So I blogged yesterday that I am now wearing a pedometer to try to do 10000 steps a day in order to lose my post baby blubber. So how did I do?
Well by lunchtime I'd done 2500 steps after what seemed to be a busy non-stop morning (I only sat down for 20 minutes to feed Maisy). After lunch is siesta time which I use to do paperwork, my TEFL course, company accounts, blog a little, read SFN, do my online shopping and feed or play with Maisy so that is quiet sitting down time.
At 3.30 the girls woke up so I took them out for a reasonable walk around the Wharf - this doubled my step count up to 5000 roughly. This walk is limited somewhat by the tiny legs of the 3 year old although I have now adapted my pushchair to have a buggyboard scooter on the back which allows her to freeride some of the time though turning corners is tricky (pushchair weighs 10kilo, Izzy 10kilo, Jasmine 10kilo) so that is some 30 kilo which needs manouvring round, up and over bridges and past city bankers (was careful not to mistake the b for a w there).
Hang on a minute - airline workers aren't even allowed to lift that much weight and I push it round all day - surely that must be burning something?
Anyway next up was dinner, bathtime & clearing up routine and by the time I went to bed I was up to 6500 steps. Significantly short of my 10,000 steps even though I'd been active most of the day and been on 2 reasonable outings.
It has shown however that whilst I am busy in the apartment - having no stairs (we're on the 18th floor so I use the lift) means if I don't go out much or don't go very far then I hardly do sufficient activity in a day to support a normal calorie intake.
So today I intended to do much more - I went to the Post Office, had a little walk around the shopping centre and along the dockside, came back for lunch and I'm only at 2210 steps! I actually did more when I was running around the apartment tidying, ironing and cleaning than going out for a walk - this surprised me somewhat.
I'm now planning on taking the girls out for a longer walk this afternoon to increase my step count although I did get invited for a play date for the girls which means tea & biscuits rather than toning and burning! Oh the dilemma - to hob nob or not to hob nob?!
I'm going to stick with it though as it is quite motivating (as I said before I'm a nunbers geek) - previous other forms of geekiness include, obsessing about calorie count on MyFitnessPal or many moons ago - trying to burn as many calories as possible in a session on the running machine.
I tried calorie counting again recently but that seemed to have little effect even though I managed to stay within the recommended intake for a feeding mum and as I'm unable to offload my 3 gorgeous girlies on Daddy for half an hour (he's stressed enough with work as it is - this could push him over the edge) a session in the gym is out of the question...so I'm going to stick with the step counting method as a means of slimming down.
My revised aim for the end of this week is to reach the 8,000 steps mark, I doubt it will happen today but it will be interesting to see how many steps I manage on Friday when we fly back to France after a normal day's activities.
I'm also intrigued now to see how many steps I take in a typical day in our home back in France where we tend to go for a walk in the vines every day with the girls and I have 3 flights of stairs to go up & down all day.
10,000 steps seems a long way off at the moment!