Working Out Was Never So Easy

With only 12 weeks left until SSB and I go to the Cayman Islands with our friends M & V, it is time to get serious about getting in shape. Apparently the imminent arrival of my 40th birthday has not been enough of a motivator . . . but being in a swimsuit for one week solid hopefully will be. This means less eating and more exercising because bulimia is a lot harder to develop than you'd think.

I've read that keeping a food diary is key to weight loss. My sister told me about fitday.com a while ago and I've used it from time to time but not consistently enough to do much good. SSB and I logged on today and started the ball rolling.

It isn't just a food log, they have EVERYTHING!! You can put in weight and nutrition goals and track your mood, weight, measurements, and activities and it will spit out graphs and reports. My favorite part is where you put in how many minutes you participated in an activity and it will tell you how many calories it burned. And they have TONS of activities in there. You can even put in taking a shower and toweling off. This is IN ADDITION TO the basic calories you burn just by being alive. Score! I never realized that good hygiene was an exercise.

I'm all for keeping track of how many calories I burned and not so much on what I ate. Like I popped a few of Bunny's wheat-free pretzels in my mouth but I'm not gonna tell fitday about it. And if I did I would probably tell them it was 3, not 12. However, if I talked on the phone while standing for 10 minutes that would definitely get recorded.

This morning I started scouring the different categories looking for anything I could count as exercise. I skipped all the Walking, Running, Biking, and Fishing and Hunting categories because that would just be a waste of my time. Ditto for the Water and Winter activities. I knew I didn't go snow shoeing yet today. My pot of gold was lying in the Miscellaneous (reading while sitting) and Inactivity (watching TV while sitting quietly) and Home (reclining with baby) categories.

That Home category is my best bet. Just the "carrying small child" and "putting away household items" activities are going to take up most of my minutes. Listen to all the stuff you do every day that you can record as fat busters: vacuuming, watering plants, mopping, child care, elder care, cleaning house or cabin (cleaning a trailer or houseboat apparently doesn't get you squat), washing dishes, washing the dog, playing with children and animals (those are separate but they burn the same amount in case you're wondering), knitting, and making a bed just to name a few. Its awesome. According to this marvelous website I am a calorie burning MACHINE!! (My thighs tell a different story but I'm not listening to that one.)

Admittedly, I don't do a lot of knitting so that one is probably out. And there are others in that category that I will also not be participating in, although I'm sure they just melt the fat away. These include maple syruping/sugar bushing, cooking Indian bread on an outdoor stove and butchering animals.

What the?? How did those categories even make it onto the list? I'm thinking the only people who routinely go sugar bushing and cook bread outside and butcher animals are Quakers, Amish and Mennonites and they don't even have computers to track their activities on anyway. I think some list-compiling employee over at fitday needs to have a little more supervision.

I'm going to take advantage of all the other ridiculous ones though. Playing cards, food shopping with or without a cart, and changing a light bulb are all getting written down. Oh, and they don't have playing Rock Band on there but they do have a whole category for music playing and I'm thinking its just the same thing so I should be a size 3 in no time.

Due to interruptions it has taken me 2 full hours to blog this relatively short post. And that, my friends, is an easy 210 calories burned.