Tag Archives: willpower

Colouring Inside The Lines

In the here & now, , , ,

rules

I like to think that I’m one of those folk who can multi-task, and generally plough through all the things on my to do list in the course of a day. I can, most of the time. But more and more often just recently I’ve run out of day with things still left waiting to be done and it’s twisting my melon big time. I feel like I’m starting the next day off in debt you know?

I know the reasons why…it’s because I’m making myself follow some rules. Now, I’m not generally big on self-imposed rules, in fact even the words are like nails scraping down a chalkboard. I have very few, and the ones I do have usually carry about as much weight as an eyelash. For example, my rule on buying handbags…if I spot another must-have bag for my collection, I have to move one on first. One in, one out. How often do I follow that rule..? Yeah, I think I’ll plead the fifth.

So being strict with myself is sort of a new concept and it’s fair to say It’s taking a bit of getting used to. Honestly, I’m feeling a bit resentful – even tearful at times. Obviously the Asshole voice has an opinion too of course but I guess that won’t come as much of a surprise. You’re pushing yourself too hard, you deserve better, nobody can be expected to put exercise ahead of enjoying themselves, that’s just fucking unreasonable and I’m telling you no good will come of it. You’re designed for comfort not speed, and fitness isn’t your bag…

Whatever, Asshole…the rules aren’t complicated and they exist for a reason. They’re helping me to colour inside the lines of this picture I have in my head, of me living in Skinny Town. My big picture features a fit, strong and healthy woman with endless energy and a rediscovered zest for life. I want that life. I’m reclaiming it, so there’s just shit I need to do.

Firstly, I need to get at least seven hours’ sleep each night…necessary because I’m doing a lot more physical stuff and if I’m fatigued I’m more susceptible to picking up an injury. Secondly, I have to complete at least five workouts per week, more if my work schedule will allow. Also necessary to increase my strength and stamina if I’m going to stand any chance at all of pulling off this 90km trek, which is now just three months and five days away.

Thirdly I need to increase my walking by at least two miles each week. I can comfortably manage eight miles now in a single walk, and whilst I genuinely don’t have time to fit an eight mile walk in every day between working and working out, I have to fit some walking in somewhere, every day and fully commit to the longer ones at the weekend.

Charlie-dog is also slowly adapting to the new routine…those long comfortable evenings in the armchair where he’d lay on my knee and have one long tummy rub whilst drooling over whatever I was snacking on have been replaced with walking, more walking and even more walking than that. When your dog looks grateful to cross the threshold on the way in, you know you don’t have the balance right between rest and play, but in preparation for Cuba it’s just how it has to be.

I do occasionally catch him throwing a longing look at the armchair but I expect he sees me do that too. I miss it more than I can even tell you, but this is my life now. And all that is set against a backdrop of busy demanding job with a long commute, and making sure I have time set aside for my mum, who needs a lot of support. I’ve had to make some ground rules especially around sleep to avoid completely burning out, you know?

You guys are awesome, cheering me on from the sidelines and I know you’re with me every step of the way, even if it means my words don’t come with the regularity that they used to. I’d love to spend more time in here and chat to you every day like I did back in the day, but for the time being it’s one of the luxuries that I can only allow myself to get to when I’ve fitted in the non-negotiables.

So, this should really have been yesterday’s post. Better late than never, right? I’ve enjoyed an hour of writing and catching up with all your news whilst my complex breakfast carbohydrates got on with the business of being digested, and now they’re ready to fuel this fat old body on another practise run. God of Pain has helpfully supplied some weights to put in my backpack which I’m going to be wearing for the first time…fuck my life!!!

Have a lovely weekend whatever you’re up to…see you on the other side 🙂

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Getting It Wrong

In the here & now,

ouch

Did you know it was possible to raise a 26kg kettle bell to chest height using only the momentum generated by your bum muscles? No, neither did I. Even with an arse the size of mine it didn’t occur to me that that might be a possibility.

One of the exercises in my morning class requires me to propel my body upwards from a squat position whilst holding a kettle bell which somehow needs to end up at chest height, before dropping back into a squat, and repeat. Call me old fashioned but I had assumed that my arms might need to be involved in the equation somehow. It seems I’d misunderstood the brief, and worse than that, given God of Pain the impression that I was doing it right so he upped the ante in this morning’s session with a heavier weight based on the fact that my arse was doing such an awesome job.

It became apparent very quickly that I had in fact not got the hang of it at all, as the burning sensation in my arm took hold…shit the bed it really hurt. My arm went from grumbling a bit to shrieking like a banshee as I tried to pull 26kg up my body, after my arse (having completely missed the point of the exercise) handed responsibility for the kettle bell over to my arms somewhere around my midriff.

I kept going for a bit because saying I quit doesn’t come easily to me, you know? Fortunately, common sense won out over being a hero although not until I was hurting off the scale. Once we established that I’d been trying to lift the weight with my arms not my arse it became clear why it’d all gone to pot, and to my frustration I had to wimp out of most of the other kettle bell exercises. I mean seriously, I wanted to weep like a proper big girl’s blouse.

Even the chopped banana on the end of my spoon felt too heavy when I came home and ate breakfast afterwards you know? So I’m dosed up with anti-inflammatories, and my hatred of kettle bells is now a thing.

I don’t know why I was so upset. Well actually that’s not strictly true, I can probably hazard a guess…I don’t like getting things wrong, and in that drama queen moment I felt like I’d ruined everything by doing it wrong and getting injured.

It reminded me of those dark dark days in the past where if I made a bad food choice and went off the rails a bit with my eating I chucked the towel in, with the Asshole’s voice ringing in my ears…what’s the point, you’ve blown it now, give it up and eat some pie. As I jogged on the spot towards the end of the session instead of throwing kettle bells around, with my arm throbbing like a bastard he gave it his very best shot…I told you you couldn’t do it. This exercise malarkey was always going to be too much for a fat old woman. You should stop coming here and just concentrate on dieting instead…

Thankfully me and the God of Pain have a plan…I’ll work with much lower weights and perfect my technique over the next couple of weeks until the hurting settles down. No drama, no quitting.

Fancy me getting a sports injury…there’s a bunch of words I never thought I’d utter. It’s all part of the adventure, right?

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Dog Spit And Other Disasters

In the here & now, , , ,

late

Have you ever had one of those days where your hands disobey every instruction handed down the chain of command from your head? In the hotel we were using yesterday for interviews, I swear I was sending all the right instructions down my arm, like for example move hand over fruit bowl and pluck a grape from the bunch, only to find that it grabbed a muffin instead from the complimentary plate right next to the fruit bowl.

The even bigger buggeration factor was that the Asshole immediately hit the override switch which could have prevented said muffin passing my lips. Well you’ve touched it now…nobody else can eat it. You can’t put it back on the plate so unless you want to walk around with it in your hand all day you’d better eat it, and quickly.

Today didn’t get off to a much better start, to be honest. Things I learned today would include the fact that it doesn’t matter how diligently you set your phone’s very loud and extremely annoying alarm, if you forget to put it on charge and it runs out of juice in the wee small hours, it’s not going to go off.

I’d left my bedroom window open overnight and I woke to the sound of the dustbin lorry outside my house. I sort of laid there for a minute before the penny dropped that my wake-up call had come courtesy of something other than my loud and extremely annoying alarm, so I felt rather smug for a moment, as I realised I could probably go back to sleep for a bit, until it went off. Out of interest I reached for my phone to establish just exactly how much longer I could sleep, to be greeted with a blank screen.

Oh dear. As the clock on the wall slowly came into focus, it confirmed that I had in fact overslept. It was ten past six, and I had an appointment in the Kingdom of Pain at six thirty…in the next town. Shit.

Now, I have a lot of respect for the God of Pain, and also fear. Mainly fear. It’s the stare, you know? No fucking chance was I walking in late.

It’s the first time I’ve got out of bed in a long time without doing the ooh ahh morning shuffle, mainly because I didn’t have time to notice anything hurting as I flung myself across the room like an exorcet missile. Charlie-dog opened one eyelid from his vantage point on the bed, confused.

Running around the bedroom first thing in the morning, usually with my underwear in his mouth, or a stray slipper is kind of in his job description, not mine and the role reversal momentarily baffled him. He was clearly up for a game though, with warp speed he joined in, helpfully licking my face, glasses and all as I bent down to tie my trainers, which just added to the confusion.

I just about made it, screeching into the car park like Starsky and Hutch, all the time cussing the dog – I was looking at the world with blurry vision due to dog-spit on my glasses which I hadn’t had time to clean. As I took them off to give them a quick wipe on my teeshirt everything suddenly became much clearer and I realised that actually, I must have gone to bed last night with one of my contact lenses still in, which is why nothing was in focus with my specs on. Oh, and I had my pants on backwards.

Honestly, sometimes it’s really hard to be me 🙂

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Getting The Upper Hand

In the here & now, , , ,

battle of wills

I should tell you about what happened on Friday evening…there was a monumental battle of wills between me and the Asshole voice, who was demanding chicken chow mien and prawn toast from the Chinese takeaway.

It’d definitely been a game of two halves on Friday where my eating was concerned – someone brought donuts into the office, and I’m not just talking about regular donuts, I mean these were seriously impressive donuts. I’m not a massive donut fan under normal circumstances but one look in the box and I was a convert…my fat-girl food radar went off the scale. I’d been all over my food choices up to that point, eating fruit mid-morning followed by quite a light lunch, so by the mid-afternoon snack stop there was a fairly respectable amount of food budget left to go after.

However, much as I fancied one of those bad boys, I had no way of pointing them and I worried that my best guess might be way under…they were big and sticky and chocolatey, and the only safe way to indulge would’ve been to sacrifice the next three years’ worth of points, you know? I decided they just weren’t worth it.

So instead, I opened a packet of biscuits that someone from the trading team had brought into the office, because they were only six points each. I say only six points, that’s about one sixth of my daily food budget. It’s high, for a biscuit, but I rationalised it to myself in the same way I do when I spot a handbag I can’t afford in the sales, you know? But it’s only this much, really I’m saving on what it would’ve cost me at full price, look it’s a bargain…compared to the donuts, they were a bargain.

The thing is, once I’d got the taste for them I couldn’t leave the damned things alone. I ate four, one after the other in that way where even as I was eating one I was thinking about unwrapping the next. They got me. Which didn’t leave me with a whole lot of options come suppertime.

When I got in from work, I had a poke about in the fridge and decided that my best option for dinner would be a bunch of grapes…right then. Awesome. My own fault, but I’d kind of squared it away with myself, and I was resigned to having an early night to compensate for having too much day left at the end of my points.

I wish I could’ve captured the next couple of hours on a time-lapse video to show you…it sort of went something like this:

Me, around 8pm, peckish because of a mis-spent points day with nothing left in the coffers, and not feeling the grapes at all. Boy walks in with chips and Chinese curry sauce. Smell pervades house. Boy eats up, then goes out. Smell lingers. Forced out of chair by onset of starvation to check discarded wrappers for stray chips. Find none. Need chips. Sit back down in chair, mentally run through Chinese takeaway menu, and fantasise.

Decide on chicken chow mien and prawn toast. Get out of chair and put shoes on, to go order. Take shoes off again and sit back down. Watch TV but see nothing. Prawntoastprawntoastprawntoast. Get back up and walk three times round kitchen, whilst pondering how many times around it would take to earn enough points for chicken chow mien and prawn toast. Remember exercise points are now off limits. Sit back down and sulk for five minutes.

Go back through takeaway menu in my head to find low point alternative. Don’t find one. Chicken chow mien and prawn toast it is then. No, it isn’t. Yes it is… NO! IT’S NOT.

Go back into kitchen and systematically examine contents of every cupboard looking for filling tasty alternative, containing no points. Epic fail, no such thing exists. Bite the corner off a dry Ryvita. Spit it out again. Put shoes back on and grab purse. Dog gets excited and thinks we’re going out. Dog looks confused then pissed off as shoes come off again….rinse, and repeat. 

I went to bed in the end, at about half past nine, still chuntering to myself but without a morsel of chow mien or prawn toast having passing my lips. It was a close-run battle, but you know what…the craving eventually passed as they always do.

In the moment, it feels impossible, but cravings always pass, if I can just bite down and hold the line. I woke up the next day ready to grab my food plan by the balls, and I was in control all day without a peep out of the asshole voice…just goes to show, right?

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Naughty Loves Company

In the here & now, , , ,

naughty

So I survived yet another new-to-me class yesterday morning in the Kingdom of Pain, called Shape Attack. Walking into the building at 06h30 knowing my shape was going to be under attack for the next hour didn’t exactly make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside but I’m definitely getting used to the scary names. In terms of managing my expectations, they work really well…I can hazard my best guess at what’s coming.

I quite like going to classes I haven’t been to before…it’s possible to go through a whole hour with hope in your heart that the next exercise is going to be a bit easier than the one that’s killing you right now, whereas in the ones I’m more familiar with all hope of that dies before I even walk through the door.

Given that the God of Pain is busy sunning his buns on holiday, a lady I haven’t met before was running the session and I must admit at first look I thought I might need to be a bit scared, I mean this girl had muscles. Not in a looks like a bloke kind of way, far from it in fact. Seriously, she was just body perfect from head to toe.

There wasn’t an inch of her that wasn’t toned or sculpted. Maybe she shot out of the womb doing bicep curls or something, because she’s clearly been at this for years. At one point she reached for the mobile phone which was driving the music, and about ten muscles popped out to have a look around…way to go to make a fat fifty year old feel fat and fifty.

She was actually lovely, in between the bits where she pretty much tried to kill me, and I survived the experience having shuffled and grunted my way through her own particular brand of torture.

So you’d think, that having greeted the day by attacking my shape for a whole hour before even hitting the shower, I’d be nicely set up for an on-track day where my eating was concerned wouldn’t you? I thought that too. I was all over it, I stopped at the supermarket on my way to work and bought prawns to have with a salad at lunchtime, and lots of fruit to get me through the day from a snacking perspective.

And it was all going really well, until mid afternoon when my friend uttered the words I fancy some chocolate…and that’s all it took.

On the outside, she got a skinny-girl response. I held up a bunch of bananas and offered her one, you know encouraging her to stick to her diet and satisfy her craving with a suitable alternative. Right on cue, the Asshole voice jumped in with FUCK OFF WITH YOUR BANANAS, I WANT CHOCOLATE TOO!! And then refused to leave me alone for the rest of the afternoon.

Since no chocolate was easily accessible (except the Mars Bar sitting on the desk next-but-one to mine, which was immediately placed under surveillance by its owner) the craving almost passed. I thought I’d dodged the bullet. All until I found myself near reception, where they actually have a box of naughties which you can plunder in exchange for a donation to charity. And my chocolate-fancying friend, who was with me started having a root through the goodies. So of course, I did too. Naughty loves company, right?

And that’s how I ended up with a slab of ‘dark chocolate cherry crunchy cake’ on my desk. Which, in the end didn’t taste of dark chocolate. Or cherries come to think of it. It wasn’t even particularly crunchy if I’m being completely honest. After the first bite I suspected it. After the second bite I was pretty sure, but it was only after I’d polished off all seventeen fucking points’ worth that I knew for certain it wasn’t actually that nice.

It’s safe to say dinner was a little bit lean last night…so much for my clean eating week. Two steps forward, one step back…muppet 🙂

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