Chapter 4 - How Many Calories Does A Woman Work

Housewives and Their Calories | Exercise Can Help You

Without straining or tiring yourself, you can walk off 12 pounds a year.

Diet quacks announce triumphantly that it takes 35 miles of hiking to lose 1 pound of fat. Who has the time or energy to stroll 35 miles, say the faddists. No one, of course, except perhaps a boxer in training, and chances are that he's in better trim than you or I. At any rate we hope so, for his survival.

It's true that we don't take daily 35-mile jaunts. However if we walk 1.2 miles more per day than we do now, our strolls will add up to 35 miles each month. This amounts to a pound of weight each month, or 12 pounds a year. Chances are that during your ascendancy to obesity you did not gain this much in a single year.

"Walk, do not ride," might very well become America's slogan in routing obesity. Every time you pace off a mile you burn up about half an ounce of food—and it does not matter very much how fast or slowly you walk. The athlete who blazes a mile in slightly under four minutes grabs the headlines, but the businessman or housewife who ambles the distance in half an hour gains equal benefits without heart strain.

The time has come to stop debunking exercise. If we have to debunk anything, let us debunk the mechanization which has padded so many American housewives with unnecessary fat.

Housewives And Their Calories

Look at Vivian D., whose daily routine is typical of millions of so-called emancipated housewives. In the early days of her marriage she was the absolute monarch of an old-fashioned kitchen. Time-motion studies have indicated that women like Vivian walked 6 miles, or about 450 calories, a day in those inefficiently planned work spaces. Her stove, icebox, and sink were placed strategically so that it took the maximum effort for her to prepare a meal. Everything was arranged to make it difficult and tiresome for Vivian, but, like it or not, she got her exercise.

Ten times a day Vivian climbed the 10-foot stairway to the second floor, expending about sixty calories in the process. She walked a quarter of a mile to market and back, shedding 50 calories plus varying extras, depending on the bundles she carried. At home again, she plunged into housework. Most of her cleaning and dusting was by hand, and when she used a broom or carpet sweeper she expended about 180 calories an hour in her tussle with friction as well as with the dust.

When she performed the noble task of washing the family clothes, she slaved over a scrub board to the tune of 250 calories an hour, and her inadvertent physical fitness program continued when she lugged the wet wash to the clothesline and lifted the garments toward the sun. If it began raining a few minutes later, the clothes got wet but Vivian gained another bonus in exercise. Later she stood at an ironing board scientifically designed to prevent housewives from sitting while they worked. This cost her 120 calories each hour. During the course of the day she washed, dried, and put away about 130 calories' worth of dishes. When it came to caring for her babies, she poured out energy with furious abandon. There were endless rows of hand-washed diapers flying in proud array, and tedious hours were spent preparing baby food. In those dim days it took more than can openers to supply a nutritious diet for baby, and the grinding of food was laborious and unstimulating— but it did consume a goodly number of Mother's spare calories.

Altogether we can estimate that Vivian's daily routine amounted to 3000 calories. Today she consumes the same number of calories at the table but she has trouble expending them in activity. Her modern kitchen is designed to save her work and trouble. Instead of marching 6 miles from icebox to stove to sink, she walks a mere 2 miles. The sink and stove are adjacent, the automatic refrigerator is a step away. There are convenient work counters everywhere. Stooping, bending, and straining are virtually nonexistent. Stools at convenient heights enable her to perform with a minimum of fatigue those chores not taken care of mechanically. She saves hundreds of steps through the device of a porthole from kitchen to dining room, and modern concepts of family cooperation relieve her weariness but handicap her waistline.

There is no top floor in her ranch house, hence no 10-foot stairway. She drives the family car to supermarket, leaves it in a convenient parking space, and selects a wheeled cart in which to pile her groceries. Her greatest expenditure of energy is in the loud gasp with which she receives the cashier's total.

If her packages are too heavy an attendant carries them to her car. Her only exercise consists in carrying them from car to kitchen when she returns home.

Plunging back into housework she does not fight friction and dust with a carpet sweeper because her efficient vacuum cleaner rolls effortlessly over the rugs. Its long, multishaped attachments enable her to clean distant surfaces without climbing ladders and stretching wildly in midair. Without expending appreciable amounts of energy she can fight the dust on the molding, mothproof a closet, or shampoo a rug. As if this emancipation were not sufficient, the dirt collected by the vacuum may emerge automatically in a sealed and sanitary bag.

The genius of modern man has designed ironing boards at which Vivian can sit comfortably as she presses shirts for the man of the house, so she retains another 40 calories each hour.

The 130 calories per day which Vivian once burned in washing and drying dishes now are added to her growing stockpile of fat. The dishwasher now exerts this energy. True, an occasional dish must be scraped before it is turned over to the machine but this is more than compensated by the dishwasher's efficient drying action. Today Vivian's greatest chore is putting the dishes back in the closet, and no doubt some research laboratory is at work on this vexatious problem. It is conceivable that a gadget resembling an automatic record player will one day shuffle dishes of all sizes and deposit them in their proper places in the pantry.

Meal preparation is simplicity itself. Just about everything is packaged, ready-made, or frozen. South African lobster tails and old-fashioned rice pudding roll with equal ease from the assembly lines of food processors to the stomachs of America. These foods are tasty, healthful, and varied, but in easing the housewife's routine burdens they add to her physiological burdens.

As for the care and feeding of baby, Vivian, who is now a grandmother, can only look with envy toward the girl who was fortunate enough to marry her son. This young woman (who is perfectly nice, mind you) never has to grind food, owns no colander, and rarely uses a strainer. Prepared baby foods solve every problem for the young wife and furnish nutritional diversity never before possible.

Even baby's crib is designed to lessen Mother's effort. The height of mattress and springs is adjustable, so that baby can be tucked in without straining Mama or relieving her of her calories.

Diapers are still a problem—but for the diaper service. The contemplative hours spent washing these essential garments belong to the past.

Both Vivian and her daughter-in-law toss the family clothes into the washing machine and dry them in the automatic drier. The pleasures of hefting a load of laundry to the back yard, testing arm muscles by hanging the clothes high in the air, and racing out to rescue them from the rain no longer exist. Neither does the resultant burning of calories.

Altogether it is safe to say that the wonders of mechanization make a difference of about 1000 calories a day to you as a modern housewife. Seven thousand extra calories add up to 2 pounds a week. Now it is quite true that you do not gain 104 pounds a year. You eat less food than your mother did because you utilize less energy. Besides, you could not gain as much as 100 pounds because each new weight gain requires more calories to maintain obesity. The heavier you are, the more you must eat to keep that unattractive fat, and even the most obese people have their limits of food consumption. However, most housewives have not reduced their intake of food in proportion to their reduction of activity around the house. It is reasonable to assume that in many cases weight gains of 10 to 15 pounds a year are attributable to the replacement of human energies by machines.

Exercise Can Help You

I am not pleading for a return to the "good old days" of endless washing, cleaning, and cooking. Your new leisure should be used to make your life richer and more interesting. The hours of freedom should broaden your personality but not your hips. They should provide healthful physical exercise as well as mental stimulation. An occasional eighteen holes of golf, for example, involves about 600 calories of walking, swinging, and despairing. There are added bonuses of muscle tone, and a healthy complexion painted by sun and wind is most attractive.

For the nongolfer, walking is the exercise supreme. Not so long ago the walk was a social grace. You and your husband, strolling arm in arm through city and country, can gain a new appreciation of your surroundings and of each other. In the process you become trimmer at the rate of 75 to 100 calories per mile.

Dancing is another form of enjoyable exercise usually discarded well before middle life. This is an especially delightful way to shed 170 calories an hour. It is likely that a renewal of the dancing which was so important before marriage will lead to a rebirth of grace, agility, and coordination. In any case you will gain more from an evening of fox trotting than an afternoon at a charm school—and the bill will be much less.

Even in this era of mechanization the housewife can help to trim her fat by resisting the impulse to enter an automobile at the slightest opportunity. Walk to the market, walk to the school, walk to the meeting, walk to the station, and walk to the movies. This habit will subtract calories from your person but add spending money to your pocket-book. The high cost of gasoline, of parking, and of repairing scraped fenders can be averted as you slim down to your desirable weight.

It is quite true that exercise without regard to eating habits may be of no consequence in losing weight. But the combination of moderate exercise with moderate dieting is irresistible. In fact it is imperative.

Later you can locate the average number of calories you expend daily in your housework or occupation. It will appear in the tables on pages 58 to 60 and will help you to choose your Safe and Sure Diet.

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