The accidental exercise plan

So how can you use your muscles even more doing your daily chores?

• Your weekly (or daily) trip to the supermarket is a hotbed of opportunity. Wear a pedometer at all times. Your target each day is 10,000 steps. Always make sure you park at the far end of the car park and you'll easily up that step count before you're even through the door. (Naturally you'll also be wearing your wrist and ankle weights you bought as part of last years New Year Workout pack. What do you mean no? Well just make sure you've got heavy jewellery on; it all adds to your resistance!)

• Ironically, picking a trolley with a wonky wheel might be annoying as hell, but it is definitely going to give you more of a workout as you struggle to negotiate the aisles.

• Got a toddler who's just started walking? Want to run around? What better way than to take them off the reins. I know, I know, you might not get much shopping done.

• In my house we have something called 'The Bottom of the Stairs Fairy'. When something needs taking upstairs, it's left on the bottom step and a pile accumulates until someone (the mysterious fairy) takes everything up in one go. Get the fairy to do some overtime-get yourself up and down the stairs more often. Find excuses to go up and down, taking one thing at a time. And hours going up and down the stairs burns off a humungous 516 calories. And you'll have the calves of Elle McPherson!

• When you're dusting or vacuuming, find the fastest, loudest dance music you can stomach and dance your heart out to it whilst working. The faster the beat, the more energetic you'll be. Singing along works out your lungs and gets your heart rate going too. Just don't do it at 6 am unless you've got headphones on.

• Mowing the lawn is an easy one, but weeding is surprisingly good exercise too, especially if you use the random chaos weed technique; spot a weed, pull it, spot another weed on the other side of the garden, pull that one, spot another one back again, and so on. Stretch down low to pull them, but make sure you look after your back and bend correctly.

• My husband's always on at me to clean my car. The incentive for me to give it a really good wash and polish with a chamois and some wax, rather than take it to the car wash is the fact that if I do I'll have burnt off enough calories to have a couple of glasses of wine, guilt free. Worth it every time.

While some of these exercises may be a little tongue in cheek, the reality is, the more time you spend tweaking your essential household activities, the more of an accidental workout you'll get and the smugger you can feel about exercise without ever setting foot in a gym.

*(all based on an hour's activity by a female in her thirties of average height, weighing 12 stone)