With more of us at home these days, it can be tempting to chill out a lot more, relax in front of the TV or a games console, or have that 10th zoom chat of the week with your friends and family. However, sitting around during lockdown adds inches to your waistline, and with gyms closed, many of us may wonder how we can avoid putting on weight.

Never fear though – there are some really easy ways to keep quarantine weight off which require next to no effort whatsoever. Here are seven effortless ways to burn those lockdown calories and keep the weight off.

Do the ironing

Life’s too short to do ironing, but if you want to lose weight, whipping the iron out and putting a sharp crease in your trousers or getting the bedsheets crease-free can be an easy way to burn off some calories. You can burn around 157 calories per hour by doing this everyday activity.

Wash the car

Keeping your car in tip-top, sparkling condition by vacuuming, washing, waxing, and buffing it is not only a great pleasure, it can also help to burn that extra weight right off. You can shift an impressive 314 calories in an hour by giving your car the love and attention it deserves.

Spruce up the garden

For those of us blessed with a garden, relaxing in it during warm weather is a godsend. A messy garden can really drag you down though – so get out those gardening gloves, a shovel, trowel and the lawnmower and you can burn off around 174 calories doing some light gardening.

Get stuck into some DIY

New shelves to put up or some plumbing work to do? The good news is that as well as improving your home environment, doing DIY is an incredibly good form of exercise. Load up Youtube, watch one of the many DIY tutorials, and get stuck in. You can burn off around 200 calories in just an hour of DIY.

Doing the laundry

Washing and folding laundry can help you burn off up to 148 calories in an hour of activity. By combining it with the ironing, you can get a completely effortless (albeit possibly a bit boring) weight loss boost into your everyday activities.

Dancing

Don’t just think that you have to do boring chores all the time to shift those pounds – dancing is an incredibly fun form of exercise. Bopping around the house for a mere 30 minutes can help you get rid of a much as 150 calories. And of course, you can also do this whilst sweeping the floor or doing many other household chores, or just let loose and dance around the living room. Just stick on your favourite music and get those feet moving.

Go for a walk

Walking is often described as one of the best forms of exercise. There are other benefits too – heading out of the house for a bit provides you with a change of scenery and a boost for your mental health. And seeing as we’re all stuck indoors more, what better excuse to change things up a bit? A brisk twenty-minute walk can burn off around 100 calories. If you own a bike, you can burn off even more by cycling – around 187 calories in the same amount of time.

The skinny

Sitting around less and moving more is key to maintaining a healthy weight, and exercise provides other benefits, including lending your mental health a helping hand. There are many ways to keep the inches off that you can make a part of your everyday routine with next-to-no effort whatsoever.

It’s not just exercise, though – a healthy and balanced diet with good portion control is also key to good health. If you don’t have the space or money for home gym equipment, simple ankle and wrist weights could give you that much needed edge for very little money.