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.