Weighing in

I am the lucky member of a small percentage of women who have hyperemesis - meaning that when I am pregnant, I am unbearably crazy sick - usually needing IV fluids just to stay conscious.  It is torture, physical and psychological, for all nine months.  Silver lining?  I lose weight!  With my last pregnancy I lost 20lbs total.   Forced bulimia!  Down side?  I gain it back, despite all of my efforts to keep it off.   It is absolutely unfair.  I mean, the price I pay during all those months should at least buy me the right to a little chocolate now and then! 

And that's where I'm at now eight months after having a baby- watching the scale drift upward in frustrated hopelessness.  Reading articles about how all I need to do is move around for at least 20 min a day to maintain, more to lose.  Move around?  I have five kids!  Unless I'm asleep, I don't stop moving around.  How is that perpetual motion disqualified as weight-fighting movement?  So I try to move more.  With no time to exercise in the traditional way, I have created my own aerobic workout that I should definitely patent.  Here's the gist - while doing dishes, do squats; while folding laundry, jog and do lunges; while dusting, do the chain-step; lift kids for resistance training.  Whatever housework or child-care task needs doing, it can double as a workout!  I could call it Despercise - exercise for the desperate.  Or Momaerobics. Can you just see the informercial for the workout video?  "Get it all done and tighten that butt in just six weeks!"  Seriously, I could make it on Oprah with this one! 

Unfortunately, the scale disagrees that it is a proper workout. Dang!