How Many Calories Are Burned Shoveling, Digging Ditches

Calories Burned Digging & Shoveling Calculator and Formula

Digging in the dirt is one of the most common gardening activities. It is also one of the toughest jobs in the gardening world.

Digging in the dirt can help you burn calories and lose weight.

If you want to find the total number of calories you have burned from digging, then you can use our calories burned digging calculator for that.

About Calories Burned Digging Calculator

Gardening is a rewarding experience that helps you connect to nature on a deeper level.

When working on your garden, you need to do a lot of digging to plant seeds or to move around the soil so that the flowers, fruits, or plants that you have planted in your garden grow to their fullest potential.

Garden might come off as simple and fun on the face of it, in reality, it is as challenging as it is fun.

Digging in the garden is a strenuous activity that requires a considerable amount of effort and energy.

Energy expenditure is associated with the number of calories burned in the body.

You can use the calories burned from the digging calculator to find the total number of calories you have burned while digging in the dirt.

How to use this calculator to find calories burned from digging?

Here is how you can use the calories burned calculator to find the number of calories burned from digging:

Input your weight in the calories burned from the digging calculator. You can choose to input the weight either in kgs or lbs.
Choose the type of digging activity.
Input the time you have spent digging in the dirt.
Click on the Calculate button to find the number of calories you have burned from digging.

Formula for finding the number of calories burned per minute from digging

You can easily find the number of calories burned from gardening, using the manual calculation approach.

For manual calculation, you need to use the formula for finding calories burned per minute.

Once you get the calories burned per minute, you can multiply your answer with the minutes you have spent digging in the garden.

This gives you the result for the calories burned as per the time you have spent digging in the dirt.

Here is the formula for finding the calories burned per minute from gardening:

Calories Burned Per Minute = (MET x 3.5 x Weight(kg)) / 200

You can multiply the calories burned per minute by the total number of minutes you have spent digging.

This will give you the total number of calories that you have burned from this activity.

The MET variable is the measurement of the energy cost of any physical activity, for any time interval.

The MET values for different digging activities are given below:

Digging, spading, filling garden, or composting with light-to-moderate effort – 3.5
Digging, spading, filling garden, or composting with Taylor Code 590 – 5
Shoveling dirt or mud – 5.5
Digging, spading, filling garden or composting with vigorous effort – 7.8
Shoveling more than 16 pounds per minute, or deep digging with vigorous effort – 8.8.

Does digging help burn calories?

Digging in the dirt is a high-impact physical activity that requires a lot of effort.

The energy that you spend digging depends on the distance you need to dig for and the toughness of the terrain.

Research suggests that you can burn as many as 340 calories per hour while digging in the garden.

How many calories does an average person burn from digging?

An average person can burn anywhere between 430 to 670 calories per hour digging or shoveling.

The number of calories burned from digging can vary from person to person.

The number can vary based on factors such as the intensity of the digging, and the weight of the person digging in the dirt.

More Calorie Calculators:

Additional health benefits of digging in the dirt while gardening

Helps relieve stress

Digging in the dirt while gardening is one of the highly recommended activities for people who feel they get stressed out easily.

When you spend your time gardening, it helps take your mind off the stress and you start feeling fresh and energetic again.

Helps prevent heart diseases

Digging in the dirt requires you to use a lot of effort. When you put the effort into the activity, it enhances the flow of blood in the entire body.

This protects you from various heart health issues.

Helps you connect to nature

Digging in the dirt and other gardening activities force you to go back to nature and see the world in a new light.

It is an experience that is somewhat spiritual and feels incredibly rewarding.

Keeps you physically active

When you dig, you put in a lot of effort and energy while doing the job.

The use of energy keeps you physically fit and makes your muscles stronger and more flexible.