I want you to know right off the top that I peel my own carrots and chop my own cabbage and that yes, I am a better man for it. How come, you ask? Well, according to at least one fitness researcher, modern conveniences — even such tiny ones as buying peeled baby carrots — deprive us of activities that go toward making us fit. Or at least, less unfit.

And that’s why you should wash your own spinach and clean your own radishes. Indeed, that’s why you should throw away your automatic garage door opener. Just think of the exercise you get clambering out of the car on a rainy night and hoisting that heavy door. Better than a Pilates class. (Yes, I open my garage door by hand but that’s because I lost the automatic opener two years ago.)

It seems that if you are looking to burn some calories and tone some muscle, you can forget about the gym and concentrate on the house. Take instant food to start: don’t buy pre-formed hamburger patties, make your own. And if you really want some meaningful exercise, grind your own beef. And grind your own coffee beans. By hand. And beat your own eggs — by hand. And unplug that electric can opener.

Without bragging, let me tell you that I do most of my kitchen work by hand. I do have a fancy food processor but it is so fancy that I am afraid of it. Every so often I take it out and stare at it but it has a collection of cutting disks and knives so menacing that they make me fear for my fingers. Besides, think of the exercise I’m getting.

Physical work is the answer to physical fitness, even in small increments. Although you would have to peel a lot of carrots to match the calorie burning of a construction worker. Or a farmer.

(In my day, I have actually lifted a few weights in a gym and run on a treadmill but I don’t think I have ever seen a spandex-clad farmer on the next machine.)

If you need more exercise than can be found by chopping cabbage in the kitchen you might step outside the house where can be found a wonderful array of conditioning activities: raking the lawn, shovelling the snow, cutting the grass. For years I did all this myself and I thought of myself as fit. But you will notice that I have slipped into the past tense.

The first winter at our present location I failed the snow-shovelling test. Oh, I tried but the driveway is 250 yards and in the first major snowfall I dug maybe 10 feet before I knew I was outmatched. It was either call the plough or lay in a four-month supply of food for winter. We opted for the plough.

I did cut my own grass for several years but then I gave in and bought one of those riding mowers. Yes, I did feel like a quitter. But in my defence I must tell you we are talking about more than two acres of grass.

Those of you who have made it this far might think I am talking through my hat when I refer, for example, to peeling your own carrots as a realistic exercise. Which is why I have worked out — all by myself — the following exercise example.

Let us say you brush your teeth morning and night with an electric toothbrush. You burn zero calories. But if you brush by hand you burn 10 calories. Piffle, you say.

And that’s where you are wrong. Ten calories a day equal seventy a week and a wonderful 3,500 a year. And that’s a whole pound lost. And not just one pound. If your life expectancy is, let us say, 80 years, that works out to 80 pounds lost. What a diet.

I think we could probably apply the same logic (a word I use loosely) to carrot-peeling and cabbage-chopping. These are things I do and things that I know are good for me and work to my benefit.

Which makes it very hard for me to figure out why I am still 25 pounds overweight. Maybe I’m going to have to ditch those homemade hamburger patties and start eating those damn carrots.