You often hear people speculate that stay-at-home mums probably spend most of their days on the sofa watching endless episodes of Peppa Pig and drinking gallons of (cold) tea - so when Graco recently challenged me to use a Fitbit and find out just how much exercise I get in an average day as a work-from-home mum, I was kind of nervous! What if my results were really embarrassing and I struggled to reach even 1,000 steps?! Our house isn't particularly big, and Tyne's school is too far away to walk to (it'd be a good hours walk along winding country roads with no pavement in most parts and lots of up and down hill too! He can barely walk around Asda without complaining, so not really doable!) so I really wasn't sure that I'd get many steps in.
But it turns out, I take FAR more steps in a day than I realised - I clocked in at 8,760 steps! And when you stop and think about it, all of those "little things" you do without thinking about every day - up and down stairs to change nappies, fetch drinks, deliver baby to and from naptime, fetch favorite toys from bedrooms, carry pushchairs in and out of the car, carry bags of shopping in, even walking to and from the car on our street can be a bit of exercise as its rare we can park outside our own house!!...it all adds up.
As part of the Mum Miles campaign, Graco have compiled some research comparing the average day for a new parent and the average day of an office-worker - funnily enough what I was before becoming a mum! - to see who gets the most exercise. So what did the research show?
Research shows that new parents spend an average of nearly eight hours a day on their feet, with nearly a third (30%) spending more than 10 hours on their feet each day. This is equivalent to walking nearly a whole marathon (20.5 miles) each week. In comparison, office workers who regularly hit the gym lead a much more sedentary lifestyle, spending an average of just five hours a day on their feet with nearly half of those polled (46%) spending less than four hours a day up and about.
There’s not much down time to be had with almost two fifths of new parents (39%) only finding time to relax and put their feet up once a week or less. Comparatively, office workers spend on average six hours each day sitting down.
On a normal day, parents can carry up to 6kg so when this is combined with the additional weight of a baby, this tots up to over 17.5kg –the equivalent of lugging around a heavy suitcase! This compares to the 5kgs that an office workers could be carrying around on an average day. In addition, parents carry their little ones for approximately two and a half hours each day with nearly one in seven (13%) spending over four hours each day carrying their bundles of joy. This compares to the average 41 minutes per session an office worker spends lifting weights.
Tanith Carey, life coach and author of Parenting Hacks has some useful tips to make life easier for parents. Here are my favourites:
To give you the ultimate freedom to get out of the house whether you’re on a day-out, shopping, or climbing stairs, choose a lightweight pushchair. At 3.6kg, the Graco Featherweight is about the weight of an average newborn baby, and suitable from birth to 15kgs or approximately three years
We've just tested out the Graco Featherweight on a trip we took and I'll be sharing our thoughts on it very soon! Keep an eye out over the coming days!
Before you head out shopping with your pushchair, make sure you don’t overload yourself by snapping a picture of the inside of your fridge on your phone so you have an instant visual reminder of what you do – and don’t need – to buy. This will save you time and money on unnecessary shopping!
How genius is this tip and why have I never thought of it before?!!!
Go Shopping at the quietest times. With young children, you’re more likely to be up earlier than the rest of the adult population. Or better still, if you have a partner who’s at home, go at night when the kids are in bed to avoid stress, tantrums and bored kids.
This is something I tend to do, I usually send Jon out at night time with a list...it takes half the time it would with the kids in tow and usually costs a lot less too without tiny tearaways throwing all kinds of rubbish into the trolley!
I hope you've found the research and Tanith's tips as interesting and helpful as I have, and don't forget to keep a look out for my review of the Graco Featherweight coming very soon!
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