Burn baby burn

So in my efforts to return to my pre-pregnancy weight, I've been learning more about calorie consumption and expenditure. There are lots of fancy calculators online where you enter in your weight and how long you did an activity and then it tells you how many calories you burned.

Some of the activities are ridiculously exact ("laying crushed rock") and some are just outright bizarre ("caulking, except a log cabin") but I've noticed that they all seem to have one thing in common: they don't take into consideration the extreme multi-tasking that a mom of 3 deals with on a daily basis.

To help out any of you fellow moms who might find yourselves in need of a more realistic list of daily activities in your calorie burn calculator, I offer you the following.

Sweeping floors, 30 minutes - 157 calories

Sweeping floors while jiggling a fussy baby on your hip, 30 minutes - 183 calories

Sweeping floors while jiggling a fussy baby on your hip and dodging two children and a dog playing tag, 30 minutes - 204 calories

Putting away laundry, 30 minutes - 110 calories

Putting away laundry with the help of children who need to be reminded every 30 seconds about the job at hand and how it has nothing to do with punching anyone or playing with Lego, 30 minutes - 159 calories (just call it 318, though, since you know it's going to take twice as long)

Cooking, 30 minutes - 95 calories

Cooking while wearing baby in a sling, 30 minutes - 117 calories (add 20 calories if baby is nursing)

Cooking while wearing baby in a sling with the "help" of two children, 30 minutes - 155 calories

Food shopping, 30 minutes - 110 calories

Food shopping in the bulk foods section with a curious 4 year old, 30 minutes (if you can last that long) - 259 calories

Sexual activities, 30 minutes - 62 calories

Sexual activities requiring climbing two flights of stairs and locking the door to hide from the children, 30 minutes - 89 calories (add 10 calories if you had to make an extra effort to be quiet)

Before you ask, no I don't have any scientific backings on any of these numbers, only many hours of practical study. Far too many (well, except maybe for that last one).

Looking at my ultra-reliable chart here might lead one to believe that pregnancy weight should just come flying off in a house of our activity level, but there's an intricate equation which relates the level of daytime stress to the level of evening chocolate consumption. But that's the makings of a whole other blog entry...