Dear Better Homes and Gardens,
This month's issue being an After-Holidays issue, there's a lot of column space dedicated to getting in shape. There's also a spread of twelve different cakes to try for Valentine's Day, but I mention that only in passing. In your "Healthy You" section, you outline how to develop a regular walking-for-exercise habit. You suggest that for motivation I enter a charity 5K walk, or contact the humane society for volunteer dog-walking. To banish any lingering grumbles, your fitness expert addresses the usual excuses not to exercise: Too Tired, No Time, Not Enough Time For Extended Workout... She fells them with easy, doable solutions.
"Got any more exercise excuses?" Well, yes. Three of them, actually.
I have Kids, something that never seems to intrude in your blissful exercise plans. Have you ever tried to exercise with kids, BH&G? I have. Kids don't settle back and leave you to your exercise; they get involved. The six-year-old flings around leg-stretches that would prove fatal if you tried it yourself. The five-year-old talks constantly about what good exercise he's doing are you watching Mama see what I'm doing I'm exercising see Mama? And the one-year-old thinks it's high fun when Mama starts to do situps, and plops herself on your tummy, bounces, and tries to stick her foot in your mouth. Try doing that ten minutes, three times a day.
And walking. Have you ever tried to walk for exercise with kids, BH&G? I have. It impacts my parenting negatively.
There is never a time during my day when I have just the baby to throw in the stroller. That's one of the downsides of homeschooling, I suppose. Or maybe the people in your world have an on-demand nanny service. Me, I'm lucky to get out of the house by 9 p.m. just to walk around the block three times.
Not that I begrudge your cheery advice. It must be nice to be oblivious.
Got any more suggestions?
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8 comments:
Dear Better Homes & Gardens,
WHAT SHE SAID.
Love, Swistle
Amen, sistah. And I only have two, AND a double stroller which I could *THEORETICALLY* strap them both in whilst walking cheerfully around the neighborhood.
This NEVER works. The last time I tried we got attacked by a dog.
I wonder if the author has any bright ideas for convincing a two-year-old who has her own ideas about how she wants to travel to a) stay in the stroller or b) walk in the same direction I want to walk at something resembling a reasonable pace.
This also assumes that I live in a neighborhood that I would want to walk around in for pleasure. I do now, but our last neighborhood? Definitely not. I think those sorts of articles are written for stay-at-home mothers living in rich suburbs in Southern California who have regular babysitters. Which is of course what all of our lives are like.
Yes, an article on How To Exercise With Kids would be far more helpful. Shorter, though, because it would say this:
"If you have children who are too old (or too stubborn) to sit in a stroller, then your exercise routine is likely to be interrupted. Your best option is to hire somebody to babysit them while you exercise. For a free option, have your partner watch the children. Just realize that it will be harder for you to lose weight while you're in this stage of life. You're just doomed to be overweight and pudgy. That's what you get for having kids."
Of course, they wouldn't SAY that last part.
Ugh, I detest articles like that. I just keep telling myself that it is written by a power editor/journalist working in New York that has a Nanny at home, a husband in another city and a boyfriend in the next apartment. This writer takes a car service to work, has time for 400$ haircuts and has not cooked a meal in eons. Of course she can come up with ways around all our "excuses".
Well thats what I say to make myself feel better anyways!
Hrm... Maybe those cake recipes are good?
They were Very Good cake recipes. The full-page, close-up photo of the citrus cake, where you can see the actual spongy texture of the cake, does not make you want to eat an apple or cucumber to fill you up instead.
Amen!
I only have the one toddler now so it's easy to bring her to the gym and let her play in the childcare room, but what happens when there's two or THREE? And what happens when they're in that in between stage of being too old to drop off in the daycare but too young to leave home alone.
Oh, woe BH&G, very woe.
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