My office currently has a load of fundraising chocolates for sale. If I take the stairs to make a purchase (rather than go via the lift), have I earned it? I hate to think how many flights of stairs I’d need to climb to burn the kilojoules in a big Freddo frog.

A colleague reassured me that I burn kilojoules going downstairs again. Thanks for that, but I suspect I’d need the chockies to be further than 1 flight of stairs away.

Eat an apple instead? Or maybe only one almond would cover it?

What the hell – life’s for living right?

Hooray: We finished the Premier’s Active Families challenge. Or at least, the boys and I did – Superhubby didn’t exactly get over the line, but you could say he supported me so that I got over the line – only scraped in though – you could say he’s a team player!

It is certainly satisfying to have taken up the Challenge and achieved it, and also feels good to be that bit more active. Guess the question now is, what next? Seems like we will need a new healthy/active lifestyle goal to pursue, especially with Winter and shorter days drawing me (in particular) along the well-trodden path towards the couch. My new-ish YMCA gym membership through work will be a good starting place.

Our family is about half way through the Premier’s Active Families Challenge, and are facing a challenge of a different sort: how to stay active and find sufficient time to eat enough chocolate to sink a ship.

We are getting better at planning something active to do as a family on the weekends, but this past long weekend, we’ve managed to over-compensate for our increased physical activity with massive chocolate consumption. It’s demoralising to calculate the amount of exercise it takes to burn off an Easter egg – even a small one – so what’s the best way to console oneself? Eat more chokky, of course.

We’re a week into the Active Families Challenge and doing ok – I’d be interested to put on a pedometer for my ‘at home with the kids’ days and compare my activity levels with ‘work sitting on butt in office’ days.

This week we’ve done walks to the playground, I’ve done a group walk (with trainer) at work at lunchtime, gone to the gym and been to the pool with the kids. Superhubby has mainly done walks in the evenings and the kids have run about at creche and kinder, walked, played and swam.

My trip to collect two kids from creche started as a 7 min walk to get there (me pushing a stroller) and took about 40 mins to get back (our 2 year olds love to walk for themselves), including an unavoidable stop at the playground. Not exactly efficient, but probably better all round than hopping in the car.

Let’s see what next week brings – hopefully lots of beach time during the Easter break, weather permitting.

We’ve started the Active Families Challenge. On day one, Superhubby and Number 1 (aged 4) were at some friends’ beach house, so spent many of the daylight hours swimming at the beach. Meanwhile, Number 2 (aged 2), Number 3 (also aged 2) and I took a walk to see the ducks (pity there weren’t any) and play at a well-placed playground. Naturally, I arranged our walking route so that we also had a morning coffee stop – now that’s a habit I would find really hard to change.

Today, day two, turned into a scorcher so the whole crew set off for the pool mid-afternoon, just as the temperature was peaking. The kids loved the pool – splashing, jumping, throwing rings and fetching them over and again. Judging by the amount they ate for dinner and the rare ease with which we got them to stay in bed, they had a good workout. I don’t know that I could say the same for Superhubby and I, but we did our share of lifting and swooshing as well as lots of floating about not doing much.

Seems getting activity in on the weekends/public holidays isn’t too hard to manage – let’s see how we go during the week.

So we’ve decided to do the ‘Premier’s Active Families Challenge’ – or rather, I’ve decided it would be a good motivator, Super Hubby is ok with it and the kids don’t yet know anything about it. The deal is we’re being challenged to be active for a minimum of 30 minutes every day for 6 weeks.

Shouldn’t be that hard, surely?

But what’s “active”? Does it count if the kids (our eldest is 4 and our twins are 2) have unstructured outdoor play in the backyard, at the playground or at creche? I hope so. Does it count for me if I chase them around playgrounds, climbing up to the top of slides, up rockclimbing walls with them? I hope so. I plan to take bike rides (with and without a little passenger), run alongside Number 1 riding his bike, and take brisk walks. I’ve recently joined our workplace gym that has reciprocal membership arrangements with another gym close to home.

So it shouldn’t be that hard, right? Let’s see! One week until start up time.

You would be right for saying ‘doh’ – I’ve finally taken a look at what goes in our rubbish bin and have to admit, it’s pretty appalling. Not because it’s smelly and kind of gross, but because there’s so much there that just need not be there.

What’s prompted my ‘fresh take’ on something that’s anything but fresh? An article in the Sunday Life magazine by Paul Connolly about his family’s effort to avoid creating rubbish for a week. The Connolly family don’t count anything which can be recycled, composted or worm farmed and planned ahead to reduce their rubbish, but were still surprised by packaging which they hadn’t anticipated getting – plastic used to wrap newspapers, plastic sleeves for mailing newsletters, even plastic seals on jars of jam.

If you took a look in our rubbish bin, (not that I’d recommend it) you’d find loads of non-compostable food the kids didn’t want (and I stupidly put out), wrappers for food we probably shouldn’t eat anyway – muesli bars, chockies, biscuits. And tonnes of disposable nappies.

If that isn’t bad enough, the amount of recycling we put out for collection each fortnight makes me shudder – sure, it’s being recycled, but that also takes energy and much of the recyclable waste is also unnecessary. Last week I bought little boxes of sultanas for the kids – a little box for each tiny handful of sultanas – sure it’s recyclable, but it’s also a waste. Then there are the icy poles, each in its own wrapper and with its own stick – again – they’re recyclable and compostable but not often reused. We have yoghurt tubs, containers of tinned fruit, milk cartons, juice bottles galore. I’d be interested to learn roughly how much energy it takes to recycle the average wheelie-bin load of recyclable stuff and be able to compare that to, say, kms travelled in a car or kms flown by plane, hours of using a light globe.

 Clearly my shopping habits have to change. While I’m not about to denounce supermarkets entirely, I’m fully confident I can cut back on both rubbish and recyclables without much pain at all. Thanks for the inspiration Paul! 

There’s a first time for everything and this is my first blog. Reminds me of having a diary as a teenager, but a) there’s going to be no mention of kissing pimple-faced boys and b) blogging is actually about talking to other people, not just navel gazing, right?

I can really see how we could use social media more in my organisation, not so much as a substitute for other media, but as a way to reach a particular group of our people and talk to them in a way that suits them.  If using some social media tools helps us to get some of our people more keen on what’s happening at work, sharing their ideas and getting more involved, it’s got to be worth dipping our toes in the water. But we want to be sure we don’t assume people who aren’t gen x or gen y won’t be interested.

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