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A new study says housework is not the quality exercise many people think it is. It even said that people who did the most housework were usually the most overweight. The study is called, "Does doing housework keep you healthy? The contribution of domestic physical activity to meeting current recommendations for health". It questions whether activities like do-it-yourself, gardening and housework are good exercise. It says any activity is better than none, but there is a danger that people incorrectly think housework is proper exercise.

A total of 4,563 adults took a survey about their weekly physical activity. The research showed that people who included housework as exercise tended to be heavier. Researcher professor Marie Murphy said any physical activity should increase the amount of calories burnt. However, her study found the opposite. She said housework was "inversely related to leanness". She said this suggested that either people overestimate how hard housework was as exercise, or they eat too much because they think they have lost lots of calories doing household chores.