My fitness journey ... the beginning and the why!

I love exercising, fitness, sport; it’s always been a huge part of my life. As soon as I could walk, I could run. In fact, my poor mother once had to chase me on the beach as I sprinted away from an ice cream van after realising I was not getting an ice cream! It was Sunday, my parents are Christians and don’t buy anything on their religious day (apart from the newspaper). I was about 18 months ...

For most of my teenage years, my parents transported me to various activities. Athletics - sprinting - was my favourite. I probably would have been more successful if I had been more focused on my training and nutrition. But I was happy with what I was doing and I knew that I’d never be one of the top sprinters in the country - I regularly competed against a few of them, they were in a different league! Although I know as a young teenager my mindset prevented me from being more successful, when I started to visualise winning before a race, I began to succeed.

Anyway, fast forward to now. I have to confess my main obstacle is still nutrition. I eat healthy meals but I snack! Whenever I am strict and monitor this, I lose weight, look good and am proud of myself but I often find this difficult to maintain. 

A real turning point of my life was when I was diagnosed with an under active thyroid. I’m fairly sure it’s affected me most of my adult life but I’ve controlled it through exercise. I used to exercise so much (quite often twice a day) that friends said I should be a PT! Sometimes people don’t understand why I exercise so much, but I have been told that if I don’t I’ll become ‘a fat, depressed mess’. That’s not going to happen!

Over the last year, I have to admit, I’ve struggled with my weight - it sometimes fluctuates up to 10 pounds during the day from water retention (another lovely side effect from an under active thyroid!) This is so frustrating!! My scales measure fat percentage and water as well as body mass but even so, I haven’t weighed myself recently. I measure myself on my jeans and Lipsy dresses! 

Recently, I’ve become resigned to the fact that I may never have a flat stomach again (I used to always pride myself on my stomach)! But as much as I could persuade myself that I was happy, I’m not! I need to look and feel good, in fact, amazing, and I can achieve this!

For a while I’ve been looking for ways to really focus on my goals and develop my passion for fitness. So I’m super excited to have joined a community of online health and fitness coaches and plan to document my journey by sharing it through my social media.

My hope is that I can inspire others through my day to day posts. Thanks in advance for your support 💕

Feeling puzzled!

For a while I have been very puzzled as to why my daughter always seems to record more steps on her Fitbit on those days when either we’ve done the same amount of exercise or I have done more! We have exactly the same Fitbit, the only difference is mine is a year older! 

So today I decided to carry out a scientific investigation with my younger daughter. She put a watch on each wrist and went about her daily business, which mainly involved walking about a bit, chatting and eating. 

Of course, we recorded the starting points for both watches. My elder daughter has not synced her Fitbit recently, hence the incorrect time. Her watch started on 317 steps, mine on 928 steps.

When we checked the steps after a short period of time, my daughter’s watch was at 646 and mine was at 1,134 (bit blurry).

This meant that the black watch (my daughter’s) recorded 329 steps and mine, the purple one, recorded 206 steps. That’s a difference of 123 steps! And if you calculate that over the course of a day, it probably works out as a difference of a few thousand steps if we’re covering the same distance!

So my question is, why is the exact same make of watch recording steps differently? Is it because one watch is older than the other? And if so, surely that shouldn’t make a difference, as it would mean that after a short period of time, the Fitbit becomes a lot less effective!

Any comments are welcome! 

Running as therapy

Once upon a time, a very competitive girl found that she couldn’t run without challenging herself to run at a certain pace. Often this worked very well and in fact, she often found it was a positive way of improving her running as she set herself targets to beat. And as she was super competitive, this usually helped with her performance. 

However, on occasion, usually when she was tired, she didn’t perform as well. This was not good. If her pace slowed to less than 5.30 minutes per km, she was not happy as she felt like she had failed!

As a teenager, this girl had been a sprinter, which is when her obsession with time probably started. Unfortunately as an overkeen athlete, who obviously knew better than everyone else, when she got injured, she usually rested for no more than a day or two, keen to get back to training.

Therefore, when this former sprinter started training for longer distances, putting pressure on an already slightly broken body (which continued to get injured as an adult), her body said, “No more!” and decided it was no longer going to endure the torture it had been used to.

Gradually, very slowly, in fact, this runner realised she had no choice but to listen to her body. Although it wasn’t until running two weeks after badly spraining her ankle, and pushing her body to the point of virtual breakdown, that she realised sometimes achieving a target time is not the most important thing in a race.

It has taken a long time but this (still competitive when she needs to be) girl has started enjoying running a lot more now that she is not constantly putting herself under the pressure of running a decent time. She is taking in her surroundings, enjoying her running and finding it incredibly therapeutic. The injuries are also a lot less frequent, fingers crossed they will remain like that!

Balance is the key now and even though she still has targets to achieve, this girl is finding it a lot more satisfying to vary her training to include long, slow runs, short, fast runs and maintaining a certain pace, training both on and off road.

Moral of the story - listen to your body. If it is telling you to slow down, take it easier, then do it. Don’t wait until it ‘breaks’ as it will take a lot longer to come back, both physically and mentally! 

Whose mad idea was this?!

Nowhere near prepared for this ... entered very impulsively. 

Who in their right mind would enter a race so soon after Christmas?! And now I have to run 10 miles while feeling like a stuffed turkey, thanks to all the food I've consumed over the past week or so. 

It's not even as if 10 miles is an easy distance for me! I've only ever run it three times before, the last time was October when I set out far too fast and almost gave up half way through, the finish line bling the only thing keeping me going! 

My Garmin has now been set to buzz if I'm either running too fast or too slow, to help with establishing and maintaining a sensible pace. Without this I would undoubtedly set off at 7.30 mile pace, which, for me, is completely impossible to sustain! 

Not that I'm running to achieve a decent time. Tomorrow's run is all about burning a few of those Christmas calories and doing a run with friends, one of whom is celebrating her birthday. Could say she's mad doing a run on her birthday but I've already signed up for one the day after mine next October! 

Energy gels, water bottle and clothes are all ready for an early start tomorrow. Fingers crossed my many injury niggles stay away and it's a race that I can look back at fondly and may even sign up for again next year! 

Already looking forward to the post-race celebrations!! 

New year ... new you?

Will you make any New Year's Resolutions this year? Will they be realistic and achievable? Or will you, like many others, set goals that are either unobtainable or ones that you lose interest in after January?

I wonder what the most popular resolutions are ... lose weight, cut the booze, start exercising, cut out junk food? I've done the healthy lifestyle resolutions; cutting chocolate from my diet for a month actually made a positive impact on my wellbeing in addition to aiding weight loss. Indeed, reducing any toxins, such as alcohol, chocolate or take aways, is going to improve health, given that they are slowly poisoning your body. I, however, will not be joining the masses to undertake January's 'Dryathlon'.

So why do we set New Year's Resolutions? Personally, I find that I am more likely to achieve a goal if I set it when it I actually need to achieve it.

In October I set myself a target to lose the weight that I had put on since breaking my ankle two years ago. I have achieved most of this and have come to realise that for me, weight loss is not a goal in itself. What is more important is improving my health by reducing my body fat, improving my fitness by increasing the distance I run and setting myself new fitness challenges. These are constant goals, not just created because it's the time of year to do so.

So when midnight strikes, heralding the start of a New Year, what resolutions will you set? Whatever you decide, I wish you a happy, healthy, fun and prosperous new year!

                                 

One, two or three ... How many children is the perfect number?

I used to be the perfect mum. I had a well-behaved, easily motivated and confident child. He was happy, sporty, did well at school and made friends easily. If he even considered doing something naughty, a word or look from me would put an end to it. This parenting busy is easy, I thought ... 

So for the first six years of his life my son was an only child. I loved our time together when it was just the two of us: cinema trips; coffee shop visits; swimming at the outdoor pool at the gym - he swam, I sunbathed! 

People used to ask me when I was having another child; I hated that question. These questions started when my son was only six months old, I was definitely not considering having another child then! And as time went on, it seemed less likely that I would have any more children, especially as I didn't want to have children after the age of 29 (positively ancient!!) 

But sometimes I would wonder what we were missing. I remember visiting Legoland and seeing families with a few children. Did they seem happier as they had more than one child? 

Shortly before his seventh birthday, along came his sister. Slightly jealous initially, which was only natural after being the only child for so long, he soon took on the big brother role with pride. Despite the age gap, brother and sister played together well and he always looked out for her. 

Strangely, I used to be a perfectionist. I wanted the best in everything and was disappointed if I didn't achieve it. With two children it is a lot more difficult to succeed as a perfectionist. Twice as many toys, double the noise ... imagine two Duracell bunnies bouncing around constantly! 

Some people say that the jump from one to two children is the big one; others disagree and say it's the leap to three. I think that any jump is a change and a challenge! So when baby number three came along, you can imagine that our lives changed again. 

Thank goodness I managed to get over my desire for perfectionism, as I would probably have signed myself into an institution before now if I hadn't. Child number three is my little whirlwind, 10 Duracell bunnies roled into one. She has never needed much sleep and is constantly on the go. 

The balance shifted dramatically when I increased to three children; one is usually left out or picked on by the others. Thankfully I'm not house proud, it's impossible to keep a tidy house with three children. And I don't have time for housework (I work and I have three children - that's my excuse and think it's a pretty good one!)

My life is manic but I wouldn't have it any other way. As I mentioned, I thought I had motherhood all sorted when I just had the one child. I was lucky that my first child was so 'easy' in that I understood what motivated him. But it's also a lot easier when you do just have the one child. You can focus on them: bring them to tennis lessons (he had four a week), swimming, karate, rugby; spend time on homework and learning; choose what they want to do in their spare time without having to consider anyone else.

Introduce any more children into the equation and things inevitably change. It's impossible to bring them to all the activities that both they and you would like them to do. It's so much harder to give each child the amount of time you would like to focus on their learning.

Prior to having more than one child, I thought how a child behaved was to do with parenting. I still think that how you parent a child does have some impact on their behaviour, morals, for example, are usually ingrained from your upbringing. But it's only after having two then three children that I have realised that they are so individual. They have their own little personalities and whatever they do is affected by this. As I said, child number one was easily motivated and also very competitive. When he was three years old, I told him that he should be dressing himself, so he did. I was the proud mum at swimming when he was quickly changed before anyone else. My two girls, however, are the opposite, they like to take their time over things. Although we're working on trying to get changed more quickly at swimming.

My life may have been easier when I only had one child but it is now much happier with three. I no longer wonder what I am missing ... I am now the proud mum of three completely individual, happy children. And no.3, the maddest of them all, is apparently most like me!!

Does anyone actually read reports?

It's that time of year when teachers are frantically trying to write reports ... as if we didn't have enough to do already! As I  was pondering on how I am going to get them written on time, I started to question if parents actually read them?

Have you ever read your son or daughter's report and thought that could have been written about any child in the class? Or I recognise that report writing programme? (Teachers may have noticed this!) Occasionally I have read a school report for one of my children and thought: 'The teacher knows and understands my child'. Therefore I always endeavour to personalised reports. It's great as a parent to read about a particular piece of work or event that your child has excelled at and that it has been recognised. 

Adding specific details and events to reports makes them much more enjoyable for the parents to read but inevitably creates a lot more work for the teacher. Fortunately there will always be children in every class who seem to be constantly excelling in virtually every area of the curriculum, thereby making it easier for the teacher to write about. However, there are also those reports that require more thinking time before writing, especially for those children who are getting on well at school and don't have any significant strengths or weaknesses. (I am aware that all children are gifted in something, although sometimes this isn't discovered until later on when they are introduced to new experiences).

So for me it's going to be a lot of late nights in order to get these reports finished and hopefully I'll have
satisfied parents who appreciate the effort I have put into writing them! 

(For anyone reading this who is thinking: 'Why isn't she writing reports instead of a blog post about writing reports?' I'm watching my daughter's swimming lesson. Plus everyone needs to take a break sometime!)