long time........No blog

I'm so sorry, I haven't updated for a week or so. The world has been conspiring against me. It started about three weeks ago, a slight niggly pain on the inside of my right ankle which felt sore to touch almost like a bruise would. Other than that it didn't hurt so I didn't worry about it. Except a week later when it was a bit more tender and still no bruise came out I started to realise that maybe I had done something odd to it. Then it started hurting alot, especially after going to the gym and I was developing a bit of a limp. I decided to battle through but everyone was telling me to rest it, as the days went on and it got more and more swollen I decided not to run on it but still do everything else. Still it got worse. We went out for an evening with some friends (doesn't happen often) and as much as it pained me to do it I even wore flats !!!!!!!!! Lots of alcohol was drunk. The bill for our food and drink in the restaurant was £689.38 !!!!!!! between 6 of us. Good job we weren't paying and it was a treat from one of our rich friends. No dancing was done, but when we arrived home and I sat down to take my shoes off as I touched my ankle I noticed it didn't hurt. Fab I thought, its fixed. Then I looked at it. Balloon wasn't the word, the whole thing was three times the size of the other ankle. I think the drink must have numbed it because it certainly looked painful. The next day I knew that something was really wrong when  the swelling was growing even more I thought the skin might burst on my foot. So on the Monday off I went to the polyclinic. This is a brilliant facility as A&E is always busy here and going to the doctors with swelling in my ankle like this would have only ended up with him saying  I should go and get an x-ray. I saw a lovely lady doctor who after a bit of manipulation came to the diagnosis of severe tendonitis. She prescribed painkillers, support and a brilliant spray called bio-freeze. Thankfully she said I was ok to carry on with some light work in the gym but no running untill the pain was gone. The spray is amazing although a tad pricey but I really feel this has aided the healing process so much so, I have managed a light four minute run yesterday when just over a week ago I could barely walk.
  So you would think I'm back on track one little hiccup and it was all systems go. No, as if to adding insult to injury literally the boy child came down with a sick bug so he couldn't go to the creche for 48 hours, fine thought I will not be beaten. I went in the evening instead, untill 48 hours later the girl child came down with it too, swiftly followed by me !!!! This is always a pretty horrendous thing for me, I have a phobia of being sick so it was all very dramatic and I was completely shown up by both my children who dealt with their sickness in a very matter of fact way. Whereas I sobbed, cried and hyperventilated my way through it. I couldn't eat for three days after but I did make the gym on Sunday. I lost 5lb this week and I only went twice !!!! Every cloud has a silver lining.
 My woes haven't ended there though. Today the car failed its MOT ! but to be honest I was expecting it as I knew my brake pipes had a bit of corrosion. However it does mean no gym till it comes back from the garage. Not to be beaten and keen to keep off the 5lb I'm exercising indoors untill then.
  So there is my three things and lets hope there are no more for a while.
I just want to talk about slimming pills for a bit. I have read alot this week and seen a few things on the telly about people buying pills online and becoming ill after suffering nasty side effects. I know what drives people to buy these things and take these risks as I have been there and perhaps if I ever had the money in my account to buy them I may have done (sometimes being poor is good for your health) Its that sheer desperation of just wanting to get rid of the weight in the quickest easiest most pain free way possible. The results are what pulls you in. the guaranteed loss is far more dependable than a diet or exercise. Look at me all this hard work and I'm not shifting half as much as I would like too. But in reality deep down we all know the only way to loose weight is too eat less and move more. Sure it might take longer to achieve results and you might be tempted to give up. You probably will give up a few times before you get it right. The sense of satisfaction you get from people saying how well you are doing and noticing the change in your body has to be one of the best things ever. I feel so proud of myself when anyone says anything to me and to be honest I wouldn't feel that if I had achieved the same comments from taking a pill. Weight loss is a massive industry and we fuel it. As with every industry there is always some unscrupulous vultures waiting in the wings to rip you off and con you. They don't care if they make you ill or permanently damage you, so please don't buy them. Just eat less, move more. Simples xxx

When the going gets tough.............

The tough KEEP going !!!! So proud of myself this week. I silently set myself the challenge of going to the gym everyday, and I have done it ! even though the last few days I have sat and questioned why I am doing it and reasoned with myself that I dont need to go everyday etc I still did it. This is no easy thing to achieve as I am the queen of talking myself out of doing stuff when things get a bit hard. It hasn't been as easy as I thought, partly down to the gym being re-furbished and all the cardio equipment was moved into the sports hall. Except not all of it as they didnt have enough power supply and also it wasnt the whole hall either, just a quarter. Its funny how you get so used to things being in the same place and there was a real sense of everyone being really disorientated. No music to work out to and the treadmills facing a brickwall instead of mirrors, (which are great for spying on other people) made every mintue on the treadmill feel like ten. Also I couldn't use my normal (favourite) treadmill as they didnt move it over. They have three different types there and the one I was using for most of the week seemed to make my shins hurt alot more and the temptation to do less running was very high. I did enjoy watching the other classes going on in the sports hall at the same time as I was killing my thighs on the stepping machine and cross trainers. The over 50's tap class definately brightened my day up as did the badminton clubs warm up routine. Lots of old men skipping around whilst reaching up to touch their heads, and one lady who who took the little jog across the hall very seriously and sprinted before anyone else had even started made me laugh out loud. For two of the days my daughter was away on a residential school trip which meant even though I had no school run to do I was still up and out the door at normal time, as much as I would have loved the chance to slob out indoors taking it easy. Today the equipment had all been moved back in and as if they just want to make us all even more disorientated everything has been completely changed around. Im sure I will get used to it though.
  So I sat and worked out a run down of what I have done this week and lookimg at it on paper I feel really proud of myself
Run 14 miles
Cycled 18 miles
Cross trainer 3 hours
240 crunches
180 bicep curls with the free weights
then add on to that the other weights I do and it all looks even more impressive
270 reps seated row
270 reps tricep and bicep press
270 reps leg press
 All looks good dont you think ???????

   So why the hell have I not lost any weight this week ???? not a pound, Gutted ! I'm hoping that either  the scales have gone wrong due to them being moved about in the week or that I am just being impatient and next week there will be a big drop.
    What I have decided to do for next week is do two days on and one off as I am pretty sure I couldnt maintain a full week long term and I really only did it to test myself just to check if I really had got more dedicated and I think I have. Which is handy given the fact that the daughter came home from the school trip with the biggest stinkiest black bag full of dirty clothes so I now not only have all the chores I have been meaning to do this week but didnt because I was in the gym I will also have an extra few loads of washing. Brilliant

Back on Track and Dad

Amazing, thats how i am feeling tonight ! I have been to the gym loads this week and have Paid alot of attention to the food intake and I am feeling pretty damm good. Even my arms are starting to get the tiniest amount of definition to them. Which is nothing short of a miracle. Since the beginning of time i have never been able to 'flex' my biceps and show of a bit of muscle. Funny because i have spent most of my life riding, mucking out, grooming etc horses. i mean i could at one time easily carry up to ten bales of hay on a wheelbarrow so I'm no weakling. Now as I'm doing alot more weights all of a sudden I'm seeing a little bit of muscle. Pathetic thing to get excited about but if your ten year old daughter has bigger biceps than you its time to worry.
Lots of gym next week I am finding it much easier with the running and can easily manage between 10-15 minutes of solid running and once my heart rate goes down to normal I run again for as long as i can. By the end of the week i am hoping to have got my run up to about 20 minutes. My style of running is certainly interesting and has definitely caused some looks from the serious runners that are so good at the treadmill they can look at other people without fear of wobbling into the side rails and flying of the machine itself.
        I bumped into my Dad in the gym today i haven't seen him for a since  I first started out on my fitness plan so it was good to hear him say i was looking like i had lost weight. I have a strange relationship with Dad. He brought me and my sister up as i have mentioned before so i should be close to him but I'm not. He wasn't the easiest person to be around and still isn't now. When i think back i could apportion alot of the blame for my weight issues to him. when i was young i wasn't a great eater and he used to force feed me. There were times when i was being sick and he was still shovelling food in. I can remember one awful day were he was insistent that i eat a boiled egg (which i didn't like) and it got completely out of control he wanted everything on my plate eaten and of course the feel of the egg in my mouth combined with the taste and smell meant i was gagging away, eventually the inevitable happen and i was sick. On my plate. An hour later the plate was clear. I have never eaten egg since that day and have never boiled an egg either. If someone eats a boiled egg near me I have to leave the room. As i got older into my teens i would hide food everywhere and anywhere i could. It almost became like a defiance thing and in the end I just didn't eat. As i mentioned before my Dad was heavily into running and I wasn't so many a time i would get called fatty or lazy. This only fuelled my problems further and whether it was a control thing for me as he was so domineering in all aspects of my life or if i had developed some kind of phobia i don't know but these problems continued on until i became pregnant with my daughter. When i did start eating again my metabolism was all over the place and i just gained weight like there was no tomorrow. Also i have a real problem with leaving food on my plate, hell not just my plate either but the kids plates or any plates with leftovers on. I think that comes from not being able to stop eating until the plate was cleared. Still i cant be to harsh, i am a parent now and i know how frustrating it can be when the kids wont eat, although i would never force my kids to eat my Dad was just trying to do what he thought was best for me in the long run. My sister on the other hand was a star child. Ate what she was told to eat and ran when she was supposed to. None of this done wonders for my self esteem. But it would be to easy to heap all the blame on him i have to take some responsibility for myself.

falling off the wagon !!!!!

Well, there we go. I fell off the exercise wagon a bit. I think it was a combination of the daughter having an extended Easter break (extra week) and no club at the gym for her meant it was going to be harder to go and i had a bit of a cold. To be honest i could have worked through it but at the time i did feel awful. I didn't go to the gym for a whole 7 days !!!!!!! I was so cross with myself but it wasn't to hard to get back into it again. so all back to normal now and working really hard to get back to the level I was at. Managed a 12 min run today and am settling into a good routine again. I have decided to give the rpm classes a miss for a while, I'm not sure if they were what had upset my little routine in the first place with being confused about the amount of weights and cardio I was doing.
 I have weighed  myself a few times since this whole process began and after the initial 5 pound loss in the first week I seem to not really be doing much more, although my body has definitely changed shape and things are feeling tighter in general. So I'm going to look into changing the eating habits and see if that makes a difference. I think maybe keeping a food diary might help me to see where I am going wrong. Obviously I do need to be really careful because this is where I start to become obsessive. Starting tomorrow I'm going to write down everything I eat and drink throughout the day !!!! scary thought but needs must. One of my friends is getting married in august so i have a proper date to aim towards now. By the wedding i want to be feeling really good about myself, I know by then I'm not likely to be anywhere near the final result but just to be able to enjoy a day out in a nice outfit without constantly worrying about being fat will be great.
I'm keeping my days nice and busy so that removes the temptation of coming home after the gym and vegging out on the sofa. I must say though tonight I'm exhausted, so its an early night for me. I cant not wait to crawl into my lovely bed and will be having a little smile to myself because i know how hard I have worked today.