Tag: fitness

Welcome to the 20s!

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Happy New Year! Well that’s it we’re into the 20s!

Going into a new decade makes me feel excited and nervous. Of course a lot usually changes in a decade but this one seems more grown up…it’s the decade that I’ll hit my 30s. I’m going to get married, I plan to hopefully be a Mum and move to a house at some point. Although, I’m not making any solid plans or promises.

That said, I’m taking it day by day, month by month, year by year. I have things I would like to do/ to happen in this decade but I don’t want to put a huge amount of pressure on myself if that makes sense? I’m going to hit 30 and that’s making me freak out a tiny bit because there’s this big idea of everything you should have done.

Anyway, I digress. I’m looking forward to this year, to seeing what happens and trying my hardest!

So, in 2020 I’m aiming to

  • Work on my fitness but also love my body in the process
  • Actually start on my bloody book
  • Be kinder to myself in regards to my mental health
  • Save, save, save for our honeymoon
  • Work hard on my freelance career and projects I enjoy

What are you looking forward to in 2020? Let me know below!

Book Review: Eat, Drink, Run How I Got Fit Without Going Too Mad – Bryony Gordon

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Bryony Gordon was not a runner. A loafer, a dawdler, a drinker, a smoker, yes. A runner, no. In April 2017, less than a year after she had weighed herself at over 16 stone but stepped off the scales and started training anyway, Bryony Gordon ran all 26 and 3/4 miles of the London Marathon.

If you’re friends with me on Goodreads you’ll know that I’ve adored every book I have read by Bryony Gordon – she’s funny, intelligent and just gets it. Although, this is the one I took longest to pick up. It was about running, something I can’t stand at all – would I really enjoy it? Read on friend, but I think you’ll work out pretty early on what the answer is.

One of the things I like most about Bryony is that she doesn’t take herself too seriously. She knows how to laugh at herself and it’s a relief, you feel like you can laugh along too. Calling Prince Harry Hazza? Classic Bryony. Signing up the London Marathon without knowing how long it was? I laughed a lot while reading this and I think most people will.

This is more than a story of just running a marathon, it’s about battling your mental health, finding comfort in others and not giving up. Bryony started something called Mental Health Mates (more about it here) where a bunch of ‘mad’ people could have a get together and walk which is a bloody brilliant idea.

Again, Bryony covers another section of her life and health with unflinching honesty. She talks about the toll that writing Mad Girl had on her mental health and how walking and running gave her a little bit of sanity. Also, if you’re a fan of her other books, there are plenty of Harry’s brilliant reactions to Bryony’s shenanigans too.

If you’re worried this will be a prechy and self righteous book about the power of exercise, don’t be. Yes, Bryony found a love for running but she doesn’t try and force it on the reader at all, she simply writes about the joy and the many challenges she faced.

I found this to be funny, relatable and because of that I gave it 5 stars. Another excellent and honest book by Bryony – she truly is a wonderful human and I can’t wait to see what she gets up to next. Also, I listened to this as an audiobook and can highly recommend!

My Love-Hate Relationship With Exercise

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Yesterday I went to the gym. I’m sure a lot of you are thinking ok, so what? A lot of people go to the gym. It was my first time going this year and it hurt. A lot. I talk a fair bit about my accident a few years ago, the impact that has on my life and being able to exercise regularly can often cause me a lot of pain.

My relationship with exercise goes way back. When I was a kid I had much more fun with my nose in a book than running around. P.E was the lesson I hated most and I was the most clumsy person I knew. For that to change when I started riding was a minor miracle, there was exercise that I loved!

In the past 3 years, my weight has gone up and down. I lose the weight, I’m happy and then six months later I’ve put it back on and it goes on, again and again. This isn’t a vanity project. This isn’t me wanting to shimmy into some size 6 jeans and get revenge. It’s literally just wanting to be healthy, to get back to the size I was at university.

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Now, I know that my body has and will continue to change throughout my life, but that natural change can be controlled. I haven’t been looking after my body the way I should be in the past few months, I haven’t eaten right, I’ve done minimal exercise so this is on me.

I feel good after a workout, I feel accomplished. Sometimes I feel better, a bit sore and I can get on with my day. Other times the old pains come back and I can’t move the next day, so it’s kind of a bargaining thing. I’m determined that, when I can, I want to exercise in one way or another on a bad day swimming is better, if I’m up to it I can go to the gym. I’ll get there slowly, I might even learn to like it again.

I guess I wrote this because it’s easy to look in Instagram and see amazing people with amazing bodies talking about how much they love fitness and healthy shakes. If that’s not you, that’s ok. A lot of people aren’t athletic but you have to do it your way, I certainly am!

 

How do you feel about exercise? Let me know in the comments below!

My Health Mission

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Hello, hello, hello!

It feels like ages since I’ve written a post about health and how I’ve been getting on. Now I’ll be honest, my whole gym fitness has been awful for the past few months, truly, truly awful. I’ve neglected it and just didn’t have the energy, which I now know had a reason and after some medication, I have a lot more energy and can actually focus on getting back into it.

What’s spurred this on? I hear you ask well I had a checkup and wanted to know what I should be aiming for in terms of weight loss. I’ve known that my weight has gone up and down a lot since I broke my spine, but didn’t know what I should be aiming for. She confirmed what I knew, I was overweight.

My doctor was lovely, she knows that I struggle with exercise because of my spine and told me that under no circumstances I was to stress and beat myself up. That is was going to take me a little longer and I had to take it easy with my exercise, but that I would get there.

So I’m on a mission, not to punish my body but to try to help it and lose the weight in a way that doesn’t make me feel rubbish. I know I can do it, it just might take a little more time and a little bit of restraint.

 

Recovery: Back To The Gym

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As my regular readers know, a few weeks ago I underwent injections in my spine in the hopes of relieving some of the pain I’ve had since my initial break back in 2015. It’s been a long, and quite painful, two weeks while I waited to see if they were going to work at all. I’m not sure if they have, it’s currently too early to tell BUT I managed to do a 30-minute workout today. It definitely doesn’t sound like much, maybe it isn’t too much, but I’m not in agonising pain afterwards. It gives me hope, that even if the pain never completely goes away, it might be able to be managed. I could have cried once I’d done the 30 minutes, because I wasn’t counting down the seconds so I could stop, I was enjoying it and it means everything right now.

January Favourites

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Hello, hello, hello!

It’s FINALLY the end of January, which is probably my least favourite month of the year. The excitement of Christmas is gone, it’s dark, dreary and everyone is skint. I haven’t been feeling the positive vibes! BUT every month I’m going to share my favourites, this month is fairly random, simply because I haven’t done much but I’m hoping others will be a little more interesting!

Promising to look after myself 

I’ve had a rough old time this January but have tried to spend a little bit of time caring for myself, embracing the Hygge way of life. 

Lady Dates 

Abbie and I had our First Lady date in AGES this month, popping to a little pub for dinner and dessert. I need these little catchups over some dinner, chilled conversation and food by a cosy fire. Shout out to The Weatsheaf in Dummer, top notch as always. 

We moved! 

7 months after graduating we finally got the keys to our new home. While I might be going a little mad waiting for internet I’m so happy to have our own home! 

Birthday Celebrations! 

My littlest cousin Jamie turned one this month, I love seeing my little smiler so happy! 

Getting back into fitness 

I’m starting to try and go to the gym, get a routine and try something new, hence boxing. 

Little treats 

I love the Powerpuff girls, I always have. I was SO happy that my Mum picked these up from Primark for me 😊

Content planning 

There’s going to be lots of fun and new content here! Keep your eyes peeled! 

Ed Sheeran 

Yes he really made the end of the month. I love his new track Castle on the Hill and thanks to my Mum I’m seeing him LIVE in May! Eeeeek! 


Hamski 

As always my little Ham never fails to make me smile ❤ 
I can’t wait to see what February brings! Let me know your favourites from January in the comments below!! 

 

Mental and Physical Health

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I have a confession to make my lovely readers. I have not been looking after myself. In the past few months, I have been severely lacking at going to the gym and keeping up with my fitness. There’s a lot of reasons that my fitness has taken a hit, partly due to not feeling up to it after work, partly struggling with pain levels and mostly motivation. Yep, motivation, that little bugger.

When the gym was 5 minutes away and I only had a few hours of uni a week, working out was easy. If I felt like going to the gym I could just go, I could make it the first thing I did in the day and if my muscles were aching I could spent the rest of the day in comfortable clothes and blankets with and write from home. I don’t have that luxury anymore. You see I start work at 8am, meaning if I wanted to get an hour in at the gym before work I’d have to get up at 5am. I would not make it through the day if I did that.

There’s a lot of pressure at this time of year to go on a complete fitness hype. To work out all the time and join clubs to slim down, cut back on what we eat. To those of you who are motivated by things like that I salute you, but I’m not one of them. For me my body, my weight and my mood are very personal to me. The thought of being weighed in front of others, or having the pressure of a weigh-in would not do me good, I’m pretty sure it would do the opposite. Likewise, I don’t have bathroom scales in the house, because I know that I can get obsessive.

When it comes to my mental health, food can be a crutch for me. When I’m sad I’ve been known to cheer myself up with food and then be weighed down with guilt. I’ve also been known to get so obsessed with a number on a scale that I don’t want to eat. It can really go either way and I’m not willing to give the dark part of my brain something to feed on. It’s because of this I’ve started taking the measures that I did before, when I was at uni. While it’s not the same (I move around a lot less as I have to drive to work and only have a half hour lunch break) I do want to make a positive impact on my life, because I have been frustrated with myself.

I’m going to the gym with my sister and have cut down on what I eat. I’m so used to snacking because I get bored and not being able to say no to food going spare (today I passed on free Dominoes pizza, it was a proud moment), but I’m not doing it anymore. I have an allotted amount of food to eat. I want to try and stick to this. Of course if I’m going out for the day or evening with friends and want to have something I will, I’m not cutting out the things I enjoy completely.

Really I just want to get back to focusing on my health and feel good about myself, my mind and my body again. No fad diets. No wanting to be a ridiculous size or weight.  Just happy and healthy, that’s all I want to be. Also, next month I’ll be having spinal injections to tackle the pain, meaning that I’ll hopefully be getting around and able to work out a bit more without having to stop for pain!

Fit Not Thin

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I know that in the past few months I’ve slipped a little on my fitness. I’ve still got a strong appreciation that I can use my body after the accident, but there were a bunch of reasons I just lost motivation. You could say they’re excuses, maybe they are, but they’ve impacted not only my motivation but the way I felt about myself. I started reverting back to old ways, attempting to cut out food and give myself tiny portions, which made me absolutely miserable. I hated having to log everything and feeling guilty if I went out for dinner.

I like food, a big part of hanging out in my office revolves around the local burger place and I don’t have to tell you that sitting and eating some rice and possibly chicken if my calories will allow it is no fun when the guys are tucking into some beautiful burgers. I have the willpower, I’ve done it before but back then I didn’t mind, it was the only way I could control my body and the way I looked, now I have a little more scope for fitness and less time to faff around with calorie numbers.

I came to the conclusion that I need to separate being thin and being fit. I’ve been self conscious about weight since I was bullied at school. I was not fat, not at all, but I had a little puppy fat and most of the popular girls in my year were naturally very thin, I had curves and was frequently told to go to weight watchers. I used to get stressed about food, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t now sometimes. I don’t like salad and fruit on its own makes me really nauseous (no idea why, it just does), so eating lunch at school was a nightmare. Now it’s better I can eat vegetable soup or something where the veg is in a sauce (I know, I’m like a baby) but then I could eat the mush from the canteen or my packed lunch, that was it. I fretted and stressed because I didn’t have a ‘perfect body’ and hid under baggy clothes and jumpers whenever I could. Part of this was teenage insecurity, honestly though the picture below from my 15th birthday I hated and thought I was ‘fat’, I very clearly wasn’t.

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Anyway, back to the focus of this post. I realised I had some of these thoughts again, panicking and stressing about food all the time, it’s not fun and it’s not how I want to spend my life. I’m going to focus on being as fit as I can whilst recovering from my spine still. I don’t want numbers to dominate my life, because I’ve been there and it doesn’t always create the right results. I refuse to let myself have scales in my house because I know I’ll just get obsessed with some numbers and a BMI chart, where’s the fun in that? So there it is I’m going back to the gym, the workouts and just wanting to be as fit as I can.

The Gym Return.

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On Monday night I sat down and set up a gym membership, my goal was to get back to my workout routine pre deadlines. I have to admit knowing that I’m going to have to fit it around work rather than having my chilled sessions with Alice made me think twice about signing up. That said after my routine slipped I noticed that I put back on a little bit of weight and I wasn’t feeling as good in myself. With the move as well my mental health has been more tricky to deal with so I needed to dose myself up with some gym love.

I’m writing this, and I know it will be short, curled up in blankets and trying not to fall asleep but I feel SO GOOD. My body aches but I’m just proud of myself for getting off my ass and going after work. It helped that I went with my sister too and got to work out and talk to her. The most important thing is that I’m doing this for myself. I want to get fitter and try to help the pain in my spine, I want to be able to help my depression by working out. Losing weight is a plus but it’s not the reason I’m going any more, feeling healthy is much more important than what anyone else thinks of me or my body.

 

Image from Pinterest.

Fighting Fit: When Your Body Won’t Cooperate

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Fighting Fit- When your body doesn't cooperate

It might have been well over a year since I broke my spine but sometimes it throws a bit of a fit. I’ve been really busy for the past few weeks and travelling to things, boxing up the flat and all that jazz, meaning that I’ve put quite a bit of strain on my back. This evening I’m sat with a big fluffy pillow resting, writing, reading and just feeling a bit frustrated. I’ve come a really long way in the past year but sometimes I try and do too much and pay for it later. I don’t think there’s anything more frustrating than when your own body lets you down.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the accident and my injury lately, more than I normally would. With the warm weather coming and my friends heading to fun days out, theme parks and long walks I can’t help but feel a little jealous. It does still get to me but more than anything I get really self concious about it in public. There are still times when I get a limp on my left side because after doing too much I’m in a lot of pain or my leg will start to go numb. When I go to Comic Con or any big event like that, I sometimes need my crutch just to relieve some of the pain. As someone who wants to be seen as strong, who is used to getting up and getting on (just like getting up straight after I fell) it’s hard to let people see me on the days when I am a little more vulnerable. This is particularly the case when I’m getting to know new people, such as at my new job.

That said, I know that these frustrations are just a part of recovery and of having to take things one step at a time. I found a lot of comfort in a TED Talk I watched yesterday (click here for 7 TED talks you need to watch!), it reminded me that while my body is still working hard and healing, it’s not the only thing I have going for me. My body being in pain and breaking took things from me, but it gave me opportunities too. It taught me a lot about myself and what I want, it taught me to appreciate every step I take because I could so easily have lost the ability to walk.

In all of this, the good days, the bad nights, the medication changes, the occasional limping and the jokes that I make to make others more comfortable I realised that I need to keep my mind fighting. I can’t let myself go into a place of wallow and self pity. I can’t let myself give in when I’m sick of physiotherapy or don’t feel like going to the gym or when the doctors try and palm me off with silly answers. Keeping my mind strong is what will, in the end, keep my body fighting, even on the worst days.