Tag Archives: swimming

Resident Of Lazytown

In the here & now, ,

So my conscience was poked a bit when Susan asked me on Wednesday whether I’d resumed workouts and whether I was still swimming…the answer is no. And Susan, by the time you’d passed further comment relating to how much you’ve always admired my drive and determination in pushing on with the workouts, I was shaking my head in embarrassment with my hands covering my ears. The truth is, I haven’t done much since before Christmas.

I know.

That situation needs to change, I recognise that. I full intended to go back to swimming straight after the new year, and I would have, except I had a small cyst taken off the side of my jaw and I had to have stitches in my face. They’re out now though, and I still haven’t been back to the pool so what does that tell you? As excuses go, it was quite a good one, although at this point I can’t quite remember what excuses I used running up to the holiday season as to why my activity had tailed off. Too tired, not enough time, full of cold…I suspect I used all of the above at least once or twice as I descended into inertia.

I’ve been light on the workout front since I had my knee surgery. I was due to go back to it in early November…by that time my knee was well up for it but sadly my head was not. There’d been a few changes at the Kingdom of Pain that I didn’t much like and it didn’t hold the appeal it once had, plus the rigid timetable had always been challenging in terms of getting there, so I moved on to pastures new. Well, technically I just moved on, since I haven’t yet settled into any particular new pasture worth noting.

There are lots of things I fancy doing, you know? I fully intend to resume my swimming because it’s a great way to decompress and I really do love it. I’d like to do more of the spin classes that we enjoyed so much a couple of months ago. There are a couple of other classes at the same place which look and sound like they might be fun, and I’ve also got access to thirteen leisure centres and almost five hundred classes a week as part of my swim membership. I’ve got lots of options, but I’ve been so busy considering all of them that I still haven’t gotten around to hauling my fat ass out of Lazytown and actually doing anything.

And I can feel the difference. In addition to the extra weight that managed to find its way back into my pants, I feel sluggish, you know? I’m loitering in that place where the less I do, the less I want to do and it’s incredible how quickly my body and mind have both embraced the armchair mentality. It doesn’t help that the evenings are cold and dark, and in winter my one hundred mile round-trip commute seems even more wretched than ever. By the time I get home it already feels like there’s hardly any evening left to enjoy so it’s an easy gimme for the Asshole voice to convince me that staying in and relaxing is the only feasible option.

Except it’s not really, is it? I should be heading back to that place where the more I do, the more I want to do, not the other way around. Maybe now I’m getting some traction with my food plan I need to broaden my focus and make a real effort to burn a few calories.

Later on today I’m swimming for the first time in almost a month. There, I’ve said it out loud now…it’s a commitment to myself. And y’all heard me, right?

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

The Right Kind Of Fix

In the here & now, ,

It’s about a month since I signed up for my second gym membership, which really only came about because I couldn’t continue doing my usual classes whilst my knee was recovering. I was really scared that if I got out of the habit of working out whilst I was getting over my surgery, I’d never go back to it, and swimming seemed like a good compromise in the meantime.

I’m not sure what happened, but I appear to have become a bit fixated with being in the water. With the exception my weekend away, I’ve done an hour’s worth of swimming every single day for the last month and you know what, for the first time yesterday I noticed that my shape is changing.

I’d gotten to the point, before I pressed pause on my workouts, where I was starting to catch an occasional glimpse of collar bone as I chucked the kettle bells around in the Kingdom of Pain, and that was exciting enough in itself because it’d been buried under a mound of flesh for donkey’s years. Yesterday, I noticed that my waist has started to become a bit more…well, waist-like. It sort of goes in, like a waist would go in on normal people.

Completely by accident, I found myself standing with my hands on my hips, and it dawned on me that I had this sort of curve down the side of my body, which somehow my hands just fitted into without a fight. When you’re really fat, you can’t do the hands-on-hips thing. For one thing it’s hard to be sure where your hips are because there’s so much body sitting on top of them, and in any event there’s nowhere for your hands to rest naturally. Not unless you tuck them into one of your spare tyres or grab a hold of your fat, you know? It’s not comfortable. But yesterday it just worked, all on its own.

Now, I appreciate that probably doesn’t sound like a big thing, but in terms of the way it’s made me feel it ranks right up there with being able to cross my legs for the first time. Or being able to cross my arms across my chest. Crossing anything when you’re the size of two people in one body is pretty damned impossible but as my shape changes, my body is slowly remembering how to do all these things that skinny folk take for granted, and I’m here to tell you it feels really fucking awesome.

It’s not very often I get fixated on something that’s good for me, but this swimming malarkey is definitely the right kind of fix. In the space of a month it’s become something I look forward to doing every day, and I find myself bending my plans around making sure I can fit it into my schedule.

It’s a bit like cycling…it doesn’t feel like a chore. And so it’s not on the Asshole Voice’s radar as something I need to be talked out of. I love it, simple as that.

I’m not sure whether discovering I have a waist has turned my head a bit, but I’ve got a good feeling about my conversation with the Shitbird Scale this week…just sayin’ 🙂

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Battle By Battle

In the here & now, ,

Do you ever walk that tightrope between success and failure and spend all day wondering which side you’re going to come down on? That was my day yesterday.

It didn’t get off to a flying start to be fair. I walked into our office, and one of my colleagues – who I swear exists on a diet of chocolate and carries no extra fucking weight whatsoever – had left a large tub of Quality Street open on the desk, the contents of which had been picked over and just the usual suspects were left.

The green triangles, the toffee pennies and some nondescript chewy caramels. Half a tub full of rejects, none of which I’d pick under normal circumstances, but you don’t need me to tell you how they taunted me all day. I put the lid on at one point after I’d sniffed the contents for about the third time. ‘Cos that was going to help, right?

I’d taken soup for lunch, except at lunchtime soup just didn’t cut it. So I had my soup and a ham salad from the deli, and I continued flirting with the rejected chocolates. I’m proud of the fact that I held out all day, and didn’t cave…I drove home feeling like I’d won the war, but of course it was just one battle.

The next one started after I’d eaten my carefully calorie-counted omelette for supper. There were nut bars in the cupboard, and skinny cow lollies in the freezer. I’m not doing too well on the staying-away-from-refined-sugar front and I couldn’t decide which one to have, so I had one of each, followed by another lolly because the first one tasted so good.

I realised I’d dipped into my exercise calories, even though the plan is not to. And the other problem was I hadn’t actually done the exercise yet. I’d added them into MyFitnessPal because I was intending to go for a swim. The pool schedule on Tuesdays has lane swimming between 9pm and 10pm. And that’s fine, except at 8.45pm from the comfort of my armchair, in pyjamas, having sunk a nut bar and two skinny cow lollies, I was feeling full fat and happy. The thought of getting changed and heading to the pool for an hour’s worth of swimming did not make me feel warm and fuzzy in any way.

I seriously couldn’t be arsed. Except I’d not only counted the extra calories, I’d already fucking eaten them. So that was the second battle I won yesterday…I abandoned the Great British Bake-Off thirty seven minutes into the technical challenge, when they’d all just cocked up the caramel filling in their Stroopwafels, and went for my swim.

It was lovely, actually. There was only half a dozen of us in the pool, so it was very quiet and non-splashy. The one-woman tidal wave who’s usually there is clearly a Bake-Off fan because she was nowhere to be seen. I just got lost in my thoughts and cut through the water for a solid sixty minutes. I’m glad I went, even though it was the very last thing I felt like doing. I finished the day with thirty seven calories on the table. On balance, I brought it home.

I must try harder to break up with sugar. Again. I keep slipping, but the thing is there’s no tightrope in my life when there’s no sugar in my life. The two things go hand in hand and I know this. It’s hardly new news, and I’ll just carry on trying to crack it.

Today’s a new day after all… 🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Taking Care Of The Hairy Mary

In the here & now, , ,


Well, first of all I can’t start this blog post without a word of thanks to all of you who’ve taken the time to answer my questions and tell me what you think about the blog…I’m blown away by some of the feedback. I’m not even kidding, I was so moved by some of the lovely stuff you said I did the ugly cry more than once.

I think I might print hundreds of copies and wallpaper my house with it all so when I’m having a shit day your words can lift my mood. Thanks guys, I feel so incredibly lucky having y’all in my corner. And so far, the consensus is that a Break Out The Skinny Girl book might just have legs. If you haven’t had chance to look at the questions yet and you’d like to share your thoughts, you can find them HERE…last time of asking, I promise.

So anyway, this week was born with the potential to go a bit tits up. I’m working away from home which means two nights in a hotel, and quite a nice one as it turns out. I did as much research as I could before I got here so I knew a bunch of stuff, like the menu options for room service, and the fact that it had a pool. And hot on the heels of my holiday swimming, you don’t need me to tell you how excited I was about the pool.

Now, I’m not the only one from the company I work for who’s staying here, in fact there’s probably another eighty colleagues here for the next couple of days. Which means that I’m probably not the only one who’s clocked the leisure facilities. And yet, despite the fact that there’s a very real possibility that I might bump into someone I know from work – cringe – I brought my swimming costume anyway. In fact, I brought two.

Can you even begin to imagine me doing that a year ago? These guys are used to seeing me in a professional capacity, you know?  Dressed appropriately with my game face on, not wrapped in a scrap of Lycra with my wobbly bits on parade in the broad light of day.

Back in the day when I was crippled with horror at the size of my arse you couldn’t have paid me enough to doff off if there was even the tiniest possibility of bumping into someone I knew, especially someone I knew from work. Yesterday, when I arrived at the hotel after a three hour drive, I couldn’t wait to get into that pool, and beyond a cursory check to make sure there was no overspill from the hairy Mary on display I didn’t give a second thought to what if I bump into… I just got on with the business of enjoying the water.

As it turns out, I didn’t see a soul down at the pool…all our lot were all in the bar. And by the time I’d had my swim, and tamed my hair again (since the water had kinked every strand and left to its own devices I would’ve morphed into a Brillo pad) they’d all disappeared into the town for a few scoops, so it was a very sensible early night for me. 

I had a carefully chosen light supper courtesy of the room service menu, so I’m off to a good start. Today will be a challenge. Last time we had a retail conference I remember all the tables groaning under dishes of naughties to keep folk entertained as they sat through one presentation after another. I tried hard to say no but I couldn’t get the words out because I was too busy chewing. It didn’t go well.  I think I ‘fessed up told you about it at the time.

Anyway, this time will be different…no refined sugar, right? I shall liberate a couple of pieces of fruit from the breakfast buffet and if the Asshole voice tries to lead me down a dark alley to get mugged by a something sweet, I’ve got something to stuff into my face which doesn’t involve chocolate.

Sounds like a plan…watch this space ?

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!