You've seen the videos [even if only in Woolworths]. Mothers are supposed to emerge from hospital, leap into a leotard and start toning up. Even in pregnancy they are not allowed to let their guard down, but are warned about the dangers of not doing their pelvic floor exercises. You want to look like you can manage work, stay up all night looking after sick children and still seem vaguely together, but how? Never fear, Working Mums is here to give you a hand.
1. It's hard to remember to do pelvic floor exercises at the best of times and particularly masochistic to do them in the immediate aftermath of childbirth. The best way to make sure you do them is to associate them with a pleasurable activity such as watching Eastenders. It has to be something you do regularly; not something like ironing.
2. Image is all. Wear sports gear or stuff with sporty names. Decorate yourself in sweatbands. Get a sporting brand name carved into your hair or tattooed on your eyebrow. Be one of those people who comes into work in trainers and changes into power shoes. People will think you have jogged in. Boast about going swimming at the weekend. No-one need know that this involves very little actual swimming and mostly boils down to holding a clinging toddler or pretending to be a mean sharkie.
3. Talk about your children's sporty activities loudly and in detail. Do not let on in any way that you are merely a spectator.
4. Recall occasions in the distant past when you had time to go to the gym, do dance classes, do aerobics etc [even if you only went once and never returned again]. Make it sound like it was last week.
5. Do you really need to do any sport anyway with the amount of time you spend running up and down stairs in the morning and rushing to places? Surely, you need to eat cake rather than watch an exercise video?
6. Remember that no amount of vitamin pills is going to save you from child-borne illnesses. Savour the most exotic ones and talk them up. Play down the minor ones, particularly the ones with attached "non-particular rashes". Your colleagues need never know that it was you who gave it to them.
7. No time to do exercise? This is where children come in very handy. Turn the tidying up into some sort of team obstacle course. Divide the family into groups. You can lead one. See who can do it the quickest. You will not only have a clean house, but also feel you have done your bit for keeping fit. This is particularly effective if you let the house get into a really terrible state before you start the exercise.
8. Get a dog. It will be the making of you. Okay, so you don't fancy getting everyone up an hour early so you can take it for a walk in the rain? No-one ever said getting fit was going to be easy. Alternatively, get a cat and watch it lie around all day. You will feel so much fitter by comparison.
9. Don't read any children's medical books. They will make you feel at death's door as soon as you look at the symptom sorter and follow the trail of arrows which all mysteriously seem to point to some sort of fatal illness and require an urgent trip to A and E.
10. Who are you kidding? Having children and working is a whole exercise form in itself. Put your feet up and watch your colleagues sweating through the lunchhour. You know you have had more training in stamina than anyone on any kind of training regime could ever dream of.
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