Tag Archives: achievement

Every Day’s A Lesson

In the here & now, , ,

So yesterday I learned two things. I learned that it’s possible to survive two days of conference without eating my own bodyweight in crap. I think it’s the first time ever. And although there was an incident with half a glass of prosecco and two bags of Scampi Fries on Wednesday evening, I’m still claiming it as a victory because forty minutes in the pool more than covered the calories, so I paid my dieting debt and then some.

On the other hand, I learned that it’s not possible to drive the one hundred and thirty miles home with a large carton of cherries on the passenger seat without incident. Like 400 grams’ worth of incident. I was only going to have one or two, but I walked through my front door clutching a carton full of nothing except stalks and stones.

Not surprisingly, overnight I also leaned that eating 400 grams’ worth of cherries all in one go is not compatible with a good night’s sleep although to be fair, after multiple trips to the bathroom I should’ve been at least ten pounds lighter by the time my alarm went off.

Every day’s a lesson, right?

Checking out of the hotel yesterday I felt so smug, like I was unbreakable and I wanted to tell the world about my will of iron. Not even half an hour later, faced with a large carton of cherries I’m a fucking pushover…I wouldn’t care, I only bought them because I noticed they’d been reduced in price when I stopped to buy fuel. Will of iron my arse.

Whatever. I’ve spent the last two days sidestepping bowls of boiled sweets, ignoring the mocked-up tuck shop that had been set out in the corner of the conference room for anybody to just dive right in and bypassing the burgers and sausages and fancy coleslaw on barbecue night in favour of chicken and salad.

I’ve had no chocolate and no dessert, and I shunned the big cooked hotel breakfasts in favour of skinny girl choices. I swam both days, and we had an escorted walking tour around Stratford-Upon-Avon after lunch on Wednesday which put a couple of miles under my feet. I pulled it off, so throwing caution to the wind and vaporising a ton of cherries isn’t worth wasting any angst over. For what it’s worth they were bloody lovely, even if they should’ve lasted me at least three days.

So anyway, with conference well and truly over, my thoughts are turning to the weekend. Are you up to much?

Back in March, when July seemed like a lifetime away (and I’m bound to be skinny by then, right?) in a moment of madness I thought it might be fun to run a 5k obstacle course and haul myself over a load of giant inflatables whilst folk chuck paint at me on the way round. So I signed up to do it with a bunch of crazy-assed friends, and it’s come around rather more quickly than I expected. Like, it’s tomorrow.

The thing is, I appear to be still fat with a dodgy knee.

Fuck.

 

 

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Feeling Just A Little Short-Changed

In the here & now, ,

I hopped aboard the Shitbird Scale yesterday morning with a real sense of anticipation, you know that way where you know your input has been off-the-chart awesome and you’re ready to take the accolade…yeah.  Well. Even with my best of fifteen approach to recording the number it refused to go lower than two pounds off.

And I know it’s a solid number. It’s my go-to number after all…If I lose two pounds a week between now and…blah blah. It’s just with six exercise classes, one 5k park run and a text-book execution of my food plan under my belt last week, I was hoping for a little bit more. I couldn’t help feeling just a teeny bit short-changed if I’m honest. Shitbird thing.

Still, you bounce back, right? That was then, and this is now. Even though I’m a bit miffed at not bagging a number befitting the effort I put in, I’m now just two more pounds away from breaking new ground and that’s when I’ll know for certain that the surety of my step over the last three months has wiped the indiscretions of the three months before that off my record card. I woke up this morning with seventy seven days of food sobriety in my rear-view mirror and I’m starting to really feel the benefit now.

So let me tell you about the Park Run that we did on Saturday. Please understand that I use the word ‘run’ in its loosest possible sense, since I don’t think for one minute that the occasional burst of speed that I managed to pull out of the bag as I walked around the course could actually constitute running. And the fact that I placed 141st out of 143 clearly demonstrates that I completed the course at a snail’s pace when compared to my competition. I’ll tell you what though…I don’t care.

It took me 55.01 minutes to do my 5km, and the truth is I didn’t really care how long it took any of the other 142 folk to do theirs. Well apart from my friends of course, I cared about their numbers. There were two personal best times amongst our gang, some of whom complete the event every week and I was really happy for them. I was happy for me too, I mean I survived. And if I’m going to do this regularly, I’ve got my baseline now haven’t I? I’ll be the one going in just a little bit harder next time so I can beat my own personal best. The only way is up, right?

It occurred to me halfway around the course that wearing trainers instead of walking boots might have been a good idea…it was a deliberate choice because I figured I wouldn’t be running, but then when I was there and caught up in the atmosphere, I wanted to go a bit faster and actually, on the downhill bits towards the end when me and Charlie really got into our stride I was almost running. Almost. Definitely trainers next time.

I knew that dogs were welcome so I took Charlie dog with me, and he loved it, I mean from his perspective what’s not to love…people and parks are two of his favourite things. Well, he loved it apart from the fact that he kept getting lapped by a poodle, whose hooman was considerably faster than me…I don’t think that did his cocker spaniel street cred much good at all. Maybe if I’d had three shits on the way round like he did I might have been able to go a bit faster..? Just sayin’ 🙂

Anyway, I’m going for it again big style this week. I’m going to take 3lbs off by next Sunday if it kills me…then I’m into virgin territory, and how exciting is that 🙂

Check it out…we have a new guest post on our Thoughts From The Posse page…written by one of my very best friends, who has finally caved after all my nagging and put pen to paper. Enjoy!

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I’m A Citreenie!

In the here & now, ,

yellow

I felt a bit twitchy when I walked through the doors of the Kingdom of Pain yesterday because I knew that straight after Fat Furnace, somewhere around the point where I’d worn myself out doing two circuits of kettle bells and planks and power bags and reverse lunges, I was going to have to strut my stuff in front of a very solemn God of Pain who would be holding a clipboard and scrutinising my every move…my first assessment.

In our fitness studio there’s a bit of a colour vibe going on, and the colour of the T-shirt you get to wear indicates what level of torture you’re going to be subjected to when you walk into a fat furnace class. It tells people how fit you are, sort of like the belt system in martial arts, right? As a rookie, you wear one of your own T-shirts which is sort of couch-potato-in-training status. But once God of Pain thinks you’ve practised enough and got your technique down, you get formally assessed and providing he’s happy with what you do you’re awarded your first colour…last night, I got mine.

After four months of blood sweat and tears I’ve earned my yellow T-shirt. I’m officially a citreenie, and I shall wear my T-shirt with pride. It feels awesome, you know? Four months ago I didn’t know how I was going to survive my first week, and a T-shirt of any colour looked way out of reach…they were for proper people who deserved to be there and didn’t risk conking out every time they broke a sweat. But look at me, I’m one of them now…one of the gang.

You might have seen the picture on Facebook…admittedly it’s not the most flattering photo of me that you’ll ever see, with my purple cheeks and sweaty hair plastered to my face but I can pretty much guarantee that you’re not likely to spot a happier girl anywhere. It’s a flaw in God of Pain’s ritual, making you pose for a post-assessment photo in your new T-shirt when you’ve just done an hour of circuit training, but right at that moment I didn’t really care. Even the fact that he was going to tag me on social media and share my hot sweaty jubilation with the world wide web didn’t faze me…I’m a citreenie after all, and we’re well hard.

It’s funny, as I drove home dressed in yellow, my boy rang to see how I’d gone on. After I’d shared my news and had a giddy two minutes, he moved on to more important matters like when are you home and what’s for supper? before uttering those immortal words do you fancy a Chinese? and the funniest thing happened…I opened my mouth to say yes, and no came out. There’s a variation on a theme, right?

Saying no to Chinese food kills me…it’s one of my hardest things. I love it and to be fair I do still eat it, but I have to budget for it. And yesterday I hadn’t. Normally if an unexpected Chinese food opportunity presented itself I’d spend a good while doing a bit of creative accounting to try and find a way to make it fit, but before I had chance to start doing my sums, the word no sprang out of my mouth like it had the hounds of hell on its tail.

No dodgy accounting here…I’m a citreenie, but I can’t rest on my laurels, you know? Fire-opal I’m coming to get ya 🙂

 

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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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