Spiderman, spiderman, does whatever a spider can...and a bit of phwoar!

So today I went to my new gym. It seems quite funky, and is pretty cheap for gym memberships and the best bit is you aren't tied in for a year. They have loads of machines and all the latest stuff like kettlebells, punchbags, eliptical machines... (Do I sound like I know what I am talking about?...... Good because I don't.)

I mainly want to go for classes and am considering getting a personal trainer on a monthly basis to set me a programme. I feel very fit and important saying that.

It seems very much a 'beautiful people' type of place so I fit in very well....haha. Normally I would be quite intimidated by a place like this as I am a) not very brave and b) very self conscious. But you know what? I think I am past caring. I am at an age where I feel like, you know what, I have as much right to be there as anyone and who actually cares about insignificant me anyway?...

SO I decided to do this class called "TRX Bodyweb". Sounded about as scarey as I could imagine, here is the blurb:

"Hang from the durable RIP:60™ ropes to push, pull, lift and lower your body through Spiderman like moves for a total body suspension workout that also super-strengthens your core."

Ahem..

Yes, in for a penny in for a pound I say.

So I timidly tiptoe in five minutes before the class begins. Trying to look both very small and insignificant, while also very fit and muscular, neither of which I can pull off, but nevermind, I try to look like I belong there.. ahem...

Let me just say at this point, this is a pretty BIG deal for me as I am a) not very brave and b) very self conscious.. oh yeah, I already said that...

Ok anyway. So I am standing there waiting for the class to start and a few people trickle in and this guy standing next to me asks me if I have done this class before. I look up and notice he is rather easy on the eye. I am a little taken aback as easy-on-the-eye guys don't usually speak to me (other than my husband of course ;-)).  Aaaaanyway... I smile and stammer...I mean say, "No, and actually I'm a little terrified" at which point he laughs and says him too...and I think wistfully that this NEVER used to happen when I was young and single. Turns out he is the class instructer and so has to talk to me as part of his job anyway haha.

Anyway the class starts and it appears we are to use these rope things on pulleys hanging from the ceiling to use our own body weight to do all these moves.






OH








MY









GOD



Is all I can say. B*gger me it was hard. Five minutes in and I am red as a beetroot, thinking, thank god I am not single and on the pull. But I give it my all.

Ten minutes in I am starting to wonder why I decided this was a good idea and fifteen minutes in I am about to die.

Just when I think I will pass out we have to flip over, putting our feet in the pulleys. Um... yeah. So I am on hands and knees with my feet hanging into these rope things and we have to do this move where we bring our knees into our chest and back again. Sort of like a plank suspended in mid air combined with stomach crunches upside down..

And all I can think is, I feel like I am in some kind of sex contraption... ahem... and because I am oh so mature, I get the giggles. Just for the record, it is impossible to concentrate on doing upsidedown stomach crunch plank moves with your legs tied up and giggle at the same time so I ended up in a bit of a tangle.

Anyway the torture, I mean class ended after half an hour and I tried to walk out with grace and dignity but they didn't want to walk with me as my legs were like jelly. I mean literally, I could barely walk. So I manage to get myself out of the room, find the stretching area and flop I mean sit down on a mat and pretend to stretch (so that I can recover enough to get myself to the changing room).

Next thing I know, hot instructor comes over and asks me whether I enjoyed the class. I am beyond red, puce in the face, more than a little 'glowing' with sweat and all I can manage is a grin and a sort of nod.

Needless to say

I will DEFINITELY be going again next week as it was fan bl00dy tastic.

Aspirations and expectations

Q. Which of these ladies is most attractive?

We all have our 'ideal' body that we are aspiring to be. For many people it is a version of their former self, perhaps pre-baby or as teenager. For some it may be a strong athletic Amazonian warrior woman. Others aspire to be like supermodels. Fantastic. It is great to have a goal, an end point on which to focus your efforts. The thing is, I think you have to be realistic. Otherwise you will never be happy. There is no point wishing you had legs up to your armpits or a 60cm waist if you are simply not built that way.

I had unrealistic expectations. I was wishing to be like the lady on the far left. In my head I was daydreaming about a concave midriff and long, slender thighs. Wearing certain clothes where a bra is not required. Errr yeah right....It is unlikely that I will ever be able to go bra-less. Not unless I decide to move to a nudist colony and develop the best pair of spaniels ears I could ever desire. It just isn't going to happen. I have spoken about my walrus on a previous blog. I don't think that will EVER totally disappear so bye bye concave midriff. I am 5 foot 4 (162 cm) so even if my legs were up to my armpits they would still only be as long as a normal person's legs..... Lets be realistic here. I actually think the lady on the right is more attractive ans I'm thinking I should be aiming more for a figure like hers, or the lady in the middle. It's difficult because we are all different shapes and sizes, we shouldn't compare ourselves to others.

Trouble is, I don't have a version of my former self to aspire to either, as this is it. This is pretty much as slim as I have ever been since I was a young teenager (except for my flabby midriff). My clothing size is 14-16 (UK) and I distinctly lack a waist. I deperately want a waist. My chest (as in ribcage not boobs) and my waist measurement are pretty much the same and then my hips go out a bit. My fat is pretty much concentrated between my ribs and half way up my thighs. And yes I know this is the most dangerous shape to be.

I know I will never look like one of the teenagers in my ballet class. I am not built like Ms Left up there. I know I will never be tall with long thin legs. SO there is no point wishing for it anymore.

I can't ever quite believe I will fit into anything less than a size 12 and I can't quite imagine how I will lose the required cm from my waist. I am dying to find out what I will look like when I weigh what I am healthily supposed to and there is only one way that I will find that out. I am going to try bl**dy hard. I am going to WW for all I'm worth, I am going to exercise as much as I can.

That way I will become the best version of me that I can be.

I need to learn to speak salad

I am like Dr Doolittle...except that animals don't talk to me, food does. It is a really great skill to have....

IF YOU WANNA BE REALLY FAT

Funnily enough, vegetables are pretty quiet on the talking front. They don't have much to say at all. Fruit not so much either. Actually it seems I can only speak lardy fat junk food language. Oh yes, sweet talking junk food. Calling to me.... enticing me..... trying to seduce me....

Chocolate mousse in the fridge:

"Ooohhhhhh Rachelle *think sexy french accent here* Rachelle...ma belle...ma petit chou....com over ere and open ze freej......
Are you hongrey? Hmmmmmmmm??? You know you want a leetle nibble....don't you??? Jusssst one leetle bite?"

Biscuits in the cupboard:

"You hoo *posh English accent* sweetie dahling!....fancy a tincy wincy little bikkie? Over here...in the pantry....come on lovie....just a itsy bit?"
Left over BBQ'd sausages in fridge:

"Awright darlin' *cockeney geezer* ow's about a larvly sausage or two? Goworn ya know ya wannoo"....
And so on....

It gets very difficult to ignore. And those are just the polite ones. The big bar of chocolate that remains unopened since February is beginning to scream my name, the leftover chocolate easter eggs are noisier than my children (and they are LOUD) and the bags of nuts...... well you can imagine....filthy language....All screaming at me and yelling:

"Eat me....Eeeaattt Meeeeee....EAT ME!"

Just downright rude.

Time for a cupboard/fridge/pantry clear out methinks. And NOT directly into my gob. Perhaps it is time to line the shelves with wholesome good for me food that will whisper healthy sweet nothings in my ear instead.

I am the walrus

You know that flabby bit of stomach below the bellybutton that sort of hangs down when someone is overweight? I call it the Walrus because that is what it reminds me of.  (If you have no idea what I am talking about then you must be svelte and walrus free...long may it last for you my friend).

Anyway...I have one of these monstrosities. My walrus is the same age as my eldest son (nearly 7) and when I was pregnant it started to droop below my nice, tight, round bun-in-the-oven belly. Luckily as my belly got bigger I couldn't see it anymore, but to my horror, it was still there after my son was born. In fact it had grown through my pregnancy and the bit above had turned into a sort of deflated bouncy castle, complete with tripey, groovy (although not in the cool 60's sense of the word) stretchmarks.

Pregnancy and childbirth and raising children are wonderful things and I am truly blessed....but man....my stomach will never be the same. The trouble is I have been using pregnancy, and all that follows as an excuse to be overweight. My youngest is now nearly 4, and really it is high time I stopped playing the "recently gave birth" card.

Yes I am the only one falling for it.

So, fair enough, I piled on the kilos when pregnant, and yes I piled on some more just surviving endless months of sleep deprivation. But the reason for that was because I ate too much and exercised too little. I have nobody or nothing else to blame. I can't really do much about the stretchmarks or even the excess skin but I can stop using it as an excuse to justify why diets don't work. The walrus must go. And that is it.

Coo coo ca choo.

I have a problem with my weight

I have a problem with my weight. Not in a 12 step programme "My name is Rachel and I have a problem with my weight" kind of problem with my weight.... Well actually that too, but I mean I have a problem with weighing myself. I have an old (analogue? -non digital anyway) bathroom scales. Now I am getting old, it is really difficult to see the dial and I have to bend forward to try and read the number (optician anyone....?) and if I bend forward to try and read where the line is, it wobbles and then I wobble and then it wobbles more and ...well you get the picture, it isn't very accurate.

I also weigh myself on the Wii Fit, which btw I hate and every time it talks to me I want to punch it in the face. The Wii Fit thinks I am 5lbs heavier (#%**&!) than my trusty old bathroom scales that I am too blind to read, so naturally I have been logging my weight and weight loss on WW according to the bathroom scales.

Yesterday I decided to buy myself a new scales, digital with nice big numbers, and because I am a glutton for punishment it also tells me how fat I am and how muscular (or rather unmuscular) and whether I have drunk enough water ...etc. (How in the world it can actually tell all of this, I will never know but at least it doesn't say "ouch" when I step on it....little @#*&*!).

So I was really quite excited to get my brand spanking new scales home and weigh myself and see the enormous blue digital numbers plain and clear. Yes I know I need to get a life, but anyway. According to the instructions, the scales need to be placed on a flat, level floor. Well, do you think I can find one of those in my house? The answer is a big frustrating NO.

The bathrooms (yes plural, because I am posh) tilt towards a drain (and btw why can't the sinks and baths just have overflows and the floors just be flat?....just sayin'). Whoever did the tiling (Bodge It and Fix it & co) obviously didn't feel like using a spirit level either. The lounge and dining room have wooden floors that again haven't seen a spirit level a day in their life. The kitchen has these stone block things that are all over the place in terms of heights and the rest of the house is carpeted.

Anyway it turns out because of this wibbly wobbly floor problem the scales can't make up their mind from one minute to the next. So I did about 10 weighs in different locations of the house and finally found a place where they were consistent and guess what? Yes...the new scales agree with the Wii Fit. (Shusshn frusshn russhn rick rastadly) I think it is a conspiracy between electronic goods. But anyway, as I am going for consistency I want to keep using the new scales for my WW weigh in but my dilemma is: Do I enter my weight higher this week which would be the honest thing and be starting afresh, but completely soul destroying to see the graph go up, or do I just enter it the same until I lose enough to catch up with what is on there at the moment, and have a flat line for a couple of weeks?

Answers on a postcard please x

Inky pinky ponky..

Wouldn't it be fun to exercise like you did when you were a child? I have been watching how effortlessly my children round around, jump, climb, kick balls and so on and have so much fun while they do it. They aren't exercising, they are playing.

I am wondering why, as adults, we lose this ability to just have fun and do physical activity simply for the pleasure of the activity we are doing. I know actually a lot of people do do just that. If you play a sport, or you dance or actually...cough...splutter....ENJOY running....then you are lucky, because I am pretty sure there are a lot of adults who see exercise as a chore or a method of torture.

It's got me thinking. What if you could do a class where you had to leave your inhibitions at the door and release your inner child? Perhaps the class might get you to run around playing tag or bullrush. Perhaps you would play hopscotch. Maybe you would jump elastics (anyone else remember doing that? -jumping over elastic tied around ankles, while chanting a rhyme?) or skip rope, not by yourself like a boxer, in order to exercise, but while two others turned it, in order to have fun.

What if the next time you went to the class it was 'sports day' and you had to do sack races, obstacle courses and egg and spoons. And the next time was 'school disco' and you just were able to dance your heart out (or if you were a boy run around the room and slide on the floor). The next time you might play rounders or t-ball. Oh it would be so much fun and so liberating.

When my boys were little and I took them to those indoor playcentres, I always secretly enjoyed going in with them with the excuse that they were too small to go round themselves. I would always come out feeling puffed out and like I had used every muscle in my body. Now I can't quite get away with that, nor keep up with them. So I end up going down the slide alone, looking like a saddo grown up having a play by themselves.

When we bought our boys a trampoline for the garden I was gutted to discover that I was over the weight limit for it... but now...guess what? I am light enough to bounce away to my heart's content. And quite often if the neighbours were to look out of their windows they would see me jumping away while my boys are at school/preschool.

Perhaps it is that I don't want to grow up or get old. I don't know, but what I do know running around and playing with my boys is helping my heart in more ways than one.

If I didn't laugh, I'd cry

Being inspired by my previous thoughts on eating junk only when I allow my children to eat junk I have come up with a few new diet ideas following the behaviours of my children....

Watch out WW you might have a bit of competition here ;-)

The too busy to come to the table diet.
-Get engrossed in some form of playing, be it lego, playmobil or whatever and totally ignore any calls to come to the table for food.
-Take so long to come to the table that food has gone cold, complain that it is so and refuse to eat more than a couple of bites.

The can't sit still diet.
-When at the table be so fidgety and distracted that you have to keep getting up and leaving the room to go to the toilet, get a tissue, change your fork/knife/spoon, get a drink of water
-Do this so frequently that food goes cold, complain that it is so and refuse to eat more than a couple of bites.

The be naughty at the table diet.

-When sat at the table for food shout your head off, say as many toilet related words, make as many obnoxious loud noises as you can so that you get repeatedly sent for time out.
-Do this so frequently that food goes cold, complain that it is so and refuse to eat more than a couple of bites.

The refuse to try anything new diet.
-When faced with a food you have never seen before, refuse point blank to let it go anywhere near your lips.
-After being presented with said food about 20 times and plucking up the courage to try it, make yourself gag on the first mouthful and refuse to eat any more of the meal.

The fill up on fruit diet.
-Just before a meal is due, nag and nag and nag for food.
-When your parent has had enough and says "eat some fruit then", repeatedly help yourself to the contents of the fruit bowl.
-When meal is ready announce that you are not hungry and refuse to eat any of it.

The snot diet

-This one needs nor deserves no explanation

The eat oh so very slowly diet
-When food is presented on your plate announce that you would like to cut it up yourself with a grown up knife and fork.
-Proceed to take 3 and a half hours to do so, oh so very precisely, until everyone else around you has lost the will to live.

The multi-tasking diet-On the odd occasion that you are allowed to eat infront of the TV become so engrossed in what you are watching that you sit with food in your hand, mouth open but never quite putting it in.

The food fight diet
-Instead of eating the food that has been lovingly prepared for you, throw it about a bit.

The cover it with sauce diet

-When a perfectly tasty meal is placed infront of you insist on plastering it with so much sauce that it becomes inedible.

The one bite diet
-Exactly as it says on the tin: Take one bite and only one bite out of every bit of food that you are presented with.

Exercise plan to compliment any of the above diets.

-Run around the house like a lunatic ensuring you bump into every piece of furniture, jump onto every chair head first and then roll around on the ground wrestling. Be sure to exercise those lungs by shouting as loud as you can while you do it.

Ahhhh good luck with those, mealtimes are a laugh a minute in our household.