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Home and gardening, wave goodbye to treadmills, weights and regimented exercise programs and get in shape in your own backyard. You don't need a gym to keep you fit and sexy if you have a garden.

The fitness gospel has long preached the virtues of exercising in sweaty gyms and ugly Lycra, but there is another option. Experts agree that a regular dose of gardening promotes a sense of well-being, raises your fitness levels and makes you look sexy.

According to Dr. Steven Palmer, Director of the Center for Stress Management and a professor at City University, gardening is an excellent form of stress management and therapy. Dr. Alison Joy, a physician, agrees. She says, "People love gardening and there's very little injury involved".

Gardening is rarely promoted as a form of exercise but regular, energetic and varied sessions in the open air offer the perfect workout for men and women. In fact, according to the latest research, digging burns about double the calories per minute of a more commonly endorsed form of exercise, such as biking. Even more startling, is the discovery that aerobics is less of a calorie-burner than a vigorous session of digging. Other gardening tasks are also good sources of weight loss - hedge trimming burns more calories than cycling, and mowing outstrips biking and aerobics. Believe it or not, a job as banal as raking leaves can actually qualify as a cardiovascular activity - but it has to do with heavy raking.

Yet no-one talks about the huge health benefits that gardening brings. It is definitely a calorie-burner and the beauty of it is that it's a bit like a game of golf, whether you're gardening at 18 or 90, the health and psychological benefits are the same.

Research also shows that more people prefer to spend time in their garden than go to the pub or play golf. For some, the garden holds more appeal than even the bedroom - an astonishing one in four women prefers her garden than sex.

The beauty of gardening is that anybody can do it. Unlike the bleak, goal challenging rigors of the gym, gardening is great fun. For some, gardening is more productive than going to the gym. It is less sweaty and it makes you feel on the top of the world. Even so, it's vital not to overdo things by approaching your garden in a frenzied manner, hell-bent on transforming it from a rubbish dump to a metropolitan Eden in a matter of hours.

Like any sports, gardening can cause injury. "It's all boils down to techniques", explains Nigel Wallace of the Fitness Industry Association. "Most people don't bend their knees but their backs." "The worst thing in lifting pots or logs is to bend forward in a standing position", say osteopath Leo Meyer. "It puts enormous strain on the spine. Bend your knees, keep the pots as close to your body as possible and avoid lifting with your back bent."

Variety - mowing for a few minutes and raking the leaves next - is the best way to avoid injury. It's also great for all-around body conditioning.

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