This is not my body. No really, this is some alien stranger. And most definitely not me. I am soft and cuddly and have curves. Somebody has made a substitution and frankly I'm suspicious.
From somewhere unknown after a few weeks away from the indoor wall, without doing anything different, special or intense I was suddenly able to lead 6a climbs. And felt alive. I was looking at my arms though as if they belonged to somebody else. Some weird person who has competent wiry arms which can be trusted to both hold and pull, to grab and pinch. Nearly said lift and separate but clearly I'm thinking of something else. These weird arms could climb, could almost leap upwards and heft this stranger's body upwards. They were unbelievably trustworthy and I thought at the time it was just a teeny bit weird.
So, unaccountably annoyed with myself tonight and unable to contain the general feeling of irritation I realised exercise had been missing from my life for ... well, maybe as long as three days if I'm honest. But as I'd already spent significant time seeing if retail therapy could lift my mood time had pressed on. I know, I thought, I'll go for a run, that'll sort the bitch in my head out and calm her down. Trainers were selected, and out the front door I stepped. To find that really sploshing June evening rain had just begun. No matter, I'm going to run.
Plan was to take the 5K route I know well, and to do it at the pace of someone who has only run once so far this year. To try to do it at a speed which meant I wouldn't stop for breaks, something my legs and lungs would survive. And about fifteen minutes into the run I was a) drenched and b) smiling. Run, Forrest, Run, thought I. And I ran and I ran. And suddenly I looked up from my running reverie. I was in Worsley. This had not been part of the plan at all. Somehow on a run I have done dozens of times, right near my house I had actually managed to get lost running. But all was good, I took advantage of another bit of cross country track I know reasonably well from cycling, and trotted on home. To find my restful pace had been in the vicinity of an 8 miles an hour pace. Which was weird, because I am not that person. Not one of those weird fit people. Definitely not.
And Queen is bouncing round my head.
I feel alive
And the world, I'll turn it inside out yeah
I'm floating around in ecstasy
So don't stop me now
Don't stop me
'cause I'm having a good time
Having a good time
Showing posts with label weightloss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weightloss. Show all posts
Monday, 18 June 2012
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
White Van
Imagine my surprise. Hooted at by a white van. Not, to my amazement in a get out of my way cycling filth fashion but as a tribute to my legs. Well, that's the way it came across to me anyway. A man of discernment one imagines, particularly given my chosen costume for the commute.
Heavy old hybrid, baggy top and unfeasibly baggy shorts. Lost a bit of weight since I invested in those. Altogether quietly happy to hear it. It's a long time since I attracted any kind of whistle or cat call, and there's a certain age over which these things are welcome rather than irritating. I do realise though that some women could find this intimidating, aggressive, or threatening, and ponder over what an appropriate reaction would be given the bigger picture. However, I can only react as I react which is to smile to myself, not turn around, and just continue with my two wheel journey.
Heavy old hybrid, baggy top and unfeasibly baggy shorts. Lost a bit of weight since I invested in those. Altogether quietly happy to hear it. It's a long time since I attracted any kind of whistle or cat call, and there's a certain age over which these things are welcome rather than irritating. I do realise though that some women could find this intimidating, aggressive, or threatening, and ponder over what an appropriate reaction would be given the bigger picture. However, I can only react as I react which is to smile to myself, not turn around, and just continue with my two wheel journey.
Friday, 27 May 2011
Fuelling strategy
Bearing in mind my attempts to keep weight under control; at the very least to maintain the kilos I'm at, and preferably continue to make a safe and gradual progression towards a slimmer more svelte Alison, I reckon I'm fairly functional at fuelling. My commuter ride to work is always done on an empty stomach; exercise at early hours makes my stomach feel rough whatever I do, and experience has taught me empty is better than full, and even then every now and then I get stomach cramps on the way to work.
Any other ride though I take a more considered approach to energy levels. Breakfast is fibre and carbohydrate and not protein and fat, and it is a greater quantity than I might for a sedentary day - you've got to be prepared. I'm also really good at eating on the trail, chewy bars being a bit of a staple diet, but only a couple of mouthfuls at a time, just enough to keep me ticking over. Lunch on the trail is also spread out into a little and often. I know a couple of rolls is going to be about right but wouldn't eat them both at the same time, just keep the input regular and try my best to keep blood sugar levels constant through the day.
It's just kind of great to have the confidence to know I'm not going to hit a wall, and eating isn't going to make me blow up like a balloon.
Any other ride though I take a more considered approach to energy levels. Breakfast is fibre and carbohydrate and not protein and fat, and it is a greater quantity than I might for a sedentary day - you've got to be prepared. I'm also really good at eating on the trail, chewy bars being a bit of a staple diet, but only a couple of mouthfuls at a time, just enough to keep me ticking over. Lunch on the trail is also spread out into a little and often. I know a couple of rolls is going to be about right but wouldn't eat them both at the same time, just keep the input regular and try my best to keep blood sugar levels constant through the day.
It's just kind of great to have the confidence to know I'm not going to hit a wall, and eating isn't going to make me blow up like a balloon.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Down sizing
Now it's clear to me I'm wired differently from some folk and what works for me is just plain bonkers to a lot of other people. A year ago I came off anti-depressants and cut myself some slack with regards to things such as weight gain, telling myself if that's what it was going to take to get myself through that period of adjustment then so be it and I would deal with any subsequent weight increase ... later. At an unnamed moment in the future.
At the end of last year / early this year; I can't be sure, the time had come to deal with the weight increase. It had not been substantial but was certainly enough to affect my morale going forwards. The bike, or in particular the spinning classes on the Watt bike have been a mainstay of weight loss, although these days the week day commuter bike rides are not about the body image, they are about getting fitter to enjoy my true love, the mountain bike.
It is worth reflecting though on how the period of weight loss has gone. My method was simplicity itself. Move more, eat less. Nothing fancy about that at all as far as physiology goes. Things I've realised it really took were
1. Change. Acknowledgment that for the situation to change I had to make changes, and this isn't make a change then trundle on back to usual with the change having been a one off, one day of doing exercise or one day of eating more, this needed to be a hard earned, sustained change over a longer period. I had to accept that just thinking I was on a diet was not the same as eating less.
2. Do what you need to do, not what you want to do. I have a tendency to get home from work, tell myself I'm tired, tell myself it's raining or cold or that I simply don't want to do anything other than get tea, sit on the settee then have a bath and go to bed. What I want doesn't necessarily make me happy either; what I want can leave me sat there, bored and lonely. What I need is to walk to the library, to go to the allotment, to do a short bike ride, to do something, get out there, be productive or at least energetic.
3. Make only really small changes, and make them stick, then make some more small changes and make them stick too, then some other small changes. Building up all the little changes over time since the start of this year now sees me eating breakfast every day, and a reasonably nutritious one at that. No snacking happens in the morning now, I'm full until lunchtime. I have learned to really enjoy enormous quantities of salad in wraps or sandwiches or just as part of a main meal. Beginning to do more exercise built up and up until I was doing 7 hours a week minimum by April. I have a four o'clock snack at work, and often it's an apple. I don't drink alcohol on "school nights" any more and not so much at weekends. Lots of little changes really add up.
And let's not forget the bike in all this. 100 hours is a normal month, from January onwards, and the plan is to double that by the end of summer. The bike is not an instrument of torture and it certainly doesn't feel like the kind of exercise you do because you feel you have to, the weekends of mountain biking are a joy and not a chore, and there's a lot to be said for that.
At the end of last year / early this year; I can't be sure, the time had come to deal with the weight increase. It had not been substantial but was certainly enough to affect my morale going forwards. The bike, or in particular the spinning classes on the Watt bike have been a mainstay of weight loss, although these days the week day commuter bike rides are not about the body image, they are about getting fitter to enjoy my true love, the mountain bike.
It is worth reflecting though on how the period of weight loss has gone. My method was simplicity itself. Move more, eat less. Nothing fancy about that at all as far as physiology goes. Things I've realised it really took were
1. Change. Acknowledgment that for the situation to change I had to make changes, and this isn't make a change then trundle on back to usual with the change having been a one off, one day of doing exercise or one day of eating more, this needed to be a hard earned, sustained change over a longer period. I had to accept that just thinking I was on a diet was not the same as eating less.
2. Do what you need to do, not what you want to do. I have a tendency to get home from work, tell myself I'm tired, tell myself it's raining or cold or that I simply don't want to do anything other than get tea, sit on the settee then have a bath and go to bed. What I want doesn't necessarily make me happy either; what I want can leave me sat there, bored and lonely. What I need is to walk to the library, to go to the allotment, to do a short bike ride, to do something, get out there, be productive or at least energetic.
3. Make only really small changes, and make them stick, then make some more small changes and make them stick too, then some other small changes. Building up all the little changes over time since the start of this year now sees me eating breakfast every day, and a reasonably nutritious one at that. No snacking happens in the morning now, I'm full until lunchtime. I have learned to really enjoy enormous quantities of salad in wraps or sandwiches or just as part of a main meal. Beginning to do more exercise built up and up until I was doing 7 hours a week minimum by April. I have a four o'clock snack at work, and often it's an apple. I don't drink alcohol on "school nights" any more and not so much at weekends. Lots of little changes really add up.
And let's not forget the bike in all this. 100 hours is a normal month, from January onwards, and the plan is to double that by the end of summer. The bike is not an instrument of torture and it certainly doesn't feel like the kind of exercise you do because you feel you have to, the weekends of mountain biking are a joy and not a chore, and there's a lot to be said for that.
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Tummy Tuck
The sunny weather brought out the lycra. Big time. On me. This brought with it unexpected vanities. Dressed in a fitted but not tight t-shirt I paired this up with a pair of proper cycling shorts a la Aldi supermarket supplier of choice to Alison. Found myself struggling on the long drag into town with breathing and position, and realised to my horror the shorts made me do it. Made me hold my stomach in. Which was obviously stopping my lungs operating as effectively as they might.
Weird, the old bugbear of vanity. Once I was aware of it, obviously my first reaction was to be horrified that I was as shallow as the next woman, and indeed obviously far more shallow. I'm no super model but I'm not a wallowing whale. Having reached the grand old age of 42 without going through childbirth I don't have the perfectly understandable post pregnant woman issues of love handles and saggy tummy, just a firm and acceptable slight curve in that general vicinity. So what am I doing trying to hold my belly in? Cars pass me, cyclists pass me, I pass cyclists, I pass walking peoples (can't quite get my head round the word pedestrian sometimes), and frankly a) I see them for a fraction of a minute and b) I won't ever see them again. Still the logic is weird, because having said my first reaction was one of horror, my second was one of trying to relax the old tum. Every time my attention lapsed though, there it was again, stomach being held in.
The moral of this story? Baggy Shorts.
Weird, the old bugbear of vanity. Once I was aware of it, obviously my first reaction was to be horrified that I was as shallow as the next woman, and indeed obviously far more shallow. I'm no super model but I'm not a wallowing whale. Having reached the grand old age of 42 without going through childbirth I don't have the perfectly understandable post pregnant woman issues of love handles and saggy tummy, just a firm and acceptable slight curve in that general vicinity. So what am I doing trying to hold my belly in? Cars pass me, cyclists pass me, I pass cyclists, I pass walking peoples (can't quite get my head round the word pedestrian sometimes), and frankly a) I see them for a fraction of a minute and b) I won't ever see them again. Still the logic is weird, because having said my first reaction was one of horror, my second was one of trying to relax the old tum. Every time my attention lapsed though, there it was again, stomach being held in.
The moral of this story? Baggy Shorts.
Monday, 21 March 2011
The Cult
So, as January 2011 dawned all fresh and hopeful with a blank calendar for a new year a friend of mine via facebook status sought followers to join her cult. She proposed a weight loss / healthy living competition where anyone wishing to go up against their mates for a period of 10 weeks simply parted with a tenner to her, the cult leader, which would then be placed in a pot. After 10 weeks a gold, silver and bronze medal would be awarded to the lucky winners. The rules were simple - weights in kilograms because we're all too old to make sense of them and they don't seem real. She would publish pretty graphs each week showing percentage body weight lost. No rules on how to get there; whichever variant we pleased of the eat less, move more persuasion was legitimate. Some talked about high GI diets but mostly we all did our own thing.
I realised early on that I'm not great at discipline over food, and didn't want to be a slave to a diet. So, with the eat less option curtailed somewhat, although not ignored I went ahead with the second option; move more. I planned to meet the government standard on the thing, 30 mins exercise 5 times a day and looked into how "exercise" was defined. Raised heart rate and lungs in use. OK, I could do that.
I tend to make excuses. But I also have anal tendencies towards planning. So every Sunday in January I sat down and planned out just how I was going to manage in the following 7 days to get to that amount of exercise in one week. Before long I was doing spinning classes after work twice a week, and every weekend had a plan, whether it was a few hours walking, the geeky geocaching or a mountain bike ride. If I wasn't going to do a spinning class I made sure I at least walked to the library. Before too long, 3 hours exercise a week became 4 which became 5, which soon became 6 or 7. 6 seemed to be my minimum by the end of February.
With the increase in fuel prices something interesting started to happen. Finally cycling to work had tangible savings to be made. £2 a day in petrol for every return journey made by bike ... also, I reasoned, if I cycled then I would also not need the £4 a throw spinning class. So, that's a saving of £6 every time I biked to work.
The weight loss "Cult" is going well; I'm in bronze position with the final weigh in tomorrow, reduction from 68.8 kilos to under 63 with any luck. If I need a kick start from a plateau, I simply get on the bike.
I realised early on that I'm not great at discipline over food, and didn't want to be a slave to a diet. So, with the eat less option curtailed somewhat, although not ignored I went ahead with the second option; move more. I planned to meet the government standard on the thing, 30 mins exercise 5 times a day and looked into how "exercise" was defined. Raised heart rate and lungs in use. OK, I could do that.
I tend to make excuses. But I also have anal tendencies towards planning. So every Sunday in January I sat down and planned out just how I was going to manage in the following 7 days to get to that amount of exercise in one week. Before long I was doing spinning classes after work twice a week, and every weekend had a plan, whether it was a few hours walking, the geeky geocaching or a mountain bike ride. If I wasn't going to do a spinning class I made sure I at least walked to the library. Before too long, 3 hours exercise a week became 4 which became 5, which soon became 6 or 7. 6 seemed to be my minimum by the end of February.
With the increase in fuel prices something interesting started to happen. Finally cycling to work had tangible savings to be made. £2 a day in petrol for every return journey made by bike ... also, I reasoned, if I cycled then I would also not need the £4 a throw spinning class. So, that's a saving of £6 every time I biked to work.
The weight loss "Cult" is going well; I'm in bronze position with the final weigh in tomorrow, reduction from 68.8 kilos to under 63 with any luck. If I need a kick start from a plateau, I simply get on the bike.
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