What I've learnt

I've just about been in to this whole fitness thing for over a year now, and as I explained in a recent post, I thought I would be well on my way to a brand new body by now. The truth is, you can't just wake up one day and decide to change your life and start exercising with an end goal in mind with no real knowledge of what the hell you're actually doing! (Maybe you can, in which case congrats, but it didn't work for me.) The past 14 months has been a journey of discovery and learning, breaking habits, and realising I shouldn't believe everything I read on the internet(!) That's not to say I now know everything there is to know, no way, not even close. I will never stop learning, but that's what I enjoy so much!

Here's a few things I've learnt throughout my journey so far, which will hopefully help others too!

1. Set realistic goals

This is an important point to make and is something that everyone should consider at first. In order to make changes, you need to start small. Setting yourself an end goal which is inevitably going to be too difficult to reach, will more often than not result in failure, which can be disheartening and you'll probably beat yourself up about it, adding to your discontent. Instead, set simple, easily attainable goals, no matter how small, and go for it. Achieving these will build your self esteem and set you up with a positive mindset.

So to put that into a bit of context, if you jump straight in the deep end with the mindset that you want 6-pack abs in time for your summer holiday in 6 months time, then I'm sorry, speaking from experience, it ain't gonna happen, and you will feel let down. A better starting goal would be to aim to get a workout in at least twice a week consistently for the next month. When you've achieved that, set yourself another!

2. Don't over complicate your diet

I must have tried, or at least researched, a million different diets in my lifetime. I've gotten myself in to a right old pickle reading the vast amounts of conflicting advice on nutrition and diet - to the point where I just wanted to throw my laptop out the window and cry into my tub of Ben & Jerry's. I could write a dissertation on this topic, but maybe that's for a future post...

What I've since learnt though, through trial and error and educating myself via the right platforms, is that it really doesn't have to be that complicated. Keep it simple, and more importantly, something you can stick to. There's definitely a balance to be achieved between what you should eat, and what works for you. There is no value in giving up foods you enjoy, or certain food groups because 'xyz' says so, if it isn't something you can commit to for the foreseeable future, there's no point. If it works for one person, it doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you. Yep life's hard.

3. Exercise for the right reasons

Everyone knows the importance of keeping active to maintain a fit and healthy body. However a healthy mind is also just as important, if not more so. What I mean by this is that it's not wise to unwillingly force yourself to go to the gym to grind away day in day out if it's not enjoyable for you. It will just make you miserable, and that's no way to live! Similarly, I've learnt to not look at exercise as a form of 'punishment' for your body after eating that extra slice of cake the day before. That will just make you start resenting the gym and eventually giving up.

For me, I can't stand long distance running (so boring - sorry runners!) so I don't put myself through that chore, but I happen to really enjoy other forms of cardio - like circuit training and kick boxing classes. More recently, I'm enjoying the challenging of resistance training and learning what my body is capable of. There are so many other ways to keep active and in shape; various team sports, dancing, gymnastics, yoga, martial arts... the list goes on. It's just finding one you enjoy enough to stick to and to make a part of your every day life.

Most importantly...

...I've learnt that change takes time. Be patient, love yourself and remember that any step in the right direction (no matter how small) is something to be proud of. We all have bad days - no one is perfect!

Tuesday thoughts

It's cold, it's wet, my knee is aching and I just feel a bit miserable.

What's with my knee you might be thinking? It's a long-ass story for a different day but the crux of it all is that every now again for the past 15 years it likes to randomly swell up and cause me a bit of gyp. OK so it's not so random as to when this actually happens, it's more as and when I decide to skip my prescribed medication because I am (quite literally) sick of the side effects. Tiredness, nausea, and generally feeling run down for 4 out of 7 days a week. I have to decide between that, and having a less than fully functioning knee joint. You can imagine my dilemma given my current love affair with exercise.

So what am I going to do about it? Firstly I can't change the weather so I'm just going to have to deal with that with my unicorn umbrella and a smile on my face. As for my second moan, I'm going to re-evaluate my diet and look to the healing power of whole foods. Something I've read a fair amount on but never really committed myself to properly experiment with. It's got to be worth a shot right? So, I've been searching and reading up on the best anti-inflammatory foods to incorporate into your diet to alleviate symptoms of inflammation related diseases or even potentially cure them.

I happened to come across this great website Dr. Axe, and he has created this easy to digest info graphic listing the top 15 anti-inflammatory foods with a brief explanation of their anti-inflammatories and benefits. Well worth a look if you are suffering with any sort of disease caused by inflammation and want to give the diet a go. This is the list I will be working from, adding these food items to my weekly shop and cooking with them everyday. And maybe the most important point to make is that I'll also be cutting down/out on simple refined sugars and carbohydrates and other processed foods (Lord help me - this will be the hard bit).

No doubt I'll give an update on my progress in due course and maybe even share some new recipes I cook up. On a side note, if this works and helps my knee, even just a little, it begs the question, why wouldn't my Doctor just tell me to try this before prescribing me toxic drugs? Surely they aren't just after my £9 prescription fee each month to keep them in business...?

A new turn of events

A few weeks ago marked my 1 year anniversary of hitting Pure Gym at least 3/4 times a week, every week. Not only that, it marked half way through 2017 - the year I was telling everyone would be my year with all my shallow, aesthetic, pathetic goals to get 'lean'.

You've probably guessed it, I was still no where near reaching my goals and felt, to put it simply, disappointed and let down. I was having thoughts along the lines of...

"Why on earth haven't I lost weight?"

"What am I doing wrong?"

"I can't believe how much of my life I've wasted to see barely any changes in my body!"

Don't get me wrong, I loved going to the gym, it never felt like a chore that I had to force myself to do. I mainly went for group classes, all kinds of classes - Circuit Training, Fat Burn, LBT, Pump and Spin amongst others.. I like the social side of attending the group classes and they definitely got me moving after a lifetime of despising any form physical activity. So in that sense, it wasn't a total waste of time.

But, after a year of this, I began to think I wasn't doing enough or it wasn't the solution I was after.

Now, I'd been toying with the idea of reaching out to a PT as I began to realise I needed to start lifting the heavy stuff. That's all I knew / thought I knew, but no amount of YouTube tutorials or Insta videos would be enough to help me here. Speaking of Instagram, it was while I was mindlessly scrolling (as I regularly do) that I came across a post from James - yourherofitness - looking for ladies who want to drop their % body fat and tone up. I thought to myself, what the heck, what harm can this do, lets do this. And I'm so glad I did.

Now, I've only had 3 training sessions with James so far but already there are a million things he has taught me about myself and what I personally should be doing at the gym to make my workouts as efficient as possible. It's like a light bulb has just been switched on and now all of a sudden things are starting to make a lot more sense. The most resounding being that we should instead be focusing on performance based goals and the visible aesthetic changes will happen naturally. Now I'm looking forward to what's to come during my fitness journey, my only regret is not doing it sooner!

So my take home note would be this: If you're umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether or not to pay for some Personal Training sessions, or getting advice from a fitness professional, I'd say go for it.

Now that I'm feeling happier and like I'm making progress again, I'll try to update my blog a bit more regularly!