to reduce the risk of impotence by around 38 per cent, a study done by researchers at the Medical University of Vienna found.

Many studies have shown that simply being in the presence of trees and plants reduces stress.

I strongly believe that gardening and laughing are two of the best things you can do to promote good health and a sense of well-being.

And lose weight too.

  • Do you want alerts delivered straight to your phone via our WhatsApp service? Text NEWS or SPORT or NEWS AND SPORT, depending on which services you want, and your full name to 07767 417704. Save our number into your phone’s contacts as Oxford Mail WhatsApp and ensure you have WhatsApp installed.