Tag Archives: determination

Me And My Big Mouth

In the here & now, , , ,

So I reached Thursday this week without having visited the Kingdom of Pain since the weekend. It wasn’t by choice, I promise, I’ve just had a crazy work schedule this week. I don’t go on Mondays because God of Pain has a stand-in (even Guru’s have to take a day off, right?) and it’s not the same. Tuesday I had early meetings followed at the end of the day by dinner with our new boss, and Wednesday was a proper killer. I had a 3.45am alarm call to get a 5am train and it was almost 7pm when I got back home, so fitting in a class just wasn’t humanly possible until yesterday.

And somehow that made yesterday feel really hard. I did not want to go do that early workout, for the first time in ages. I laid in bed when my alarm went off, running through pretty much the whole of the Asshole’s repertoire you know? Stay in bed, you had such a long day yesterday, you’re too old for this shit…today you should scrape by with the bare minimum, conserve your energy and take a load off…you need a rest. You might hurt yourself if you’re tired…blah blah blah.

I went, of course I went but the going sort of teetered on a knife-edge for a moment. The only thing less appealing than dragging my sorry ass out of bed was cancelling the session and getting nailed by the full force of his disapproval. And I felt so guilty at the way I’d tried to talk myself out of going that I went from one extreme to the other and shot my mouth off, totally putting the kibosh on all things naughty whilst I’m away on holiday in the next couple of weeks.

I think the blood must have rushed to my head or something as I jogged on the spot in-between torture stations, because I only went and made a point of telling him that I was going away, and requested, yes requested that he personally weigh me next Friday before I leave, and again a week on Sunday when we get back to make sure I haven’t put any weight on over the course of my cruise.

I mean WTF?? I earned an approving nod of his head as he agreed to it. Well of course he fucking agreed to it, he’s the actual diet police. I can’t think of a more effective way to make absolutely sure I stick to my food plan.

What usually happens when I’m presented with something I shouldn’t eat but really want, is that you’ll hear me say no…no really I’m sure…yes very sure thanks…oh fuck it go on then. I guess I’ve shut the door on that one, right? And you know what it’s like on a cruise, there are chefs hiding around every corner waiting to force-feed you cake. Step on like a girl, step off like a foie gras.

There’s two big reasons why I need to hit this with a straight bat – firstly if I don’t, and I have a week long chew-fest, no way will I be able to get back in the game when I get home. Secondly it’s taken me the last two months to lose ten pounds, and I could put all that back on in the course of a week, and then some…I’ve done it many times and it’s just not worth it.

Plus which, I’ve got to admit as I dress for my skinny dinners in one of my new little size 18 numbers, not feeling like Shamu in a frock is going to really help in the willpower department, you know? And imagine, clothes that fit me as we set sail still fitting me as we arrive back into port…I don’t think that’s ever happened before 🙂

Anyway, I’m just home from doing the ‘muffin tops and bingo wings class’, which is it’s own little world of pain. Tonight I’m boxing, and tomorrow a bunch of us from the Kingdom of Pain are going to conquer Pen Y Ghent, which is a 6 mile walk up one of Yorkshire’s peaks. At almost 700m it’s not far short of the mountain in Cuba that I’ll be looking at in a few weeks’ time. Then Sunday I’m back for the circuit training and boxing combo to kick off my last pre-holiday week.

Have an awesome weekend chaps 🙂

Before you go, we have a new contributor on the Guest Spot – Thoughts From The Posse Page if you’d like to check it out…Deb is an accidental guest writer, since I pulled the words from a note she sent me rather than her setting out to write a post but I could relate to every word, and I’m sure she’d benefit from a little encouragement from the posse. Knowing other people had walked a mile in my shoes when I started my journey helped me no end…you’re a bunch of wise old owls 🙂

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Cruising Skinny-Girl Style…

In the here & now, ,

It suddenly occurred to me just before the weekend that I’ve got a holiday coming up in a couple of weeks…I’ve been so preoccupied with the trek, and everything related to it like my fitness classes and all the walking, that whilst I hadn’t exactly forgotten about my holiday, I’ve not really given it any thought at all.

The friend who I’m going with has been island-hopping in Greece for the last two weeks so we’ve not been doing our usual giddy countdown, which is probably why it’s only just hit my radar. She’s back now though, and we spent a couple of happy hours on the phone last night planning all the detail. We’re cruising from Southampton up through the Norwegian Fjords, which has been a long-standing feature on my bucket list…the scenery will be absolutely breathtaking.

I can’t help reflecting how different things are compared to last year. My friend and I tend to like a mixture of planned sightseeing and then doing stuff under our own steam. Being herded around and following a guide with a flag held aloft drives me bat shit crazy, but sometimes in order to get to see the things you want to see in the short time the ship is in port you have to bite the bullet and just put up with it. But last year, oh my GOD I was miserable on the tour days.

It didn’t help that having eaten myself to the brink of disability, walking was painful. I needed to sit down for a rest every few minutes and I actually started to dread getting off the ship. Some days I even chose not to, and I stayed in the spa area all day instead and had food and drinks delivered to my sun lounger the banner of relaxation.

As well as a handful of organised trips, we did lots of the hop-on-hop-off bus tours in the places we visited, but if I’m honest there wasn’t an awful lot of hopping off going on. Seat safely bagged, I was happy to sit there all day. My poor friend. I was such a shit companion. Don’t get me wrong, we did have a great time and I loved being away, in fact it was an awesome trip but man, it was hard work.

Last night we established that all four of the places we’re visiting on our week-long cruise are very easy to navigate on foot, unlike some cruises where your ship docks in some grotty port miles away from anything pretty or interesting. So this year, navigating on foot is exactly what we’re planning to do. We’re going to walk. Well, all except one of the days where I’ve booked an excursion on my own, because my friend didn’t fancy it…it’s a hike, up a mountain in the Fjords to go see a waterfall. Three and a half hours, tough going, some steep inclines…I’m all over it, and I can’t wait.

This year, essential packing will include walking boots and socks, gym gear so I can work out and join some of the exercise classes on board, and whilst of course I’ll enjoy the cuisine I am one hundred percent determined to weigh the same when I get off the ship as I do when I get on. No open season, no all-bets-off mentality – lets face it, when I get back on terra firma the trek will be just five weeks away. I can’t afford to slip, not even a little bit.

But you know what, I’m not worried about it, in fact I’m really looking forward to the challenge of making the holiday fit what I need it to be…after all, we’ve already established that I’m in this for the long game. For the rest of my life I need to find a way to stay in the mindset of healthy, vibrant and disciplined so I’d better get used to it, right? I choose to be that person. I don’t want to be that morbidly obese passenger from last year who held court on her sun lounger because getting off it was too much effort. I could weep for that lady.

I’m going to wring every last drop of enjoyment out of this holiday, and of course that includes some relaxation. I’m tired, and I’m ready to chill my boots. I’ll recline on my sun lounger in a shady spot and read two or three books, and I’ll indulge with a cheeky Pimms or two because that’s what holidays are for…but not before I’ve sweated my cahoonies off in the gym, or walked a good few miles around and about wherever we happen to be. Last year’s lazy lady is one hundred percent gone.

And as for the two formal nights…well, bring on the bling. I can’t wear my trusty evening outfit, you know the one I wore to the Blog Awards..? It’s too big now and I flogged it on eBay along with the rest of my fat-girl duds 🙂

But don’t worry…it just so happens that I’ve indulged myself with one or two new things…needs must, eh?

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A New Found Respect

In the here & now, , ,

I had such a good day yesterday…I can say with a degree of certainty that any residual pain  would barely qualify as a stiff neck, and even my legs worked okay…pity I couldn’t make the same claim on Monday, holy crap I was stiff after Saturday’s ten mile hike. More so on Monday than Sunday for some weird reason, it’s like they lulled me into a false sense of security before they pulled a big fat ouch out of the bag.

That worries me a bit, to be honest…its only nine weeks and three days until we depart for Cuba, and I’ve got to walk further than I did on Saturday, for five days on the bounce. With the added buggeration factor of heat and bugs…the Asshole voice keeps chipping away in the background as part of his business-as-usual campaign to undermine my confidence and make me doubt myself but he’s not really getting anywhere with it. Most of the time anyway. I’m throwing everything I’ve got at this, and I’m as determined as ever. I can do this.

Anyway, I mentioned that I’d spent a few hours at the hospital last weekend didn’t I..? I’d rocked up after taking advice from the NHS helpline with a serious pain in my neck and no ability to move my head at all, and in order to diagnose the problem they had to check me from head to toe, including all the usual observations.

They tried to take some blood, and I had to pre-warn them that my veins don’t like to give up so much as a drop without a fight. Apparently it’s because I’m fat. So sayeth the doctors anyway. That doctor. He was actually very nice, along with the medical student who was with him. And let’s be honest, he wasn’t wrong, I mean I am fat. If further proof was needed, they then attempted to take my blood pressure, and the cuff was too small…it kept pinging open. They had to go get the fat-girl cuff.

Cringe…I sat there trying to decide whether I had enough energy left to be offended/pissed off/mortified at the indignity of it all, but for once there was no voice in my head encouraging me down the road of self-pity. I suspect I was too focused on getting through the consultation, you know? They’d already told me that I wouldn’t get meds to wipe the pain until they’d ruled out non-muscular related issues, so I was very compliant in the hope that they’d just hurry the fuck up.

I couldn’t help thinking that this time last year I’d have been devastated when the young doctor stepped back into the cubicle with the fat-girl blood pressure cuff…it’s the ER equivalent of an airplane seatbelt extension, offered up to the fat lady by a young version of Doctor McDreamy. This time, I didn’t much care, to be honest – I even joked with my boy about it as I sat huddled in the cubicle trying to see the funny side of anything in order to take my mind off all the hurting.

What struck me was the change that washed over the young Doctor as he took my medical history.  As he went through his list of questions, I started talking to him about how I might have hurt myself – the day before I’d done two exercise classes, and I told him all about trying to get fit…about the circuit training, and the boxing, and the walking and about the trek and the reasons why I was doing it.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment he stopped looking at me as a fat old woman with a face screwed up in pain, and saw instead a strong determined woman who was turning her life inside out to achieve a goal, not to mention risking life and limb in the process. But there was a definite shift in his perception…it was tangible.

As I shuffled in, he probably thought I’d strained myself reaching for the hob-nobs but by the time we left, diagnosed and drugged up to the eyeballs, I felt like I’d earned his respect. He’d clocked the grit and the determination and suddenly it felt like I was forgiven for being fat.

I can’t really call him on it, right? It wasn’t until it dawned on me that I was really going to see this this through that I started to feel respect for myself…I’ve got to tell you though, when you’re used to folk looking at you with anything on a sliding scale from pity to contempt, seeing respect in someone’s eyes when they look at you is very powerful.

I quite like it 🙂

 

 

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From Zero To Hero

In the here & now, , ,

Oh my days it’s good to be here. I missed you guys!

It’s been the strangest and longest week, this forced hiatus from our regular chats, but genuinely I was in such a lot of pain last weekend that I didn’t need telling twice to follow the physio’s instructions to the letter…no laptop meant no laptop. It’s something to do with the position my shoulders and neck have to arrange themselves into, in order to be able to type…apparently it’s not good, especially if you’re nursing a sore neck to start with.

She wanted me laid flat, only getting up on the hour every hour to do my neck exercises and then back to studying the ceiling again whilst I rested. I did that from Tuesday lunchtime for a full 48 hours until my second appointment, by which time I could move again much more easily. And from there, it’s been getting better at practically warp speed.

On Friday I joined my work colleagues for a full day’s team building event which had been in the diary for a few weeks, I was so glad I could make it although to be fair I did sit around for a lot of it whilst they took the piss out of my lopsided demeanour, the rotten lot. We had a great time but I was toast by the end of the day, you know?

That said, some kind of sorcery was afoot between going to bed on Friday early evening and opening my eyes on Saturday because I woke up feeling almost back to normal. I was able to join a bunch of my Kingdom of Pain buddies on a walk we’d pre-arranged as part of their collective efforts to get me over that mountain…I can’t even tell you how relieved I felt at not having to wimp out, especially when it had kind of been arranged in the first place for my benefit.

Anyway, we ended up doing my longest walk yet at around ten miles, much of which wasn’t easy walking for a fat lass with a body held together by chewing gum. Some really steep endless hills, uneven ground and lots and lots of steps. But we did it, and I’m here to tell you that the sense of achievement afterwards was epic. Even though my arse was dragging and my feet ached and it felt like I had lead in my boots for the last mile or so, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

At one point, somewhere in the middle after we’d climbed some really steep never-ending wonky steps up what felt like the side of Mount Everest, I swear I thought I was going to throw up. But it passed, and I didn’t. You just push through it, right?

It was the weirdest thing, to go from two days of forced inactivity to one of my biggest physical challenges yet, sort of like zero to hero in one fell swoop. But listen, here’s what’s even weirder…all the time I was on enforced bed-rest, I was wishing I was anywhere but there. However, not once, even when the going was really tough on that walk did I wish I was back in my comfy bed. I was enjoying myself. Imagine that.

Yesterday I was stiff, and it took a while to limber up…I got up for a wee in the night and literally had to hang onto whatever bits of furniture I could find to get to the bathroom without falling in a heap because everything, and I mean everything hurt. But when I got up properly, I stretched, and loosened it all up, and went to my first post-injury exercise class. Then I put in a full shift entertaining my mum, did a load of washing and the weekly shop as well as another three and a half miles walking with the dog.

All in all, not bad considering this time last week I pretty much couldn’t move. I guess when you look after your body, it looks after you, right? I’m oddly happy with my weird week, and despite missing you guys I worked it out, you know? I worked out the kinks and did what I had to do, and I came out of the other side stronger than ever. Sure-footed.

Oh, and did I mention…? Another three pounds lighter.

It’s great to be back 🙂

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A Hall Pass? No Thanks…

In the here & now, , ,

Well, I guess this is what you’d call another bump in the road. I had awesome plans to walk on Saturday with one of my best buddies who’d figured out a great route down in the Derbyshire Peak District. A precious walk, you know? The sort of walk I could never attempt on my own due to being a bit lacking in the sense of direction department. I’d get lost, and someone would find me in a cave after six months with an impressive beard….let’s face it, it’s pretty impressive anyway, or at least it would be in the absence of tweezers.

But my friend is a map hound, so I was excited…we were planning to walk for ten miles or so, my longest yet and I was so up for it. Backpack was all ready, boots de-mudified after last time, water bottles filled and in the fridge…bring it on. My plan was to rise early, do a bit of writing and then spend the rest of the day yomping up hill and down dale, practising for Cuba and also shaking off the unwelcome pounds that materialised after last week’s whoopsie.

Except. I woke up early on Saturday morning and realised that I couldn’t move my head. I tried to move it and let out an involuntary shriek which was loud enough to make Charlie shoot off the bed and growl at the linen basket…clearly he suspected some imminent threat to life and the linen basket must have been the first thing he saw in his just-awake state. The shriek happened because trying to move my head really bloody hurt. It took me twenty minutes to actually lift my head off the pillow, so clearly all was not well.

To cut a long story short, after four hours in the hospital, it transpired that for some reason during the night, all the muscles in the right hand side of my neck had gone into spasm, which meant that every little movement of my head was agony. I came home with three lots of drugs…painkillers, anti-inflammatories and diazepam to relax my muscles so the last 2 days have passed in a bit of a haze, if I’m honest. And it’s not feeling any better yet 🙁

So, like the best laid plans of mice and men, my weekend turned to shit. No walking, no classes. And despite all the pain, which sort of means that moving around isn’t possible, I feel so guilty about the fact that I’ve been so inactive. I don’t sit for hours in the armchair these days, that was the old me, you know? I don’t do that any more. Except this weekend I have.

However, get this – I’ve hated every minute of being in that armchair. I’ve sat there and seethed to myself at the interruption to my training programme. I missed my ten mile walk on Saturday, and my fat furnace class and my box-lite class yesterday, and I sulked to olympic standard at the unfairness of it all.

Do you remember, when I first started moving, that every time I was doing anything which required effort all I wanted to do was scuttle back to my armchair..? Look at me now, I’m handed a genuine bona fide hall pass to the whole fitness thing, and I don’t fucking want it. How did that even happen? The realisation has taken me completely by surprise. Some of you lot told me that would happen and I didn’t believe you. I’ve always hated exercise.  But now it seems that I don’t…who knew!

That said, if the Gods of Skinny are listening, thanks for the enlightenment but I can think of easier ways to learn a lesson than being put out of action by something that really hurts…you all know I’m a wuss and I don’t do pain. But if there is a silver lining in this particular cloud, well there it is, right there…I’m actually missing my exercise regime. Dear God, miracles really do happen.

What’s more, there were no cheese balls keeping me company over the weekend at I sat there in the armchair. No comfort food to ease the pain in my neck…that’s also progress, right? Strong drugs, which come with a directive to ‘take with or after food’ would have meant a mental punch of the air and a licence to munch, in times gone by. If anything I’ve eaten less than normal this weekend because I’ve not been moving around very much. HELLO, this must be what being a grown-up feel like? Miracle number two.

In fact, it seems they come in threes…this week, you know those three unwelcome but deserved pounds that showed on the scale last week? Gone. Along with two more…five pounds loss this week. Get in 🙂

So I’m in a lot of pain, but I’m feeling pretty positive. Things will work out, you know? My neck will hopefully feel better in a couple of days and then I can get back to my new normal…which includes grabbing life by the balls and squeezing 🙂

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