Fitness Programme for Busy Mummy's

So, recently I have received a few lovely comments about my figure and how quickly I lost the baby weight. I do have a healthy diet and I have a mainly vegetarian diet. I have also been doing some morning routine exercises for toning using the Abs Trimmer. Yes I know cheating but I have just never been able to master the full independent sit up. Even when training with the best some years ago prior to children I had to have him holding down my feet like a 12 year old in gym class.

Regardless of these menial morning exercises, I have to say I attribute most of my weight loss to one key thing:

‘Being an Inefficient Mummy’

Here are a couple of examples from throughout the day of how this works...

It’s breakfast time and I have chopped a couple of bananas and taken them to the table for the children and return to the kitchen to start the second wave of breakfast. Toast into the toaster. The first complaint from the table arrives, the banana is not cut into equal sizes, so I go and collect the plate, apologise for the mistake. I cut it again, this time being sure to be more attentive to the detail. I return it to the table. I retreat to the kitchen and take the toast from the toaster and collect the butter and jam from the fridge. Felicity spots the strawberry jam she initially requested and decides, as is her prerogative, she would prefer ‘orange jam’ so I go back to the fridge to collect the no bits marmalade. I apply the orange jam and provide the toast at the feast. They need water... I go back to the kitchen and get them water. I’ve received my next complaint; the water is not cold enough so I go back to the kitchen and replenish with the Dyln water and return to the table.

Now I will not go on about breakfast because it will consume my post as it could last up to 4/5 ‘waves’ in our house. However, my point is that if we say there are around 10 steps from the kitchen to the dining area, then by rough calculations I have already done over 100 steps in the space of about 5 minutes.

Then other basic tasks like I forgot to grab socks for Edward out of his drawer so I run upstairs. Unfortunately, I cannot miss the messy beds, which look like 10 teenagers were over for a slumber party. I decide I could quickly change the children’s bedding. Now this one is an excellent ‘Inefficiency Exercise’ as this one is laborious too, especially as I have managed to shrink the fitted sheets for both beds and have to use full force biceps to stretch them over the mattress, then end up doing squats on and off the bed to flatten the mattress back to being flat. It reminds me of that scene from Cinderella when the ugly sisters squeeze into the clearly too small glass slipper. I have to be thorough with this as I’m pretty sure someone could lose an eye if a corner was to come loose (obviously a joke and yes I have new trusty Mothercare sheets on order). The key to this exercise is to tense the stomach throughout to add a little extra toning.

I go back down stairs with the sheets to be washed and put a load on. I then go back to the living room to continue the epic mission of getting everyone dressed and out of the door to realize I have forgotten the bloody socks. Back up the stairs again.

I’ve now decided that Felicity’s trousers don’t completely match her top and so I go back upstairs.

Anyway, I’ve now added around 60 more hill steps and a bit of resistance training to my ‘Inefficiency Work Out Programme’. Everyone is at the front door ready to leave and I note the trail of toys that follow, so for my next exercise I introduce the ‘Toy Swing Squats’, which is probably more of an efficient exercise adapting the conventional swing squats to using toys rather than a med ball or kettlebell. I work my way along the trail swinging toys to the toy box it’s kind of like a one-person relay doing one toy at a time back and forth.

Anyway, you get the point...

The other exercise in this programme is what I like to call the ‘Strong Man Shop’... First of all, clear your mind. Completely forget that you don’t have the pram with the handy basket because the children are at nursery; yep throw that thought to the far reaches of your mind. Now choose a grocery store at the other end of town from which you parked. Right, load up a trolley with heavy items, for example yesterday was coconut milk, olive oil, chickpeas, watermelon and other random cupboard filling items. Go to the checkout and purchase some very sketchy plastic bags to use. This is the tricky part... you’ve now remembered that you have no pram so it is time to really get to the nitty gritty part of the routine and lift the bags and run through the town back to the car. The key to this one is to alternate weight from one arm to the other, keep your back straight and finally remember to bend your knees with each lift. By the time you’ve reached the car you will have purple lines across your hands and feel a slight burning sensation in your forearms. You’ve done well!

Back to diet. At the beginning I mentioned trying to eat healthily and I have recently cut out all fried foods and a lot of carbohydrates, exceptions to this are devouring anything left on the children’s plates after every meal. Does anyone else have to very consciously stop themselves from doing this? Sometimes, I’m almost willing my children to leave food behind so that I might roll my eyes and take it to the bin and then intervene seconds before it is lost forever and secretly dive behind the counter and stuff my face with left overs.

Anyway, give my programme a go and see the difference for yourself.