Duh - burning calories

Today I met up with our former neighbor and her new baby, Blake.  Jen and her husband moved to NYC a few years ago, but coincidentally Blake and Riley were born on the very same day! This was our first chance to get the two of them together, swap stories and take tres' cute photos.

Jen is about 5 inches taller than me, and has always been super slender, especially compared to me.  So it wasn't a surprise to see that while I'm still in clothes a size or two larger than what was hanging in my closet pre-baby, she has not only lost all the weight but appears to be even more slender thanks to new baby stress and lack of sleep.

We were talking about this and how each of us has or has not regained our bodies.  And it occured to us...on a daily basis, she just has so much more walking in her life.  She wasn't surprised that I was hitting the trail with the baby in her jogging stroller, knowing how much I miss triathlon and being active.  I might get in an hour walk or run with Riley each day (and not always every day, unfortunately).  But then I jump in the car to go the 2miles to the grocery store, and the mile to the post office and the 3miles to the book store, etc...  Meanwhile, Jen might not be doing true workouts, but she is putting in as many if not more miles than I am simply by living in New York.  As she told me today, just to take her son to the pediatrician requires a two mile walk.

It's silly that I hadn't really processed it before.  But in our little suburb, the trail is a block away, and so I do my workouts but I'm not "going anywhere".  It's not intuitively obvious that I could walk to the store and just do shopping for today.  Or walk to the post office to buy stamps.  Arlington is a pedestrian friendly city, in that there are sidewalks and trails everywhere.  You just don't see people using them as transportation as opposed to workouts, so it doesn't naturally occur to me.  Now I'm going to try...