Who says you have to spend hours in the gym in order to lose weight? As the season for growing vegetable gardens come into full bloom, it also provides the opportunity to get some exercise in and grow your own health food.

Let抯 start with the obvious and that is the food that a vegetable garden yields. Many health experts, dieticians and nutritionists all agree on one principle when it comes to eating healthy and that is to ingest plenty of vegetables. Vegetables are filled with all of the nutrients, vitamins and minerals your body requires in order to function and the best part is most of them are calorie free.

A vegetable garden provides you the ability to grow your own nutrition and the freedom to pick and choose specifically which vegetables you like. For instance I am not a big fan of cauliflower so I do not include it in my garden. However, I absolutely love spinach and therefore I have 5 spinach plants going. As a side note, by growing your own food you also will save money at the grocery store, and saving money is something we can all agree on.

But what about the exercise part of gardening? How does that fit (no pun intended) in? In vegetable gardening there is a lot of bending, stretching and moving, all of which help your muscles, and of course aids in burning more calories.

My vegetable garden is about eleven feet by eleven feet, give or take a few inches. I do not use any power tools what so ever. Everything is cultivated by hand. Throughout the year I am constantly working my soil by burying food waste for compost and turning the soil over to keep it well aerated. This might not seem like much but it is great exercise.

I am using tools that have some weight to them, the dirt I am lifting adds even more weight, and because it takes a good hour to completely turn my garden over, trust me, I am getting some great exercise in.

Then comes planting season, where I have to do a lot of bending down, to put the seeds in the soil, lay down my weed barrier and of course add in mulch and compost. All of these tasks are physically demanding, are great forms of exercise, and help me break a sweat.

Vegetable gardening is a fun and rewarding hobby but it also can be one that you can incorporate into your physical fitness routine. I won抰 guarantee that it will get you prepared or in shape for the next Olympic Games or make you a professional athlete, but I can guarantee that you will break a sweat and get some great exercise in.