Tag Archives: fitness

Will I Ever?

In the here & now, , ,

zebedee

It’s funny isn’t it, I always imagined that if ever I established a regular exercise schedule and raised my base level of fitness a bit, from there on in I’d skip through life feeling energised whilst I glowed with vitality. As I watch the scene play out in my head, of the fit and healthy me going about my daily business, I don’t even look like a version of me I can recognise.

I’m usually wearing a dazzling white shirt, matched only in it’s brilliance by my dazzling white smile, and I’m tanned and wrinkle-free with hair that behaves itself. Oh yes, and I’m usually gliding along with fluid easy strides, collecting admiring glances as I go, at the way I’m dripping with good health. Hmmm.

Cue the sound of needle scratching across vinyl, right?

The reality is, pushing my body to reclaim a level of fitness which should have been mine all along means that most of the time, something hurts. At the moment, there is nothing graceful or fluid about my movements at all. Before I’ve even taken a step I wince in anticipation – for any of you who’ve ever suffered from Plantar Fasciitis you’ll empathise with that feeling of a constantly bruised heel which means the first few steps hurt – I have it quite badly in my left foot which gives me a bit of a lopsided gait every time I set off walking.

Once I’ve got the first few steps out of the way and my foot stops hurting quite so much, my legs kick in with a reminder of all the squatting and star-jumping and jogging on the spot which has become a regular part of their new normal, and especially after I’ve been sitting down for a while it takes me a couple of minutes to properly shake off all the stiffness and persuade them that moving is a good idea.

And right now, I’ve picked up a bit of a sore shoulder which is giving me hell. It started off as a small protest from the muscle in my upper right arm which was objecting to the new regime…lets face it, the only time it’d been required to lift a fat arm above my head in the last few years was when I went to grab a bag of cheese balls off the top shelf in Tesco. It’s hardly surprising that the kettle bells came as a shock, and now my shoulder has got in on the action too and gone into lockdown.

It amuses me no end to think that colleagues in the office who obviously know about my plans to complete a 90km trek up a mountain must look at me and think how the actual fuck is she going to pull that off when the trek from her desk to the printer appears to hurt so much?? 

When I’m out walking, once I’ve got the first couple of hundred yards under my belt, everything settles down and nothing hurts, not even my knee these days but I can’t help wondering will I ever get to the point where I can just get out of a chair and start moving without shuffling like a fully-paid-up wrinkly? I’m only fifty years old, although I guess in terms of the way I’ve abused this body over the years it’s probably older on the inside, you know?

I’m still clinging onto the fantasy in my head…I mean, I’m never going to tan, and as the fat in my face is slowly disappearing, what’s left behind has already started its slow descent south. I’m probably going to end up looking like a Shar Pei puppy, and as for having hair that behaves itself, well don’t even get me started.

But you know what, I’ll happily offer up all that in exchange for being able to walk with a spring in my step…that bit I’m hanging on to. In the short term, all this exercise malarkey is going to get me over that mountain. But longer term, I just want to walk like Zebedee 🙂

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And Now I Can

In the here & now, ,

keep-going

Just before I drifted off to sleep last night I spent a few minutes reflecting on the progress I’ve made over the last few months. Days like yesterday really bring it home to me how every cheese ball I resist and every bead of sweat I generate are totally worth it.

We had an off-site meeting for work, and they’d set the room out with a bunch of chairs arranged in rows facing forward…let’s just say the chairs weren’t made with comfort in mind. We held it in the upstairs room of a trendy bar in the city centre, and I don’t imagine the chairs were selected with a fat middle-aged demographic in mind, you know?

Not only were they hard, they were fairly small and arranged quite close together. Now, I was uncomfortable, but then so was everybody else. It wasn’t because I’m fat, it was because they were really shit chairs. You know what though, I couldn’t help thinking that even six months ago I wouldn’t have been just uncomfortable, I would have been in my own private version of hell.

I couldn’t have walked the half-mile or so from the car park to the venue without feeling like I wanted to die. Especially with my boss, who stands six feet five inches in his socks and has legs a mile long…even yesterday I was practically trotting along beside him as we headed in for the meeting, three of my short fat steps matching one of his leggy strides. I think I’d have feigned a broken leg six months ago just to end the torture.

The room was upstairs, so even if I’d made it to the venue, the stairs would have just about finished me off. And the toilets were downstairs in the basement, so if I’d felt the call of nature I can pretty much guarantee I’d have chosen to sit there all day with a bladder like a space hopper rather than attempting two flights down and two flights back up again.

Are you with me so far? I feel like I’m painting a picture of the old me, sweating like a stuck pig, spilling over a small hard chair after a long walk and a steep flight of stairs, out of breath with hair that would have gotten more wild and curly with every step. Miserable, and trying to hold in all my fat so it didn’t bother the person sat beside me.

And when it came to my turn to present my slides, I would have been so pre-occupied with what a hot mess I looked, there’s no way I would’ve been able to relax and get into any kind of stride with my presentation. Despite the shit chair, I’d have been desperate to get back to it. There were no tables to lean on so I could distribute my weight a bit, and within five minutes of sitting down I’d have had pins and needles in my legs and an aching arse, but even that would have been better than standing up there feeling like crap.

Worst of all, I would have felt completely trapped, knowing that this torture was only going to end after another half mile walk back to the car at daddy-long-legs speed.

Yesterday, I enjoyed the day. After a morning in the office, it was good to stretch my legs with a walk through York. Although the chairs really were shit (have I mentioned that?) I wasn’t any more uncomfortable than anyone else. I went downstairs for a wee twice without really thinking about the stairs, and when I was up at the front doing my presentation, what I looked like didn’t even occur to me as I walked the group through my slides.

The walk back to the car park at the end of the day was another opportunity to get a bit of air in my lungs after being cooped up all afternoon, and we even chatted about how the afternoon had gone, I mean get me, walking fast and speaking at the same time…who even knew that was possible.

Six months ago, I wouldn’t have made it, but now I can. I’m nowhere near Skinny Town yet, but every day I take a tiny step nearer to normal, and if I ever needed any encouragement to keep going, well that’s it…I’m really getting there 🙂

 

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Yesterday, I Earned My Tired

In the here & now, , ,

image

I couldn’t help reflecting last night, right around the time I fell into bed, totally wiped out from a very busy day, that yesterday I had earned the right to feel tired. And somehow, it felt like a good kind of tired, you know? I’d worked hard for that feeling.

Not too long ago, Sundays were all about being lazy. Chilling out, I used to call it. Which is kind of fat-girl speak for doing sweet sod all. In my fat-bubble, I’d lay in bed until late morning, cuddled up to Charlie-dog and reading the paper on-line, or maybe burning a couple of hours mooching my favourite handbag websites

First stop when I finally hauled my ass out of bed would be breakfast, closely followed by lunch because look, the little hand was nudging twelve so you know, it was lunchtime. God forbid I might miss a meal. My mum usually spends the day with me on Sundays, and after I’d collected her we’d usually go do a bit of food shopping before hitting the sofa for an afternoon of TV and chatter. All washed down with tea and hobnobs of course.

Then I’d cook something, and maybe have a quick snooze before taking mum home and returning to my big fat leather armchair for the rest of the evening. More often than not, as I hit the recline button I’d have the brass neck to declare how knackered I was, and how another Sunday had gone far too quickly.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment things changed, in fact if I think about it I’m not sure there was ever any kind of Big Bang…it’s been more of a gradual thing, but let’s take yesterday as an example. I was out of the house by eight in the morning, with Charlie in tow…we covered about four and a half miles before I dropped him off at home and then drove down to the Kingdom of Pain.

I did two one-hour classes back-to-back…circuit training followed by boxing. Yeah, I’d raise an eyebrow too if I was reading this. What was I thinking?  Well maybe it’s easier to share what I wasn’t thinking, you know? I wasn’t looking for excuses not to do it.

I’d booked the double class because work commitments on Friday meant I couldn’t work out, so I wanted to make up the session I missed. And I knew I was going to be busy with mum in the afternoon, which means Charlie would’ve missed out on his walk so I got up early to make sure we could fit it in. I didn’t try and negotiate any short-cuts with myself, because I enjoyed it.

The same can’t be said for the double helping of torture mind you…I didn’t enjoy that much. At all, in fact. But I didn’t try and negotiate my way out of it either. Mainly because God of Pain would’ve nailed me to the wall if I’d even thought about it, but also because even though I knew it’d be tough, I knew I could do it because you know what, I’m starting to think I might be tough…far tougher than I ever thought I was.

Fact is, I no longer harbour the belief that I can’t do it, because what I’ve come to realise is that no matter how much it’s going to hurt in the moment, I’ll come out of the other side with a sense of accomplishment. Those sore muscles and tired limbs are a kind of badge of honour, which serve to let me know that I’m one degree stronger than I was before, right?

When the actual fuck did that happen? That’s a monumental shift in attitude which has kind of sneaked up and said BOO…I hardly recognise myself.

I’ll take it though ?

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Things Nobody Tells You About Lycra

In the here & now,

step

I realised when I joined this fitness programme that I wouldn’t exactly look the part in my mis-matched exercise gear, in fact I can’t even really call it exercise gear since the term suggests it was bought for that purpose, and actually none of it was. Well, all except my new trainers of course. Anyway, before I got started, a good root through my drawers turned up a couple of pairs of stretchy pants that I’d bought for some holiday or other in the past which I thought might be fit for purpose.

One pair were three quarters length, but a size too big now, and the second pair fitted a bit better but finished just below my knee with a turn-up, which was totally in the wrong place for kneeling down, which I seem to have to do a lot. Pulling the hems up above my knees made me look ridiculous – trust me I tried – so it seemed that a little bit of internet shopping was required.

I soon established that exercise pants with built-in knee padding were as-yet uninvented. It’s definitely a gap in the fat-girl-exercise-wear market, you know? My knees have been so sore all week, in fact I even googled knee-pads at one point when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself. The only reason I didn’t whip out my credit card immediately was because it occurred to me that God of Pain would probably run me out of town if I dared to rock up with a pair strapped to my legs so I didn’t bother in the end.

I was surprised though, to see just how many options there were for roly-poly bodies on a fitness kick. Apparently, lots of fat girls exercise, who even knew? So there was a lot of choice but I’ve got to be honest, they were all modelled by women with the proportions of a toothpick so it was hard to get a feel for how these lycra exercise pants would look on a body like mine. Anyway, in for a penny and all that, two pairs of them ended up in my shopping basket.

They duly arrived, and I was a bit baffled when I took them out of the packaging…they looked like they’d fit a five-year old. Man those things have some stretch, I mean I put my arms inside the waistband to see how wide it would go, and it just kept on going, it’s amazing stuff.

So the first thing I learned about Lycra exercise pants was despite them looking like something from Barbie’s wardrobe, it is possible to squeeze the equivalent of two normal-sized arses inside one pair. But then under no circumstances should you go near a mirror. I tried them on, and…well, lets just say they didn’t look like they did in the pictures and leave it at that, right? They felt as light as a feather and very comfortable, but Sweet Jesus it wasn’t pretty.

I was a bit nervous about wearing them for the first time, you know? I imagined silence descending on the room when I walked in, as people took in the full horror of what they were seeing. These pants take no prisoners, and I’m not even kidding when I say once they’re on you can pretty much see the outline of every hair on my legs. In the event, nobody batted an eyelid so that was cool.

However. The second thing I learned about Lycra exercise pants is how perfectly they demonstrate that well-known phenomenon…

for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

Put simply, arms up, pants down. As soon as we got cracking with the warm up, it became obvious that Lycra exercise pants are pre-programmed to roll as far down your body as possible every time you move. I’m just grateful it wasn’t a boxing class, because with gloves on, the crotch would have been round my ankles within the first thirty seconds. I probably burned an extra hundred calories in the first ten minutes just trying to keep my pants under control.

Through trial and error I discovered that the only way to prevent the continuous downward march from happening was to pull every single bit of stretch as far up as humanly possible, so swathes of lycra disappeared between my bum cheeks. Think Rudolph Nureyev and tights, and don’t even get me started on how I worked that look on my size twenty backside, but at least finally they stayed put.

At one point I found myself in front of the mirrored wall, eighteen of my finest stones squashed into those Lycra pants, red in the face from exertion with dripping wet hair plastered to my face whilst I jogged on the spot. My bingo wings were having a party all of their own as my arms tried to keep up and I was sweating like a stuck pig.

The tune pounding out of the speakers at the time..?

Don’t ya wish your girlfriend was hot like me….  🙂

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Yesterday, I Laughed…

In the here & now, , ,

boxing

So, let’s have a recap. My first class was Body Blast, and I’ve told you all about that one. My second was Fat Furnace, and I’ve told you about that one too.  I haven’t talked about the third one yet. That’s not me being slack, it’s more that I’m still trying to get over the shock. When you’re no longer living a life where you can reach for a packet of Hobnobs to help you to process your thoughts, it sometimes takes a while, you know?

My friend had told me that I’d laugh, in this class. She said that it’s the most fun I’d ever have. And it had the word ‘lite’ in the title, so you know, I sort of thought that this one might be easier. I believed her. I mean, pick up any item in the supermarket with the word ‘lite’ on the pack and you’re pretty much guaranteed it won’t taste of anything…go on, tell me I’m wrong. It’s something, full of nothing. So I believed her when she said I’d laugh, I mean why wouldn’t I?

My friend lied. My friend’s a bitch.

So there I was, aching muscles and a body on the edge, walking into Box-Lite like a lamb to the slaughter. Session three of my souped-up fitness regime and for the first time there was no fear, just anticipation…I’d come to laugh. This was bound to be a walk in the park compared to Body Blast and Fat Furnace, right?

Right. It started to dawn on me during the warm up that perhaps I’d jumped the gun a bit, right around the time where we had to bounce on our toes whilst holding a squat position. That hurt like crazy, the muscles in my thighs were on fire and it certainly didn’t bode well for an easy ride. God of Pain demonstrated from the front, and made it look effortless, as if he had springs on the balls of his feet.

When we really got going and pulled on the boxing gloves, I learned how to throw a punch, in fact I learned how to throw four different punches. Imaginatively named one, two, three and four. Then I learned how to duck. Well, he called it roll, but thankfully there was no actual rolling going on. And punching and rolling were easy peasy lemon squeezy. I so had this. Except for my legs, which were required to keep up a continual bounce, on the toes…my calves were not happy. Unhappy calf muscles underneath burning thigh muscles isn’t a marriage made in heaven, if you want me to be completely honest.

I was partnering God of Pain so we could work on my technique. Not said through gritted teeth at all. Apart from my legs, I coped okay, or at least I did at first. When it was one, pause, two, pause, three, pause, four, I was fine. One, roll, two, three, roll, four…still fine. He introduced quarter turns and half turns, and all the time I’m bouncing and throwing punches onto the pads he was holding up in front of me. I’m fading fast at this point, and the asshole voice in my head was in overdrive.

That’s enough now. Why don’t you pretend you need a wee so you can at least go and have a sit down for a minute….this can’t continue, everything hurts and you’re on the verge of overdoing it. He’s driving you too hard, can’t he see you’re a fat old woman who shouldn’t even be here. Enough now, time out!

Quite apart from the asshole conversation going on in my head, things got a bit complicated when God of Pain started going faster with his instructions. And then he started playing dirty, I mean one, two, three, four is one thing…one, four, two, three messed with my mojo. I looked around and saw lots of people in fits of giggles as they punched and rolled and bounced their way through it and tried to keep up. I wasn’t laughing, in fact it was all I could do to fucking breathe. And with the best will in the world, my punches landed on the man mountain like feathers on a breeze.

Onethreetwofourrollquarterturnleftonetwofourthreerollonerollhalfturnleftfourthreetworollroll…shit. That’s torn it.

Having got nowhere at all with gentle persuasion, the asshole voice leap-frogged right over the chain of command and went straight to the director of feet, screaming FUCK IT !! THAT’S ENOUGH LADS, YOU CAN’T GO ON AND SHE’S NOT FUCKING LISTENING…TAKE HER DOWN!!

And they did. The next thing I knew I was lying on the floor looking up at several Gods of Pain, arranged in a very bohemian rhapsody kind of way above my head.

Scaramoosh Scaramoosh will you do the fandango…

I got up again real quick when I clocked the look on his face…clearly being tripped up by your own feet is for wimps. And so it continued, ’till it was done. And I survived. There were two moments where I genuinely thought I was going to throw up from all the bouncing, punching, rolling and turning, and several moments where I wanted so badly to quit and tell him where to shove his gloves, but you know what, no way. My legs burned for the rest of the day. But I was back there for Fat Furnace the very next day, and yesterday I did my second box-lite session.

I wasn’t partnering God of Pain yesterday…yesterday it was easier.

Yesterday, I laughed 🙂

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