I heard a horrifying piece of trivia the other day: the average person eats 150 pounds of sugar every year. That’s about one pound every other day! That means that we are each basically eating our weight in sugar every year.

Even more horrifying is the thought of going on yet another doomed-to-fail diet. So what are we left with? Yep. Exercise. While these regimes may not be so steadfast either, it’s much more productive to sneak in a little exercise here and there than it is to “almost” diet.

Instead of the tired old suggestions that tell us to do our butt-clenches while we drive or sit at our office chairs and to take the stairs instead of the elevator, I prefer to try a much more enjoyable approach: gardening. Gardening is a multilayered, yet subtle, way to broach well-being:

• Exercise – doing tasks to cultivate and maintain a garden burns calories
• Vitamins – outdoor gardens dictate spending more time in the sun, which gives you more vitamin D, which your body thrives on
• Green Living – by creating a garden you’re actually enhancing the earth; making the soil more fertile and creating a natural food source, sometimes more for wildlife than family consumption, but it’s all good
• Diet – it’s a dirty little 4-letter word, but you’ll be so proud of the food you’ve worked so hard to grow that you’ll find yourself snacking and cooking with more natural ingredients

Here are some great tips that will help your garden grown and your dress size shrink all at the same time:

1. Place the garden in the far corner of your yard – you’ll have to walk farther to get there and back
2. Don’t just turn over the soil, work in extra nutrients through ingredients like peat moss, vermiculite and compost with a shovel or gardening rake
3. Instead of using the hose, carry large buckets of water, one or two at a time, to the garden – not only is this more exercise for you, it’s better for the plants to gain moisture through the soil than for the leaves to get wet and drippy
4. Check on your garden daily – you’ll get in more steps per day and you’d be amazed at what can change in just 24 hours
5. Thin your crops – it’s tempting to leave plants exactly where you sowed the seeds, but many of them need more room once they get above 3-4 inches tall. You’ll get more food and more exercise if you do this
6. Harvest only what you can carry – the more trips to the garden you make the more calories you’ll burn

Spending a lot of time gardening can be fun and great exercise, but overexposure to the sun can be dangerous, too, so be sure to:

• Wear sun screen and reapply it every 2-3 hours
• Wear a sun hat and other protective clothing
• Try to avoid going out between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. – gardening just after dawn and right before dusk are best and provide some spectacular views
• Bring a bottle of water with you to stay hydrated

Photo credit – ClipArt from Micorsoft Office Online