Tag Archives: exercise

Getting Into My Groove

In the here & now, ,

Old habits are hard to break sometimes, right? When I got back from the Kingdom of Pain last night after an hour of circuit training I was ravenous, and before I’d even climbed out of my sweaty togs I had my head in the fridge to explore supper options. I started fixing myself an omelette, but despite getting myself all set up first with kitchen scale and the ingredients I needed to weigh, I caught myself lobbing a handful of chopped pepper straight into the pan.

I mean, the scales were right there  on my production line, but my hands chopped the peppers and the only thing that landed on the scale was a swift fuck you as my auto-pilot messed up the system and bypassed that step without a second thought. My app was open right next to me so I could log the calories, but my head was still living in the world where peppers didn’t count.

Like a fully paid-up drama queen, I stamped my foot and acted like the world had ended.

Well that’s it Dee you’ve fallen off the wagon, you may as well go eat cake immediately because you’ve ruined it. You’ll never know how many calories were in those peppers now…

I must have stared at them sizzling in the pan for a good thirty seconds, fighting the temptation to fish them out piece by piece and weigh them after the event. Fortunately common sense prevailed before OCD could kick in, but I did chop about the same amount of pepper all over again just so I could weigh it. It’s currently in a bag in the fridge ready to be eaten later today so it didn’t go to waste, but I’m beginning to see how this could become a bit…obsessive.

The discipline of logging everything isn’t worrying me as much as I thought it might, but I’m becoming disproportionately fascinated by all the reports and graphs which analyse in the minutest of detail exactly what I’m putting into my body.

What do you mean I’ve eaten too much sugar??? (screams at smartphone) – aside from all the stuff that tastes of MDF because it’s busy being all high fibre and low fat, over the course of the day I’ve had a child-sized banana, a handful of grapes and a hundred fucking calories’ worth of cherries. I can’t possibly be over my sugar goal, I’m NOT HAVING IT!!!

I need to chill out a bit, and I’m sure I will eventually once I’ve worked out all the kinks. Exercise has taken on a whole new meaning since God Of Pain approved the new regime on the condition that I eat my exercise calories, because I’m working out and it’s important to properly fuel my body. And let’s be fair that means extra rations so I’m hardly going to argue.

I rarely have time to get to the gym before work because the office is just shy of fifty miles away, but I nipped out for a cheeky half an hour on my bike yesterday morning and then did an hour or circuit training last night…I’m getting adept at sneaking a look at my watch as I work out. Not to keep an eye on the time, more watch the calories rolling into my food bank…ooh look, I’ve earned another grape…

It’s not too bad you know, in fact I’d go so far as to say I’m actually enjoying it 🙂

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No Fat Incidents To Report

In the here & now, , ,

Aside from the fact that the Shitbird Scale didn’t wholly climb down from its position of Chief Pisser-Offer yesterday morning, I was buzzing as I got ready to go out on my first bike ride in more than seven years. I’d gone to bed on Saturday night having laid all my gear out in readiness, including my old skinny-life cycling shorts, my cycling gloves and my helmet. My bike was standing in the kitchen in newly serviced anticipation.

The only bits of me that were quivering with nerves rather than excitement were my bum cheeks, and to be fair they had a hall pass on excitement for obvious reasons. Size of saddle vs size of arse…no further explanation needed, right? In the cheeks department it was never going to end well, and I’d already made my peace with that.

Pulling on the cycling shorts, I was immediately filled with gratitude towards the person who invented lycra back in the day. You’ve got to bear in mind these bad boys are actually four sizes smaller than the size I should rightfully be wearing, but although it felt like I was wearing an arse corset they did make an heroic effort to stretch far enough to provide padding in all the right places.

On the downside, being squeezed between the waist and the knee area meant that the areas just above the waist and just below the knees looked…well, lumpy is how I think I’d describe it. I pulled a second pair of exercise pants on over the top of my cycling shorts in an attempt to disguise some of the more obvious overspill, and it wasn’t entirely successful but it was better.

I had to swallow my worries that somewhere along the route I might explode out of all that lycra but surprisingly, everything held together and there were no fat incidents to report. And you know what, my friend and I had the most awesome morning. We cycled for the best part of 15 miles, and I can’t even begin to tell you what it felt like, zipping along the greenway on two wheels. I felt free, somehow. Well, apart from having no circulation below the waist, obviously.

And agile…I felt agile. I wasn’t a fat girl on a bike, I was just a girl on a bike, same as all the other cyclists who were out for a Sunday morning ride. It took me right back to the time where I was a fully paid up resident of Skinny Town. And after sniffing the air of that life again yesterday morning I’m more determined than ever to go back and stay there this time.

Now, I’ve got to be honest, by the time we got home, my arse cheeks were not feeling the love. Without thinking, I perched on the edge of a chair last night to talk to my boy and shot up again like a scalded cat but it’s a small price to pay, you know? It’s no worse than the aches and pains I’ve pushed through after working out in the Kingdom of Pain, except the saddle managed to reach places the kettle bells can’t get to. It’ll pass. By mid-week I’ll brave another outing, once the bruises in my pants have calmed down a bit.

I can’t help feeling that a whole new world of possibility has opened up to me, and I’m excited. Eighty five pounds ago, I couldn’t have done this, and now I can 🙂

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Back In The Saddle Again

In the here & now, , ,

I’m so excited, and you’ll never guess what I’ve gone and done…I’ve only dug my bike out of the shed and taken it to the bike shop to be serviced. I know, right? It’s at least seven years since it saw any action, and I’d kind of thought in the back of my mind that I’d hold on until I reached a certain size before I took the plunge. The size where children and small animals wouldn’t run for cover for a start, at the sight of my arse in cycling shorts.

But you know what, I was chatting with some friends last weekend after one of the gang had been out for a spin, and we all agreed we’d enjoy riding along the canal path together one of these days, so I thought knickers to it, why wait. And now I’m really really giddy.

Cycling is the only active pursuit where I’ve properly caught the bug, you know? Where I’ve done it for pleasure as opposed to doing it for exercise. Last time I lived in Skinny Town I used to go out on my bike pretty much every day and I’d think nothing of hopping aboard and killing twenty or thirty miles. One or two of my favourite ever days have been spent on two wheels so it’s fair to say that now I’ve decided it’s time to get back in the saddle, I can hardly wait.

It feels like a bit of a milestone moment to be honest. It’s a thing, you know? A throwback to the fit and skinny life that I spent a long time missing, and a long time doubting that I’d ever get back to. It’s one of the things I’ve most looked forward to since I started this journey and I’m so grateful that I’ve managed to come this far, although you might need to remind me that I’ve said that when my arse cheeks are rubbed raw from the first two or three outings.

Most of all, it means that now the nights are lighter, on the days that I get in  from work too late to get down to the Kindgom of Pain, I still have a workout option, and that could be a proper game-changer.

I was hoping to have it back by Saturday but I think it’s more likely to be after the weekend. To be fair, years of inactivity meant it limped across the threshold of the bike shop with two flat tyres, and a set of seized up gears,  so I suspect it’ll need more than a little TLC to breathe life back into it.

It’s perhaps just as well, because I’ve got a final exam next week relating to some professional development that I’ve been doing at work. At least I won’t need to sit on an ice pop whilst I revise over the weekend…every cloud, right? ?

 

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Too Easily Persuaded

In the here & now, ,

sweating

Hands up who’s ever made a prosecco-related decision which turned out not to be your smartest move? Yeah, me too. I had a lovely evening on Saturday, you know one of those unplanned evenings that springs up out of nowhere and turns into something unexpected..? There was a beer and prosecco festival in the next town that a few of my friends had been involved in arranging, and having been invited along my intention was to go and have a couple of scoops late afternoon and then head home for my usual Saturday evening in front of the TV with my four-legged fur baby.

It certainly wasn’t my intention to drink my own bodyweight in prosecco before leading the charge to a local Indian restaurant where I proceeded to work my way through their menu. That wasn’t on the cards at all when I left home. But…well, that’s what happened. The prosecco flowed until after dark, everybody left  except me and one of my friends and a bunch of her friends who I’d met for the first time that evening, and when someone said I fancy some food, my tipsy asshole voice was on it like a car bonnet. Indian! Let’s go for Indian food! 

Actually if it’d come into being on the back of a solid week I could probably have got away with it, but for some reason last week it was a tough dieting week so my fizz-fuelled decision to throw caution to the wind and nosh my way through poppadoms with a full pickle tray, onion bhajis and a chicken korma with pilau rice didn’t strictly correspond to the number of smart points I had available in my food budget. Like, not at all.

Saturday night is the very end of my dieting week remember, so it was down to the wire…I’d left home with 12 points available to me, which probably equated to three glasses of prosecco. I definitely had at least six of those after trying the local cider which nearly took the enamel off my teeth, and my ability to keep a count got a little compromised after that so there may have been more if I’m honest.

So, philosophically speaking I don’t regret the evening at all…it was fun, we laughed a lot and it was good to meet some new people. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Sunday morning however, well that was a different story. I wasn’t hungover as such, to be honest by the time I got in on Saturday the food had pretty much soaked up the prosecco. But I felt sluggish. Like I’d eaten a big rich meal just before bed…oh, hang on a minute that’s because I did eat a big rich meal just before bed. Doh.

Safe to say then that an hour of circuit training followed by an hour of boxing didn’t appeal much when I opened my eyes. Or at all. But you know what, I went. I dragged my sorry ass around those circuits through gritted teeth, because it was the start of a brand shiny new week and I’m on it. God help those poor people who had to witness me sweating turmeric out of every pore…I thought I was going to die.

I don’t know why last week was a difficult week, food wise…I think perhaps front-loading my points didn’t help. Last Sunday I had a bit of a blow-out so I had to manage my food budget pretty carefully for the rest of the week, which is guaranteed to make me want to rebel… I know this, it’s not like it’s new news but I guess there are some lessons that need to be learned over and again before they’re baked in, right? The whole week felt like an uphill slog, and I struggled to keep focus so the Indian meal on Saturday was sort of king turd of turd mountain as far as dodgy food choices were concerned.

I’m determined this week will be different. According to the bitch in the bathroom I lost no weight last week, but I didn’t gain any either, so I’ve dodged a bullet and I’m pulling out all the stops. Lets see how much of this arse I can offload in the nineteen days before we set off for Cuba, eh?

Onwards 🙂

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Fare Thee Well Old Friend

In the here & now, , , ,

waving

I woke up this morning to the most beautiful view. As I opened my eyes and greeted the day, for the first time in a long time I didn’t see a gleaming steel contraption staring right back at me. All I saw was an expanse of oatmeal carpet, with an indentation where four steel feet used to sit…the hurt machine is gone.

It happened by pure chance. Earlier in the week one of my friends at work asked me what type of cross-trainer mine was because she was looking to buy one. Before I had chance to think about it, the words You can buy mine of you like..? jumped right out of my mouth, and with a bit of jiggery pokery the deal was done.

You know me…I never loved it. In fact I couldn’t stand it. I persevered with it, and around the time I joined the Kingdom of Pain I’d built my time up to an hour or more most days…thing is, there was never a time where my workout was done with a light heart, or any sense whatsoever that I was enjoying myself. It bored me rigid, so I learned to do it, but I never learned to love it. And don’t even get me started about the fact that this cold hard steel beast stood in the middle of my beautiful shabby chic bedroom looking stupidly out of place.

But now it’s gone, I can look back fondly. For all my moaning, it served its purpose, you know? I remember writing Buns of Steel after my first attempt at a workout, having expected it to be much easier than it was…my legs were like jelly for a week. But I kept plugging away, and slowly but surely my body started to respond. It got me off the base line and it’s a good job it did…my first session at the Kingdom of Pain almost killed me, so I can’t even imagine how things would’ve worked out if I’d rocked up there without the foundation of five months’ worth of daily cross-training under my belt.

It isn’t the first time I’ve dabbled with an expensive piece of exercise equipment for a while and then turned my back on it in pursuit of something new…you name it, and I can pretty much guarantee that one of them has crossed my threshold at some point. One thing I’ve always been really good at is talking myself into believing that this new shiny thing – whatever it happened to be – was the silver bullet which would kill my fat life dead once and for all.  What I’ve never done however, is wave one off without a sense of guilt that the only real exercise has come from dusting it once in a while. This one did its job…I’ve just outgrown it.

It’s part of my story, an important part actually and I’m grateful for the way in which it helped me to get into the discipline of regular exercise, but I’ve moved on now and for me, the camaraderie, the encouragement and the sense of belonging that I’ve found at the Kingdom of Pain is making exercise enjoyable for the first time in my life. Even though it hurts…who knew! Well, you lot did actually, the wise old owls amongst you told me that would happen. I’ve just signed up for another twelve months, so the hurt machine is officially redundant.

I think the Gods of Skinny witnessed my happy dance on Saturday as I vacuumed over the expanse of oatmeal carpet where the hurt machine used to sit, and you know maybe they worried a little that I’d get complacent..? It seems too much of coincidence that God of Pain upped the ante yesterday morning by bumping me up to a whole new level of workout.

I felt like a rookie all over again, but it’s all progress, right? 🙂

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