Friday, February 3, 2012

My Fitness Pals

In an effort to drop some "baby" weight and to win The Biggest Loser at work, I've joined the free site www.myfitnesspal.com. You can debit your calories and credit your workouts. I keep up with my intake all day long, via apps and internet.

The calorie debit is amazing--search by brand name and someone has likely already entered its nutritional information. However, the workout part lists all types of stuff I wouldn't do--jog, run, dance, strength train. I do walk, and that combined with limited portion has led to me tying for lead with another coworker in the contest. This week may be different, though, as I have packed in a LOT of extra calories.

That is, of course, if the calories I burn from extreme parenting truly burn what I think they do.

Today, I picked B up from school and took him and Bronchitis-ridden G grocery shopping. G has been his normal self most of the day, with the occasional need for an extra snuggle. As soon as I strapped him into the double seat cart next to his big bro, he announced, "I don't want cart." Uh oh.

"G, you have to ride, baby. I can't hold you and push the cart."

"I want Binky." If his godparents are reading this, they are guffawing. They have not seen a binky in his mouth for a year and a half, and they see him five days a week. Even when he stays overnight at their house, he's binky-free. At home, different story. He gets it at night...and when he finds one.

"I'll get you a binky right now if you ride in the cart." Usually I do not bargain. I have shopped for thirty minutes with a screaming 2 year old strapped into a Food Lion cart. The kid is sick, though, and he needed some type of comfort.

Full blown meltdown. "Mama, hold me! Mama, I want you! Please, Mama!" Tears, tears, tears.

We live 30 minutes from town. I was not going back. Desperate times.

I switched the double cart for a regular, and had the 7 year old push. We hightailed it to the baby section where I snatched the $1.97 set of pacifiers, opened it right then and popped one in G's mouth while reassuring B that it was OK to do this instead of waiting until we paid. One day, I'll show him the people of Walmart site, and he'll forget all about my irresponsible consumer habits. After burning calories from that run and arguemnt, I moved to more cardiovascular: catching the cart before B rammed a fellow customer, carrying a 26 pound child while tossing groceries in the cart, backtracking to retrieve items forgotten, and sweating from the stress of it all. I'm sure I burnt a serious amount of calories.

My friend Whit posted that a warm bath burns 130 calories and watching tv burns 92 calories an hour. I think I might work in a second workout tonight.

Take that, Fitness Pal.

2 comments:

  1. Maybe you want to rent Baby G out for the weekend! Just an idea... Love you, man!

    ReplyDelete