Good Plan Batman?

Ladies and readers I have an idea.
If we are going to get fit for the Olympics it seems to me it would be remiss of us not to plan some sort of finishing line of our own.  A medal ceremony accompanied by own own personal anthems maybe a little ambitious (and it is unlikely The Proclaimers would be able to spare the time to come and play my anthem personally) so instead I suggest either we choose a point on the Olympic torches journey to London and all meet up to see it (or we all pick a place nearest to us and cheer it on there if funds are tight).

Thoughts?

Drum Roll please....or maybe not....

So here we are, at the end of week 1.

Lise and Helen below have been very honest about where they are in terms of their weight, fitness and goals. So I thought I should also post a little about why I am doing this.  For me this process is kind of a thank you to myself.  My poor old body, I have been battering it for neigh on 20 years now.  Since I was the first girl to obviously start puberty in middle school at the grand old age of 11 I never really felt comfortable in my own skin.

I internalised what we might tactfully refer to as a difficult adolescence and beyond and battered my body inside and out with too much alcohol, nicotine, sugar, fat, binges, purgers, starvation and every crack pot diet in-between   Despite all this my body has never let me down.  During a very difficult delivery of my eldest daughter it did everything it could to protect her and get me through one close call with death in really pretty good shape.  Then it fought off viral meningitis and then it got me through the small matter of one brain hemorrage and one lot of brain surgery in February of this year.  It seems to be that it might be time to cut my body some slack and actually respect it a bit, look after it a bit better.

Now sure my bones are not perfect either, (in fact having osteogenesis imperfector leaves no room for doubt) but actually my bones do their best to keep me moving too.  I am recovering from an operation on my foot (known in these parts as my fookedfoot) to reshape the joint of my big toe and hopefully once the pain has gone (please God for good) I'll be back to walking the miles upon miles a week listening to my i-pod like I used to before my life took such an unexpected turn.

As you might expect much in the way of physical activities has not been a priority for some time.  In fact for a while I wasn't capable of much beyond sitting on the sofa, not that anyone wanted me to do much more than that anyway.  Now as my physical mobility increases and my brain is being more co operative (at least 50% of the time anyway) I am finally, like a squeaky, rusted train starting to gather a tiny bit of steam.

I plan to start increasing my independence by going for walks alone in the first instance. Not least because my body seems to have lost all ability to adequately regulate it's temperature so I'd rather less people saw me sweating like a piggy.  And the wonder of my bike thing means I can do that whilst watching Homes Under The Hammer.  God I LOVE Homes Under The Hammer, does anyone know how I get Martin and Lucy's autograph?  Anyone?

ANYWAY, right the result this week are:
Walking 13.5 miles so 486.5 to go
Cycling 8 miles so 492 to go.

I am fairly ambivalent about those figures, it's a start I guess.  I told my doctor this week about my 2x 500 mile plan when we discussed my ongoing rehab stuff.  She looked at me with a mixture of amusement, concern, pity and hope.  Assuming nothing else happens *touches wood madly* I'll see her again in 3 months.  I plan to have some pretty good figures to show her then, and I don't just mean a smaller bum!

It's funny, but it's true; it's true, but it's not funny

Since Helen was dead brave and honest below me, I thought I'd do the same and work out why I'm here and what I want from this.
I'm not calling it a diet either, for the simple reason that I know when something is forbidden to me I rebel like a twatty surburban teenager, except with Twixes this time, rather than badly-applied eyeliner. And my bizarre relationship with food, by the by.

There's very little time in my life when I've not been at least chubby. I went toddler-chubby>bookish child who was shit at sport>fat teenager who was able to eat shit for the first time in her life and went overboard. If I'm absolutely honest, looking back, perhaps I absorbed some food issues during my childhood. We didn't eat sweets and had a pretty sugarfree and lowfat diet. I'm sure my parents were doing the best by us at the time, but a low-fat sugarfree diet in the early 90s (and now!) means gallons of artificial sweeteners and Flora, ie, the shit that I now know puts weight on me like nothing else.
So, when I went to secondary school and could eat loads of crisps and crap, I did, to a ridiculous degree. By the time I was in 2nd year at uni, I was over 13 stone and a size 16/18 at 5 foot 3. Sadface.

But then! I left the country, and went to work abroad for a while. A combination of being poor, having no oven and living with someone who had food issues meant I lost a lot of weight; about 3 stones in 6 months. For the first time in my life I looked normal, felt I could wear nice clothes etc. The downside of being able to feed yourself for €10 a week means that it's not very varied. I lived on muesli for breakfast, a couple of biscuits from the tin at work for lunch, lentils with other veg for tea; yoghurt for dessert. Tap water to drink. Every day for a year except Sundays. It sounds boring, but I LOVED it. I felt healthy,  energetic, all that.I also felt as if I was worth something, for once.

But I had to come back, and that diet is unsustainable here, because veg are so much more expensive in the UK, but also because I moved back to my parents', and most of the control over meals was understandably removed from me. However, I managed to stay at that weight for a long while.

But....this year has been difficult in a lot of ways. To cut an already overlong story short, I got ill in the last year of my University degree, and no one could fix me. It turned out to be an allergy; incredibly minor in the scale of things, but it meant I was in pretty much constant pain for about 6 months. But because I looked normal, no one realised it was debilitating to me. Eventually all the NHS could suggested was to man up, stop moaning, and celibacy. By this time I had been with my new boyfriend for about 7 months, during  6 of which he'd put up with me doing my best nun impression to try and stop the pain. When the doctors told me that there was nothing they could do, I kind of fell apart. In my mind, not only was I in pain, but it wasn't ever going to stop, I was going to lose the man I loved and I could never be normal. (Drama queen, I know) And therefore I ate crap, in an attempt to feel better.

So here we are. I managed to fix myself through a last-ditch idea, woop! So no more pain for the moment. However I've put on about a stone in a year. I'm probably about 11 and a half.

I will never be skinny; I have a genetically large arse, and PCOS, so I will never have,never have had, a flat stomach. I can accept that. But when I look at myself now, all I see is acres of fat. I hate myself for going backwards, so scared of going  back to how I was. I spent my teenage years in clothes that suited me, that I was told were suitable for my figure, but clothes that were boring and safe, from M&S, Next, etc. The joy of being thinner was/is being able to buy vintage, unconventional clothes that I liked as per my personality. Maybe I still can; I don't know, because I daren't try.  I'm 22. I have 2, 3, 5 years max until I'm too old to shop in Topshop and H&M and "young" shops. Before I have to dress "nicely" again. It's the idea that I'm too fat to enjoy my youth and it's my own fault which hurts and disgusts me the most.

I'm doing Olympfit because I have to change this. Too much of my life has been spent in depression and self-loathing. It might not work, but my pals are doing it with me and if I know anything I know that they are some of the world's most supportive people. So I have nothing to lose.

We're not calling it a diet...

It seems I have been slightly remiss in the posting stakes lately, I think it’s because I knew this post was going to be hard to write.

As I build up the courage to return to the gym... (and it’s taking a while) I’ve been trying to eat healthily.

But we’re not calling it a diet.

The thing is, we can’t really. I’ve been on A Diet before. I lost a lot of weight, but I wasn’t very good at it. To cut a very long and boring story short, I’m not allowed to go on a diet anymore.

I’ve been trying to concentrate on cutting the excess. I’m not really concentrating too hard on the meals, but rather the bits in between. The hard thing in all this is that I’m probably the world’s worst emotional eater, so the last couple of days have been quite hard for me in that my feelings haven’t really had anywhere to go. It’s been a tough couple of days, but I’m recognising that that is what’s going on and accepting it for what it is. Something that I need to go through to break the cycle.

This is probably why the fitness thing appeals to me. It’s an outlet for my energies and when I’m exercising, I’m too lazy to undo the work that I’ve done with food so tend to stay on the right path.

I have no idea what kind of goal to set. I know I want more energy and to be healthier, but have no idea of what I may be capable of. So I’m going to hold off on the goal for now, but I will start the exercise regime soon. Honest. If I don’t, please poke me. Thanks.

Google Maps is a bloody faff.

This I have learnt from working out that I walked 5.9 miles today, although this included an impromptu trip to Aldi (oh, the glamour), where I bought nothing and walked past chocolate and tasty cereal. I knew having £8 to last me all week would work out well!

Google also tells me that I'll be walking 4 miles every day when I stay with my parents, 2.7 when I stay with my parents but go home to my boyfriend's, and an utterly shameful 1.4 on the rare days when I both leave and come home to my boyfriend's. Is it me or is that a bit shit? I'm a bit sad about that.

In other news, on the yay side I have ordered a cable for the aforementioned iPod shuffle. On the nay side the stitching on my running trousers has come apart in the washing ON THE FOURTH WASH. They were expensive. I am annoyed. Now the drawstring no longer functions and the double waistband doesn't exist, so wearing them is painful. Bah. Hey ho.

Monday, Monday..

A good enough day to start I feel so here we are.

I have decided to combine walking with 'cycling'.  When I say 'cycling' I mean this:

OK so I wrote about why I have this and not an actual bike here.  So currently my plan is going something like this....

No, I am not going for a Proclaimers style make over but I am wondering if between now and the Olympics I can walk 500 miles.  Since I am doing that, I am wondering if I can cycle another 500 for good measure.  However as easy as it is for me to stick the DS pedometer in my pocket and convert the kilometres to miles (better go dig that out tonight actually) the 'cycle' thing tells me time, calories burnt and how many revolutions the pedals have done.
I need to figure out a way to convert that into miles, any ideas?

Auld (iPod) shuffle and the New Town stride

The boyfriend/better half (delete as applicable) surprised me on Tuesday having bought me a secondhand iPod shuffle. After I'd wiped the look of shock and "zomgthisistoomuchmoneytospendonme" off my face he said "I thought it'd be good for running." Yay, SupportiveMan! It'll be handy as my 16gig Nano is dying batterywise and getting a bit full, and I can take it to work too. Brill.

PS: Sorry for the obscure Scottish folksong title reference. If you know me, you'll realise that this'll probably happen a lot.

Blisters!

I have gotten blisters on my heels - sadly not from a ten mile hike, but from walking around Torquay looking for a pub. I need to buy some trainers as these flat shoes are clearly not going to be much cop if I'm aiming to increase my walking. Obviously the fact that I don't currently own a pair of trainers is indictive of my attitude towards exercise up to this point. Baby steps...

I'm wearing my running clothes. That means it's exercise, yo.

Forgot I/my brother/my dad had a Wii Sports lying about, and how Wii Tennis is about the only sport I can do; so spent an hour today whacking hypothetical balls at virtual Playmobil figures. That counts, right? If I keep it up I'll at least have a very fit left arm...

Older and wiser...

Actually I'm getting older and fatter, and walking uphill practically kills me, so it's time to do something positive! Can't change my age, but hopefully can do something about getting fitter. I'm starting today with small changes to be just a bit more active - walk a bit further, sit on my bum a bit less, and will build from there...

Pam

Franco gets fitter

...that's the idea, anyway.


Hello, my name's Lise, but call me Franco, everybody does (long story). I'd like to be a bit thinner than I am now. I consider myself quite fit in a "can walk a long way without moaning" way, but can I run past the end of my street? Can I buggery. So I suspect the idea that I'm fit may, in fact, be bollocks.

However. I have a plan. I started the couch-2-5k plan a fortnight ago, which was great, until I royally banjaxed my hamstrings and ankles. No, I don't know how I managed it either. Sadface, So. I have an eliptical walker thing which has festered in a corner for ages. It's a hateful thing but I reckon it'll be easier on my muscles than running; I also don't mind doing crunches for my abs so if I put in a good few of them a week we might be rolling.

Also, in a spectacularly sudden financial SNAFU,it turns out that from Sunday I won't have money to buy my weekly bus pass until pretty much the end of time. This means I'll be walking about 90mins to and from work 6 days out of 7 until Septemberish, hopefully 3/7 after that. Hopefully that makes a wee bit of a difference.

Allez les filles, let's roll.

My Name Is Fiona and...

after a few minor setbacks this year (you know, brain explosions, foot joints being jiggerypoked) I am all for getting a little more healthy and a lot more active.

So far I'm thinking that I'll reset my DS Walk With Me, start using my pedometer, track how far I can walk, convert that into miles and then see how many equivalent marathons I can do between now and then.

The marathon is an Olympic event isn't it?  Well, it's an idea anyway......

Welcome!

By my calculations, it's 374 days until the Olympics start.
I seriously need to get fit.
I haven't decided what my goal will be, but right now I'll settle for not convincing myself I have diabetes every time I'm thirsty.

Some others want to get fit too. If you do, let us know. The more the merrier.

I'm a bit excited about this now...

Helen