Tag Archives: determination

The Spider In My Pants

In the here & now, , ,

spider

I’ve got to be honest, it wasn’t just assessment nerves that made me twitchy as I went through class on Tuesday – ridiculous as it sounds, I was convinced there was a spider in my exercise pants. There wasn’t of course, but I swear I could feel something tickling me as I worked my way around. There’s not a whole lot of room inside those pants for stray threads so I pretty much convinced myself that a spider must have crawled inside them in my drawer before I put them on.

The whole time I was obsessing about the non-existent spider in my pants, I was working my way around a circuit training session and for once I didn’t think too much about how much it was hurting because my head had found something new to worry about. My mind joined the dots between the imagined spider in my pants and my forthcoming trek, where the spiders and bugs will be mahoosive. Before I knew it I was obsessing over what would happen if something really did get in my pants, like when we’re camping, you know?

I’m going to be a complete basket case in that jungle, I just know I am. Even in my post-assessment euphoria, as soon as I got home the first thing I did was to run upstairs and make utterly certain that all my walking pants have ties around the ankles so nothing can shimmy up my trouser leg when I’m not looking. I’ve spent hours scouring the internet for deet-infused accessories, and as well as bug spray and bite cream I’ve bought wristbands and anklets which allegedly keep bugs away, and even a mosquito net tailored to fit over my head. Yes, really.

Thing is, to biting insects I’m seemingly very tasty. I don’t know what I’ve got that other folk haven’t – well, apart from considerably more flesh to go at – but they make a beeline for me. None of my fellow trekkers will need to worry about getting bitten because even surrounded by a fog of deet I’ll still be the decoy of the group…mozzies form an orderly queue, your fine dining experience starts here.

I had a very weird dream when I went to bed on Tuesday, about needing a wee in the jungle in the middle of the night, and getting attacked by a legion of bugs when I switch my head torch on and emerge from the sleeping bag. I imagine this marauding band of flying teeth just waiting for me to drop my pants before going in for the kill. I know I’m being a bit of a drama queen but even so…I’m dreading that.

Shall I tell you what I’m not obsessing about though..? The physical elements of the actual trek itself. I’m totally cool with that, in fact I’d go so far as to say I’m not really thinking about it much at all. I mean, of course it’s going to be challenging, and I’m sure there will be plenty of times over the five trekking days when I’m hot and knackered and out of breath with sore feet and aching limbs but you know what, it’s going to be fine. I’ve worked hard and I’m ready. Let’s be honest, in every Fat Furnace class there are moments where I feel like chucking the towel in.

But I never have. As God of Pain would say, going for another second in those moments where you think you can’t is what gives you the shape. It’s every bit as much about mental resilience as it is about physical ability, and I’d like to think that I’ve developed my mental muscles a little bit over the last few months.

We’ve got a practise walk this weekend up in the Lake District…I’m going all out with my new rucksack and my walking poles, not to mention my new Tilley hat which is awesome…two weeks today I’ll be in the air and heading out for the adventure of a lifetime. I can’t wait.

Sod the bugs, right?

 

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Getting My Shkit Together

In the here & now,

list

As I walked into the house on Wednesday evening, having been to the outdoors shop after work with one of my colleagues who’s also doing the trek, my boy did a double-take. I was wearing my brand new trekking hat, and a backpack bursting at the seams with all manner of stuff including a rolled up sleeping mat and walking poles. He found it utterly hilarious…fucking hell mum, have you joined the SAS? Cheeky knacker.

Earlier that day I’d worked my way through the items on my kit list, ticking off all those that I already had…walking boots and socks, check. That was it, the full extent of my trekking-related accessories. Never one to miss a shopping opportunity, when my friend mentioned he was going to get kitted out I jumped at the chance to tag along.

First stop backpacks. So I have a backpack which I’ve used when we’ve done some of our practice walks, but what became apparent as I stood at the head of the backpack aisle surveying acres of bright colours and bungee cords was that mine wasn’t really a backpack at all. I’d thought maybe I could get away with using it, you know surely if it carries stuff and you can sling it over your shoulder it’ll do the job, right? The fact that it’d come free with my laptop was a minor detail.

When I read the bit in our itinerary where it said that for the first three trekking days we don’t have access to our main luggage, and we have to trek carrying everything we’ll need for three days and two nights including a mat to sleep on and a sleeping bag, the penny dropped that perhaps my laptop bag wouldn’t be quite big enough.

I picked out a beautiful bright red one with black webbing and lots of cool gadgets, and it was all going really well until I tried it on and realised that I couldn’t make the straps fasten. Clearly it wasn’t a backpack designed for fat girls, no way were those hip straps going around my midsection…for fucks sake, I’ve been dieting for a year and I can’t fit into a backpack, what’s that all about?

Several attempts later and with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp I finally settled on a green one which had a more generous portion of strap…only just, mind. I’d better not eat any pies before we set off, that’s all I can say. Anyway that was that, and the backpack was quickly joined by a water bladder, sleeping bag, ground mat, walking poles, mosquito net, my hat, two pairs of walking pants, a couple of moisture-wicking tops, and some waterproofs – I had to buy blokes XXL waterproofs which didn’t improve my mood but at least I’ll be dry and fat if we hit a monsoon, right?

I nearly passed out when she totalled it all up – it’s an expensive business this trekking malarkey. Yesterday I added to my pile and stocked up on shit-stoppers, blister plasters, antiseptic spray, sting cream, anti-histamines…the list goes on, and don’t even get me started on having to spend upwards of a hundred and fifty quid on my rabies vaccination, which was a bit of a shock…the tetanus, typhoid, diphtheria and Hep A ones were all free but even so, if I don’t get bitten by a rabid monkey in the next five years I’m going to be well pissed off.

You know what, I’m almost ready. Three weeks today we leave, and I’m feeling organised. My visa arrived yesterday, and I’ve just got a few more odds and ends to buy…I know it’s been an expensive week but I’m still pinching myself at the fact that I’m actually doing this, you know? A year ago I could barely walk from my house to the car, and certainly walking more than a couple of hundred yards was impossible…now look at me.

Knowing I can do this is worth every penny, and knowing that I’m walking to honour the memory of my dad…well, there are some things you can’t put a price on, right?

If you’d like to read my dad’s story and understand why I chose the mental health charity MIND to benefit from every penny of sponsorship money raised, you can follow this link…and if you’re able to help by donating a couple of quid I’d be truly grateful 🙂

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Nothing Happened Here

In the here & now, , , , ,

happy dance

So I’ve got to be honest, waking up with the rocky road spoon in my bed made me laugh out loud, but it also served as a reminder of the way things used to be with me. And along with the spoon came not a small amount of regret for allowing myself to get carried away in the moment, well several moments if we’re being honest. I did some quick mental calculations as to exactly how badly I’d fubar’d and it was a wake-up call…enough now.

The last two days I was fairly sensible. I had to go see the ship’s doctor on Thursday after a miserable day walking around Bergen with earache – well, miserable until 1) I walked into a clothes shop in the town and came out with four off-the-peg garments which fit me 🙂 and 2) I met the ship’s doctor who looked like he’d just stepped off a movie set. When I shook his hand and said hello I was practically leering. I reminded myself of Sid James clocking Barbara Windsor’s chesticles, which is a bit embarrassing given that he probably wasn’t much older than my boy.

Anyway, being loaded up with antibiotics along with the earache made me feel a bit crappy so on our last day at sea I was very lethargic and the exercise thing just didn’t happen…I think the most energetic thing I did was turn the pages of my book.

Reflecting on the awesome week and chatting it all through with my friend as we waited to disembark, I estimated that the likely outcome of the week I’d had would see the bitch in the bathroom serve me up a two pound gain the following day. Two pounds sounded fair, you know? Deserved…I’d worked hard but I’d played hard too, and I was ready to embrace two pounds as being totally worth that exquisite Chateaubriand, and the incomparable jaffa cake desert, and the customary poke about the cheese board which by the end of the week had become a regular thing…the ice creams and the waffle and all my other little indiscretions…two pounds sounded about right.

Eight pounds on the other hand, did not. I must have spent at least half an hour on Sunday morning nudging that fucking scale around every tile on the bathroom floor trying to source at least one favourable reading, but no…eight pounds, I mean come on. No way did I consume nearly thirty thousand extra calories over the course of the week and anything I did eat was offset against a ton of active stuff…I was beyond pissed off.

It was still showing that unwelcome number by Tuesday, despite me hitting Sunday head on with as strong a resolve as ever, getting straight back onto my regular food plan and walking Charlie for at least five miles every day since I’ve been back. The first session back in the Kingdom of Pain was horrendous. It was like going right back to my first ever session, I felt so sluggish and everything was hard. And then suddenly, (forgive me being indelicate) it occurred to me that it might have been four or five days since I’d been…you know, for a visit.

Now, I don’t know about you and your ablutionary habits, but me, I’m a bit vague. I don’t really give it much thought…not like some folk I’ve known, who want to call a press conference if nothing’s happened daily by 10am. Me, well pardon the pun, shit just happens. Except since probably Thursday last week in my case it hadn’t. Oh my God I can’t even believe I’m talking about this in here…there’s honest, and then there’s too much information, right?

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I’d felt the full force of God of Pain’s disapproval after his scale revealed the same number as mine, but he dispensed some words of wisdom relating to prunes when I filled him in on what was emerging in my mind as the front runner culprit for the outrageous weight gain and feeling of being bloated. And having followed his advice, lets just say over the last couple of days mother nature did her thing.

I hopped on God of Pain’s scales again last night before my fat furnace session and I’m very happy to report that I’m now just one pound heavier than I was before my holiday, and that’ll be gone by Sunday. Nothing happened here. I went, I had a ball, and I earned most of my treats as I went along. I enjoyed every single one of them, and now I’m on it like a car bonnet.

As soon as I got home I went right back to my own new normal, and contrary to any worries I might have had, I’ve done it without a fight. I swear, I could do my happy dance for twenty four hours straight up. And I can honestly say that I am just as determined as I was last year when I got back from holiday and started my diet…it’s all good.

So…next stop Cuba. Five weeks today we fly out for what will without doubt be the most physically challenging five days of my life, so it’s all systems go here for the final push. I’d like to take off at least another ten pounds before we leave so there’s hard work to be done…let’s get to it 🙂

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Getting All Reflective On Your Ass

Biggest Triumphs, , ,

Can you remember what you were doing exactly one year ago today..? I can. It was a Monday – of course it was – and more than that it was the first Monday after my holiday. It was the Monday I started my diet. It’s been a year folks…I could get a bit choked if I tried, you know? It’s the day a new life came screaming into this world. My new life.

What I wanted to do was spend last night scrolling through some of my early posts and have a good old root about down memory lane. Somewhere around the six months mark I  read through loads of them, and I really enjoyed myself although it kind of felt like I was reading someone else’s diary, if you know what I mean. Was that really me? In the end I didn’t get chance to poke about in the blog because I was working until quite late – I only have two more days at work with a hundred things to do before I switch on my holiday out-of-office so I was a bit up against it to get some stuff finished.

It doesn’t really matter…I don’t need to read it to reflect on the last year. I can kind of feel my way through it by memory, to be honest. I mean sure, I’ll have forgotten some of the detail but if I had to do the elevator summary it goes something like this…Monday 17th August 2015, I started my diet. Like a muppet I decided not to get weighed on day 1, after chickening out of the come to Jesus moment on the scale. I knew the number would be horrible, so I gave it an educated guess instead and decided that when my clothes started to feel looser I’d know I was on track.

That theory works fine unless every garment you possess is made almost entirely of stretchy elasticated middle-agedness. No fixed waistbands on this body back then, so after a couple of weeks when I was very confident that I’d lost at least twenty pounds, I took the plunge and weighed myself…not a smooth move on my part I’ve got to say. I was a decent chunk of change heavier than I’d thought I might have been right at the start, and given that I’d definitely dropped some poundage, I’d obviously underestimated the starting number. Badly.

However, it didn’t throw me off course, when it so easily could have done. Would definitely have done in the past…thing is, I’d started to discover that writing down my feelings was way preferable to eating my feelings. It helped, to talk through what was going on in my head and by some miracle, you lot began to listen, and join in. And out of nowhere, this awesome and unexpected support system sprang up around me. It’s the reason I’m still here.

I don’t remember moving much in the very early days…that came early in the new year when I’d committed to doing the trek and I knew I had to start getting fit pretty much from the lowest possible base. Charlie’s walks got longer bit by bit. Then the hurt machine arrived…do you remember the first time I went on it, and five minutes on the easiest setting almost killed me?

I remember staggering downstairs on legs made of rubber and wondering whether being a fat knacker pre-qualified me to get a refund since it was clear that the relationship between me and that machine was never going to work out. But look what happened when I stuck at it…it became easier, and doing time on the cross-trainer helped me to walk further and further as the weeks rolled on.

In May I discovered two things…firstly I started exploring all the local footpaths and bridle ways which opened a whole new world of interesting walks for both me and Charlie-dog. It spurred me on to walk further. And my friend introduced me to the God Of Pain which was the point at which this shit just got serious…

Those first few weeks in the Kingdom of Pain were tough. But I kept my head down and cracked on…I wasn’t going to step a toe out of line, he was too scary, but I made some new friends who also started getting behind my determination to make it over the mountain. We made it over our own mountain in fact this very weekend.

And here we now are…you lot standing firmly at my shoulder, ready to steady me if I trip and keep me going if I’m running out of steam. My new friends giving up their precious weekend days to push me and walk beside me as I practise and practise some more in preparation for the trek.

I guess what I’m trying to say is if I hadn’t have taken that first step one year ago today, I might be sitting here forty pounds heavier instead of eighty pounds lighter, wishing I had. I’d be packing shapeless garment after shapeless garment into my suitcase ready for my holiday, with frequent stops to get my breath and most of all I’d be hoping that the scenery in Norway was so spectacular that nobody else on the ship would notice me, or how fat I was.

But I did take that first step. And it’s been one of the best years of my life. I’m having a ball. Happy birthday to my fledgling new life. One year down, eighty pounds off and another eighty to go. I’m halfway there folks, and that’s got to be something to celebrate!

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Four Women, One Mountain, And A Wayward Dog

In the here & now, , , , ,

Saturday was an enormous day…I conquered my very first mountain. I use the word mountain in its loosest sense you understand, since technically Pen Y Ghent is a peak, but to me it looked like a mountain, so that’s what I’m calling it. I mean it’s bigger than a hill, right? It’s rumoured to be the most challenging of the three famous Yorkshire peaks, so let’s not split hairs…it was hard, and I did it. We did it, me and my three fellow mountaineers. Oh, and four dogs. I know I’m not normally big on photos in here, but this sort of feels like a special occasion, so I’ve included a few. Come on, I climbed a mountain!

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That’s it, way in the distance. I’ve got to be honest, I nearly did a load in my pants when I realised what we were actually climbing. I’ve heard the name Pen Y Ghent a lot…as a girl born and raised in Yorkshire the name is familiar to me, but I’ve only ever heard it in conjunction with somebody else’s adventure. Me and Pen Y Ghent have never moved in the same social circles, you know?  On the outside I was full of enthusiasm as we pulled into the car park – that’s where I took the photo from. The reality was, I wanted to turn and run, as fast as I could manage in the opposite direction. To a fat lass still in the early stages of recovery from a sofa-surfing lifestyle, it looked downright terrifying.

I was well prepared though. Well, I say that…I was well prepared for the heatwave promised by Yahoo weather on Friday night. I’d brought a lightweight waterproof jacket just in case it was a bit nippy at the top, and my sun-visor and sunglasses. Lots of suncream on my face you know? Didn’t want to get burned. As we arrived and got out of the car there was no evidence of any sunshine at all, and it occurred to me that perhaps the suncream might have been a bit premature.

The lightweight waterproof jacket bought with Cuba in mind a few weeks ago that I didn’t think I’d actually need to put on was a bit snug, in fact it’s safe to say that when zipped up it actually restricted the circulation to several bits of my body. To add insult to injury, when I did put it on, the navy blue and white spots clashed rather alarmingly with the black and white flowery pants I was wearing…I looked like I’d escaped from somewhere. Still, the rest of my prep had gone well…I’d brought some awesome sandwiches for our picnic at the top, and you know me…the promise of food was always going to help get my arse up to the summit.

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The first couple of miles were okay. We were climbing, but it was fairly gentle incline. We covered maybe two miles getting to the bit where it got steeper, and that’s about the time when all bits of blue disappeared from the sky altogether and the mist started to roll in, taking every bit of warmth out of the day. We didn’t feel the cold too badly at that point because we were starting to work hard…it had definitely stopped feeling like a walk and we were climbing. The marker saying Pen Y Ghent summit 1 & 3/4 miles frankly didn’t help. It might have even fleetingly brought on my for fuck’s sake face, but the thought of that roast chicken in seeded ciabatta rolls kept my feet moving.

I wish I’d taken pictures of the hardest bit, because I feel like I’m being a drama queen now when I remember how tough it was, but there was a point where we were actually climbing, like properly pulling ourselves up on rocks and everything, zig-zagging up what felt like a sheer rock face, I shit you not it was practically vertical. It was very foggy, very windy and absolutely bloody freezing by this point, and it had started to rain.

The Asshole voice was chipping in like mad every time I came to a bit that was particularly hard to navigate…you’re going to fall, stop this lunacy immediately, you’ll never make it, Just stay here, it’s almost the top and fat people shouldn’t really go past this point, in fact they’re probably not even allowed right at the top anyway in case they have a heart attack…

Weirdly enough, I didn’t feel miserable. Despite the cold and the wind and the fact that I’m scared of heights and I couldn’t see much beyond the next few yards. I just felt determined. And then, all of a sudden, the ground sort of evened out and there was a proper pathway paved with Yorkshire stone leading right up to this kind of monument thingy…we all looked at each other and the penny dropped. That was the summit. We’d done it. We were there.

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Check out those faces! This was us, at the top, hands on that monument at the summit…relief, elation, achievement…and for me, a burning desire to pillage my rucksack for the chicken sandwiches. And you bet your sweet ass we sat and had our picnic, in the cold and the rain…it didn’t matter. We’d earned it, right? Let me introduce you to these strong beautiful women…my friend in red was the experienced one, and led the way. My friend in black is amazing, do you know she’s lost over one hundred and forty pounds..? And my friend in purple on the right of the picture (check out @therealslimkayleigh on Instagram for some awesome recipe ideas) has dropped about seventy. Y’all know me, and my journey…I’m within touching distance of eighty pounds off now. How about them apples? We’ve lost over twenty stones between the three of us…if we’d still been living in Mooseville no way would Saturday ever have happened. We’ve all put in the hard yards to get to this point, and it’s beyond worth it.

Just to add a touch of drama to the day, one of the dogs fooled us on the way down the other side into thinking she’d hurled herself off the edge of the mountain, since one minute she was there and the next she wasn’t…it was so foggy and we lost her, only to be greeted about twenty minutes later by a very waggy tail further down the trail after we’d hollered, sweated, panicked and seriously considered calling out mountain rescue. As if that adventure wasn’t enough for one day, this one foot tall dog later went on to scale a six foot dry stone wall to go play with some very surprised sheep…she is an adventure on four legs.

So anyway I was expecting at least ten pounds off this week given yesterday’s expedition and last week’s sticky needle…not a chance. The bitch in the bathroom offered up one single solitary pound. Grrrr…but whatever. Not bothered, in fact I couldn’t care less.

I climbed a chuffing mountain 🙂

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