The computer thinks I'm fat

Once a year, I have to take an online health assessment.  You know, tell a computer program how much I weigh, how happy I am, how stressed I am, how much sleep I'm getting, how many days I'm ill, you get the drift.  The computer program churns all my answers and basically spits out a plan to "help" me with my health problems. Or something like that.  Most of the time, it's a bunch of crap. It's all stuff that I already know I need to do, just don't care to.  An algorithm that spits out motivational tidbits is very unlikely to change my mind.  Well, most of them time. Sometimes it does come up with something useful.  Nonetheless, it's 90% annoying, but I put up with it because I like the rewards I can reap by taking said assessment, including a healthy-sized candy bar that a colleague usually issues as bait.  Ohhhhh chocolate.

I digress.

Anyway, I took the survey today, and it told me that my weight was very concerning. According to this application, I needed to start thinking about weight loss 3 months after I've had my baby.  Ummmm....what?  ENTER ANGRY HORMONES!!!  I'm about 5 pounds above my baseline weight right now, and exclusively breastfeeding...is it really unreasonable to carry that extra 5 pounds around???  I dunno, I'm pretty sure (at the rate of my metabolism, and the rate of weight loss since the birth), that a few more pounds will go away in the next few months.  Besides, on days that I eat less than usual (like cutting out snacks or reducing carbs) I actually feel SICK to my stomach.  That and I see consequences with my milk supply. LAME RECOMMENDATION.

Ok, next item of irritation.  It asks me how stressed I am.  'Nuff said.  

Then it asks me about sleep, as it's determined that insomnia is one of my "problems" and asks me to identify what the trigger is. Oh wait.  There's no box for "I have a six month old who thinks my boob is a 24 hour friggin' buffet."  So I check the box that says "none of the above."  Oh, I don't have an actual problem now.  Hmmm.... So helpful.

I'm not even going to go into the details of the "physical activity" section.  It's just irritating.

After it thinks about my answers, it basically comes up with a composite score of how good my health is.  I see that it's dropped from "good" (last year) to "fair" (this year). I can't help thinking that while that may be true (I am more stressed, more fat, less awake, less active), I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life.  I don't know many people who can say their health has declined, but can say they're glad it's happened. There's something to be said about the power of our children - everything can be bad bad bad, but at the end of the day, none of the bad measures up to the good.

Someday, I'll change my health behavior.  But not today.  My son is crying in his crib while I type away on this keyboard.  It's gonna be a long night.