Exercising Demons

Fat Girls Don't Run

Some people take to exercise like Wayne Rooney does to women of the night. Alas and alack, I am not one of them.  Bizarre really, as when I was younger I was an exercise fiend.  You are reading the written word of the fastest female air cadet in the South-East region 1993 I’ll have you know.  I also used to play football until my feet bled.  I trained my feet to be ambidextrous as I am a naturally right-footed player but I was madly in love with Ryan Giggs at the time and wanted to play in his position too. (We had an affair. We didn’t. I was 14 and he was too busy with his other affairs.)   I was pretty good too until two incidents prevented me from playing again – one was doing my leg in so seriously I had to stop playing and the second was gaining fear of a football following me showing off doing 236 keepy uppys in front of a crowd of boys and doing it with such gusto I kneed myself in the face and broke my nose.  Anyway, when I realise what I was going to talk about before I went off on this tangent I have something fascinating to say.

Ah, yes; At 16 or so exercise became something you ‘had’ to do rather than what I ‘wanted’ to do.  It got in the way of kissing boys, hanging around in parks and Sega Megadrive.  At university, which was Loughborough, sportiest university in the world, I used to enviously watch people walk round in their ‘African Violets’, the purple tracksuits sports science students used to wear.  The trouble with exercise is that you reach a tipping point when you are bigger (figuratively speaking of course – I was so big no one had a gnats chance in hell of tipping me,) that means that if you do exercise you just look bloody stupid.  You become the one everyone is waiting for to fall over, or give up, or collapse in a heap.  I can remember going to the university gym once having decided to get rid of the chub and only being able to last 15 minutes walking at 6 on the treadmill whilst these lean, mean fighting machines ambled their way through a 10k in 40 minutes.  It was excruciatingly embarrassing and so I never went back. 

I tried a couple of those couch to 5k plans and even a minute or two of running would almost kill me.  I looked a fool shuffling along roads in an ill-fitting t-shirt and massive tracksuit bottoms, having to run with my arms under my jubblies because there were no sports bras big enough in the shops for me.  Another tangent:  Zest! Women’s Running! All other health magazines!  How about advertising clothes and gadgets for people who are big enough that they NEED to exercise rather than crop tops for Size 8’s all the time eh? Anyway... I bought a wii fit and did tiny step ups and waved my hands in the air like I just didn’t care and got patronised by a bloody money bank on the screen and didn’t see results so gave up.  I tried walking but the self-confidence issues I had when I was bigger meant that I would get horrific panic attacks before leaving the house because I knew I would get a nasty comment or two if I went out in exercise gear so I gave up.  Seeing a trend here?  i was a quitter.

Anyway, that was a rather long-winded way of getting to the point, which is now I weigh less, I love exercise again.  I have been away from home for a week and forgot to pack my trainers and whilst I had a couple of walks I got home yesterday aching to get into the gym, to feel my body work off the milkybar buttons I had scoffed and to continue trying to firm up the bod.  Ah yes, the body.  This is one of the most frequent questions I am asked when I talk about my weight loss:  What has it done to your body?  Well, I ain't gunna lie, it ain’t pretty.  Of course you end up with stretch marks and crepey bits and lo and behold all these years I looked at girls in size 12 clothes thinking goodness what amazing bodies they have when actually I realise that even when you are skinny you can still be fat underneath a lightly skimming jersey top from Jigsaw.  I have loose skin now. Not Channel 4 documentary WHAT THE SCREAMING HELL IS THAT??!! level, but I certainly ain’t no hard body.  Having spoken to ex Lighterlifers it is apparent that it all firms up after about a year, once your body has got out of the equivalent shock level of being hypnotised then waking up naked next to a goat with lederhosen on.  I can already see a bit of a difference in the batwings and I actually have muscles on my biceps.  Someone felt them the other day and was singularly unimpressed compared to their guns but I’m proud of them.  The chub at the tops of my thighs I don’t mind because it makes me feel feminine still.  The Fabulous Baker Boys muffin top I would gladly be rid of forever but at the same time it is a reminder of what I have been through and for the first time EVER in my life I am slowly getting to the ‘who cares’ stage.

Changes

Now, I run, I swim, I walk, I pretend to do the gym plan the trainer gave me at the gym, I do planks on medicine balls because I am so good at normal planks (3 minutes 56 seconds is my record) that the trainer says life is too short and makes me balance my hands on a medicine ball and laughs hysterically as I swear myself through a wobbly 30 seconds or so.  When I go swimming, no longer do I do the scurry from changing room to water.  I used to agitate over the best way to get in to the pool.  I lived in fear of pulling stairs of the wall and there was no way I was diving in, it would have been like a tank crash landing. I’d sit on the side of the pool feeling very self-conscious and try to slowly slide my way in but invariably my weight would be too much for my arms and I would plummet, lead like, to the bottom like a walrus (hence the blog title).  Once in, I could swim like a demon.  A few years ago I swam the equivalent of the English channel over 2 weeks but it was all very lazy breaststroke (that sounds like far too many ex-boyfriends) which effectively did nothing health wise.  Now I thunder down the lanes doing front crawl and I can do those tumbly flippy turny things at the ends too!

Being less heavy makes me want to exercise.  It’s just a shame I didn’t notice that 15 years ago.

Sponsor me if you would please very kindly thankyou!

I am running a 10k for UNICEF in September.  When I say running, I mean gasping my way slowly through East Grinstead yelling weakly ‘water, water’ and blowing a whistle feebly like Kate Winslet at the end of Titanic.  If you have any spare 50 pees in your pocket and would like to sponsor me, please feel free to do so at http://www.justgiving.com/LilacNun  or text code LNUN 48 and the amount you wish to sponsor to 70070.

Muchos Gracias. Or is it Muchus? Meh.

Reactions

If you ever want to know who your real friends are, don't eat for 7 months. Or turn up on their doorstep at 3am with a body wrapped in some carpet frantically mouthing the words 'Help.......it went wrong' with a length of hosepipe and some feathers sticking out of your pocket. Weight loss has generally brought about two responses at complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Nobody has said 'meh'. It seems to be something people are genuinely interested in, either because they want to do something themselves, or that they are astounded when it actually works.

When I first started, I was really surprised by some of the responses I got, from people who I thought would be glad to support me. I realise a lot of it was through concern rather than malice but some of the gems were: 'you'll put it all back on again and more', 'it's unsustainable', 'gosh that sounds unhealthy', 'these diets never work, the weight always goes back on' Well, to that I say:

Yeah, I will, if I go back to the way I was eating and being non active.
Course it bloody isn't, but then neither is eating crap every day.
Less unhealthy than being 20 stone but you bloody kept quiet as my weight went up.
Diets always work. You go on a diet, you lose weight. That's what diets are meant to do. It's me that doesn't work if I fail to make choices afterwards to maintain the weightloss.

I had what I thought was an extremely close friend. A few weeks into the eating plan we went out for a drink. She gave me a guilt trip because I wasn't going to be drinking alcohol and was fairly moody when we arrived at the bar and I said I defo was sticking to the plan and not 'lapsing' that night. By this point I had perhaps lost 3 stone, so just getting to the stage of 'noticeably different'. She told me not to lose much more weight as it would change my face shape and I'd lose my prettiness. Instead of smashing the San Pellegrino bottle on the side of the table and thrusting the shards in her eyes, I excused myself to the ladies to arrrgghhh a bit. When I returned, ten minutes later a burgers and chips appeared in front of me. 'That's not mine' I said to the waitress. My friend piped up, 'Oh, I forgot about your diet thing....ah well I've paid for it now you may as well eat it'.

I didn't. We ended the evening awkwardly and I haven't seen her since. She was genuinely a close friend prior to that. On weightless forums, which I used to lurk on you'd see a lot of this sort of behaviour and the were lots of assumptions about people being jealous of weight loss success, and feeling threatened and aren't all skinny women bitches they just want fat friends to make them look good. I think there is some elements of that in some people, but in general I reckon it's just a whole fear of change thing - and they are right. Because here is the thing: I have changed a lot.


I am much more assertive. I quit my job a few weeks back because I was bloody fed up of being unhappy and just taking whatever life threw at me and putting up with it. Since I quit, I've been the happiest I have ever been. I have done things I have never done before and opened myself up to a lot of new experiences and meeting new people. I went out boozing in Hoxton on Friday night and felt like I belonged there and had a fab time instead of hiding in a corner feeling awkward. When I say belonged, I meant in terms of physically not feeling out of place, not that I'm a pretentious twonk who describes their job as being a 'creative'. I am more confident in saying 'screw it' and stopping doing things I don't want to do because it is expected of me by others. I have finally learnt to like myself and not care hugely whether other people like me and it has pretty much blown my mind, this shift in attitude. The attitude change wasn't gained through the plan but through the network of friends, family and random people off the Internet who are at the other end of the scale, the ones who helped me.

Some of you who read this are off of that there Twitter bollix. #wave. Facebook friends who read this that was # a hash tag and you won't get it and all my Twitter friends are cooler than you. Some of you are off of Facebook *like*. Twitter friends won't get that because they are all snarky and hate everything. Especially Justin Bieber. And Tesco. And Facebook. Some of you, and I am assuming that someone reads this other than my Mum, are strangers or have been friends for years. I want to say thank you to all of you. The congratulations and warm wishes you sent when I was banging on about losing a lb, the ones who when you saw me told me how great I was looking. (Oh, as an aside..... When you see an overweight person and say 'you're looking well' we aren't dumb, we know you mean we have put on more weight). The twitter one who reckons I look like Kirstie Allsopp and made me happier than a bunny in the grass. The work one that took my photo each week to help me track progress, every time saying how proud she was of me. The facebook one who when I posted pictures always put a *like* on it. The real life one, now on her own LighterLife journey who was the most supportive motivational mental friend ever. The woman from the LighterLife website who said I was her inspiration. So many more of you have been fabulous, so thank you again.

I'll buy you all a burger to say thank you one day.


Also, all you people that like Apple stuff, you are wrong. This has been the biggest pain in the non formatted arse ever writing this entry on an iPad.