Must Do Better

This week has proved a little haphazard so far, and I don't like what the scales say as a result.

So today, I commit to making it a good day of eating. It's a rest day on the exercise front (pre-planned) but that is no excuse for sloppy eating.


- Posted from my iPhone

Just Gotta Keep Going

Sometimes, no matter how rubbish you feel before you run (think proper blood-sugar crash with hot and cold shakes while I was walking home from work), it all comes right for no apparent reason. 

As we finished our 5km lap, I still felt fresh, so put another 2.5km under my belt before I headed in.  I could have done more again, but it was great as it was. 

I may or may not (so read: may) have come home and eaten a couple of spoonfuls of nutella after dinner ... the damn stuff is like crack for me, and we bought it for pancakes yesterday .... ah well, at this rate I don't expect it will last very long.  It's tracked, and I'm still just about in bonus points for the day.  Good enough, I guess, for now.

I'm off to take my not-quite-as-disciplined-as-I'd-like-it-to-be-but-still-trying ass to bed for a decent night's kip.

More anon, fighters of the good fight.

Blogging DOES Help

See, I knew this would happen: as soon as I get back to blogging regularly, I'm in the zone with my food and exercise.  Or more in the zone anyway, as I already 'fessed up my pancake guzzling last night.

Today, however, is a new day full of promise, and so I'm back on the healthy eating.  The scales have a me a couple of lbs up at the moment, so I'm aiming to get as close to a stay-the-same this week as I can, and use the extra couple of day's good eating as a spring board into next week. 

It occurred to me, that with my bi-weekly social planning at the moment (just the way it's turned out), if I can stay-the-same on social away weeks, and manage a good loss on the week's off, I should still be moving downwards at a steady pace.

In the meantime, I'm off to go and do some more financial planning - I'm great at the planning, even if I lack a little panache in the execution stakes! lol

Pancakey Goodness

I feel like I've been MIA for a few too many days now, and I notice that when I don't have the accountability of my blog, I'm not always so good.

Going into this weekend, which was barging in Wales, with a partially completed food journal certainly helped, but there were things I hadn't accounted for, like somebody bringing a load of those boxes of mini bitesize treats for dessert on Friday, and there being a lot of rum punch on Saturday night. 

Still, I tracked every damn thing I could remember, including the half bag of Jelly Babies in the car on Friday, and at least I know how bad the damage is. 

Sunday wasn't too bad, as I was already out of the holiday thinking, so I talked myself out of the takeaway on the way home, and just had some beans on toast and went to bed early.

Yesterday, I was positively virtuous on the food front, and thankfully Hannah dragged my totally lethargic ass out for an evening 5km run which did me some good.  I love to report that today had gone similarly virtuously, as I rang the gym and booked myself in for lunchtime spin at 7am this morning, but the day was somewhat ruined by both a lack of food in the flat, meaning I resorted to careless eating during the day for convenience, and then pancakes this evening.  Oh my lordy - great pancakes - we had thin ones, fat American style ones, savoury ones with salmon and cheese, sweet ones with banana and chocolate, lots of fruit salad, and even blueberry pancakes.  There were too many, as my complaining stomach pointed out, but at least they were dinner rather than an as-well-as.

Back to fabulous eating tomorrow, now that the annual pancake-fest is out the way - onwards!!!

Early Weigh In

Today has very much been a day of ups and downs.

On the upside, I weighed in a day early this morning so as to get a realistic weight on my own scales at my normal weigh in time (rather than my Dad's slightly sketchy scales tomorrow morning). This week's result: 12st 2.8lbs, which is down, ummm, quite a lot from last week. 3.2lbs I think.

On the downside, I got a call-back from the bank just as I was leaving my flat for work, to tell me that they'd turned down my loan application. I've tried so hard not to get my hopes up about this, but I felt pretty crushed to have that option taken away from me.

Apparently, I've been turned down because I've been over my agreed overdraft by about £10 sometime in the last 6 months and that makes me a bad prospect. Never mind that I make all my bill payments on time, and want to use a small part of the loan to clear and shut my overdraft completely and also ease my cash-flow a bit.

After considering crying for about 30 seconds, I told myself to suck it up, as it won't change anything. I tried, and for the moment it didn't work. Ok, so for the time being there's no (slightly) easier way out of my debt. I'm just going to have to keep plodding and do it the hard way, and if it is like wading through treacle and thoroughly demoralising, well tough shit. I got myself in this mess, and it's down to me to get myself out.

Like everything else that's worthwhile in life, it's not going to be easy and I'm going to have to fight hard for it. As per usual, Jo stepped in with practical words of support as well as cheering me up over email, because she's an awesome friend, and I'll keep fighting this thing.

Off home to Dad's tonight, and then off barging in Wales tomorrow - a busy weekend (and probably the last one away I can afford for a while). I just need to sit back and enjoy and stick to my food plan.

Keep fighting!


- Posted from my iPhone

Digging Deep

I will be the first to admit that there are days when I'm just not feeling it.  When it's a struggle to find the motivation to spring out of bed and book a spin class. 

This morning was definitely one of those days.  I rolled over, turned off the alarm, and .... just lay there.  Debating whether I could be bothered to spin, even though I said I would.  Eventually (after a couple of minutes) I hauled my lazy carcass out of bed, and at least looked at the timetable to see what time lunchtime spin was today.  Wooooohooooo - no spin class.  Oh rats - except that means I should run instead and spin tomorrow.

You know what turned that decision over for me, and made me pack my bag - I actually sat there and asked myself "how much do you want this?".  I talked about how you need to really want it a couple of weeks ago, and then you're prepared to make the neccesary decisions and sacrifices.  But right then, I wasn't following my own advice.  So I stopped and asked myself "how much do I want it?", and surprisingly, the answer was "enough".

My run turned out to be one of those where I was not feeling it.  I don't know if it was a hangover from last night's feebleness, but  I'm still fighting a total lack of energy, and feeling dull and lethargic.  So my completion of that run was born out of sheer bloody-minded stubborness.  I'd got most of the way round without stopping, and I hadn't died yet, so I just dug deep and got on with it.  5km, no walking breaks, but it felt really slow and ploddy, and just leaden really.  Also my first run without company for a couple of weeks, so without a companion to pace against, I felt a little lost. 

I was therefore very surprised to look at my watch as I finished and see it was dead on 31 mins, for just a 100 or so metres of exactly 5km.  That is, if not my quickest ever run, damn close.  Huh - go figure!

You’re Sounding A Little Faint, Dearie …

Oh dear – not the best workout at the gym tonight. 

I had a personal training session after work today, but all did not go to plan.  We started off ok, with a warm-up on the X-trainer, an interval training cardio blast on the rowing machine for 10 mins, followed by circuits.  Each round of circuits is two reps and then adds an extra exercise in – so the first two rounds are just stomach crunches and then step-ups, repeated in quick succession.  On the next round we added in kettle-bell swings in the middle.  Then tri-cep dips on the end on the 4th circuit and replace the crunches with Russian-twists (another ab exercise).  By the end of the 3rd round I was starting to feel a bit off – just a bit light-headed, but after a quick pause, it faded and I pushed on.

However, halfway through circuit 5 (hellooooooo lunges with 6k dumbells in each hand), I knew I was in trouble.  I was feeling too hot, and couldn’t seem to catch my breath.  The light-headedness returned, and when my ear’s started to buzz and the noises started sounding a far away ….  I promptly sat down on the step and apologised for being a wimp to my trainer.

I’ve literally no idea what came over me.  For my heartrate at the time (I wear a monitor while I’m working out) there was no way I should have been struggling with my breathing like that – I was actually a bit concerned I was going to start hyper-ventilating at one point as I just couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen in.  Rob and I went over my day while I recovered – I’d eaten a decent lunch (sandwich on granary bread, small fresh vegetable soup, a pack of Quavers (but hey, we’ll gloss over that, right?), and a yoghurt).  I had snacks later on – grapes mid-afternoon and a banana in the hour before the gym.  I’d drunk plenty (I get through a lot of cold drinks at work).  The only thing I could think of was that I’d complained to my colleague that I felt dizzy this morning, when my vision went funny and the book I was trying to write in appeared to keep sliding off to the right.  We have concluded that I’m either coming down with a bug, or it is, for want of a technical term, just one of them days.

Anyway, we binned circuits once I’d decided I wasn’t going to faint (hey – having to have a sit-down on the gym-floor in the midst of a crowded gym was humiliation enough ….. no way was I actually going to pass on top of that!), and did a bit of light upper-body strength work.  Then Rob stretched me out.  Yeah, you heard.  I had foolishly mentioned at the beginning of the session that my hamstrings and inner thigh (abductor?  Adductor?  I can never remember which one) were super tight at the moment, so Rob literally took me at my word and spent the last 15 minutes pretty much lying on top of me on the mats contorting my legs into weird (and slightly painful) places in the name of loosening my muscles a bit.

There is nothing quite so uncomfortable as getting that up-close-and-personal with your trainer!  Yeah, I’ve had my physio do this sort of work with me before, but a) she’s a trained physio so I kind of expect it, and b) she’s about 40 and female.  A bit different when it’s your strapping mid-twenties trainer instead!  I can only say that I was eternally glad that I had super-smooth legs (yeah, I’m vain – so shoot me), and that it is somewhat uncomfortable (and not just in terms of resisting muscles being stretched) to have your leg pressed up over your trainer’s shoulder as he leans over you and presses down, whilst carefully studying your face for … probably pain, I would guess.  Or how about, your entire lower leg resting sideways across his stomach and your foot practically in his groin (try not to wiggle your toes too much!) and the same leaning (glutes stretch …. soooooo painful!).  Is it wrong to contemplate (in an entirely objective manner obviously) how rock solid his stomach feels at that point? (Seriously – what does have he have under that shirt?  An actual metal washboard????) 

I did a lot of careful studying of the ceiling past his ear, and cracking jokes, because honestly it all felt a bit too intimate for me to be relaxed.  Not that I’m often in those positions mid-sexual encounter obviously (what do you think I am, a contortionist???), but it’s just a bit weird when it’s a near-ish stranger and you’re right in the middle of the gym and overlooked by a very full free-weights area and a whole queue of people waiting for the next studio class.  The only funny thing was the guy on the mat next to me who appeared to be getting a full-on sports massage / pummelling from his trainer, who was making some very odd and painful noises!

Anyhoo – apparently I’m quite supple or so Rob says. 

So other than the traumas of the gym, it’s been an on-track day of eating, and I’m going to throw myself into bed in a minute.  I still haven’t heard from the bank (booooo – although no news might be good news I guess) and I have started thinking about pre-tracking my weekend as best I can, so I don’t go way overboard. 

Night, chicks.