The point.

A few years ago I worked in London, in media and then in adult learning and development.

I earned a fair few pounds.  I put on a fair few pounds also.  I worked long hours.  I got stressed.  

And one day it hit me.  This is rubbish.  I mean I always knew it was, but one day it properly hit me that the rubbishness of it all was too rubbish to carry on with.

But I didn't do anything about it really.

Until one day it got even more rubbish and I found myself jobless.  That bit has all been well documented on here.

So what did I do next?  I re-trained as a teacher.

I no longer earn very many pounds.  The cakes in the staff room continuously conspire to pile back on the pounds I shed.  I work very very long hours, stupidly longer than before.  And when I'm not at work, I take my work home with me and I'm still working.  Even when I'm not working I'm thinking about work, I don't think the teacher brain ever switches off.  I get stressed. Very stressed. And busy. 

So what, then, on earth was the point?

What was the point of swapping London, well paid, well vino-d stress for local, dismal paid, no jollies, work-at-the-weekend-every-weekend stress?

That's a question I often wonder about asking myself.  I read many articles by people who got into teaching and then leapt straight back out again a year or two later because they couldn't stand it or the workload or the parents or the politics or the stress or or or or.

What is the point?

Here is the point:

The point is, in the middle of a god awful, when will it end, is it nearly half term yet week, the world offers you one of the most beautiful, heart warming, uplifting experiences on a plate, right in the middle of where you work.  Just as you're innocently going about your lastminute breaktime photocopying rush.  Just as a matter of course because that's what this place is all about, there in the middle of the hall are 30 children all dressed up as pirates and sea creatures with that look on their faces that says they don't know whether to be terrified or excited.  And seated all in front of them are another 150 or so children eagerly anticipating what's about to come, shuffling to get the best view, surreptitiously waving to their friend about to perform.  And perform they do. As the music builds, they twirl and whirl, they flap and spin, they climb that rigging like that's all they were born to do.  And the crowd go wild.  There's clapping and bowing and cheering and grinning until our faces ache. Hearts are a fluttering like the flags on the ole pirate ship.

And I think to myself: That.  That is the point.

What to do when you can't do anything

So, according to my schedule I should have done high intensity intervals on Thursday and Friday evening, a full weights workout on Saturday, a yoga class last night and another load of intervals tonight.  And in between all of that been a teacher and kept my house running.

I haven't done any of those things, because, following a slight altercation with an errant hoover attachment in which I came out far worse than the hoover, I am currently joined by my old friend Si. Attica.

I was only saying the other day how he hadn't popped round for a while.  Never, Tempt. Fate.  Or accidentally try to ice skate down a corridor on a hoover head.

Oh, and I have a giant head cold.

So, I can't actually do anything.

Wrong.

Ok, granted, to begin with I couldn't get out of bed unaided...but what I could do was rest.  Something my body has been trying to tell me to do for ages but I've been ignoring.  So, rest it is.

Then, when I did manage to shuffle out of bed and hobble to the kitchen, what I could do was make sure I eat right.  I may not be able to throw a 20k kettlebell about the place, but I can make sure I eat plenty of green leafy stuff and stay away from the sugar, dairy and caffeine (inflammatory, snot inducing and mood sucking the lot of them).

Ok, so I'm actually doing pretty good here, I can rest and I can eat well.  Boom.

Turns out after a few pain killers I can actually move a smidgeon as well.  So, every hour or so, in between resting (and watching complete turd on the TV), I move.  It may be just to shift position, it maybe to hobble 3 steps across the room and back, but I move.

I also learn I can crawl a lot more comfortably than I can walk.  I probably won't get a week's shopping done that way, but it's a start. And actually crawling is recommended as a fab all body exercise...possibly not the way I was doing it but there we go.

After the first few days I can move a little more so I build in some upper body stretching because all this lying around and bracing myself to protect my lower back plays havoc on the rest of it.  Have I ever mentioned how utterly excruciatingly painful it is to have a coughing fit when you also have sciatica?  Horrible.

Next I try to get some fresh air and actually make it to the doctors to stock up on anti-inflammatories which speed things up nicely.

Next I discover that a few of the yoga poses and stretches I've learnt recently are doable and also feel like they're helping.  Clearly lots more of them are definitely not doable and won't even be attempted, and that's ok.  

But, it turns out that if you're very careful, even a few chaturanga dandasanas are possible.  And anyone who's done a few of them knows that's a workout right there!  

So really, it's not about focusing on what I can't do right now, it's trying to work out what I can do.  It's just about trying to figure out what are the bare minimums I can do here to try and help myself out a bit.  Charging into the gym the minute I can actually move is not going to solve anything, it'll make it a whole load worse.  Lying in a heap of pity feeling sorry for myself and not moving from the sofa for 4 days? Same.  Heroically shuffling into work because I feel like I should? No need and not even possible. Can't drive. Can't sit down.   But I know I would have opted for one of those routes in the past.

I haven't done what I 'was supposed to do' these last five days or so.  I haven't completed a single day's work or a single work out.  My exercise has not been 'perfect'. But it has been better than nothing. And every day I've done a little bit more. Apart from when I've got it wrong and tried something that clearly very much hurts, I've enjoyed experimenting, seeing how I can work around this, which movement patterns and stretches help, what I can do that actually feels like some kind of a challenge without injuring myself further.  

And eating properly throughout  has kept me in a fairly positive mood.  I say fairly because it's been quite miserable, yukky, painful and lonely too to be honest, but it would have been a whole load worse in many ways if I'd tried to treat it with pizza and icecream.

Now, if only this cold would shift...

I am what I am

I am what I am.

And by that I mean, I am not anybody else.

Which is a fairly obvious thing to say, but one that's not that easy to remember.

I have a t-shirt.  Here it is:

It says that happiness comes when we stop comparing ourselves to other people.  Again, simple advice but still a habit that seems so deeply rooted in very many (if not all?) of us.

I think comparing ourselves to others goes beyond a bad habit, it crops up all over the place. From being last to be picked in the school sports teams to being asked to rate yourself versus your peers in performance management reviews.

We're often told not to judge ourselves, but judgement and comparison are all around.  I'm writing this with X-Factor on in the background (it's ok, it's the 'Overs', I'm not missing much. By the way, over what, 25!? dear oh dear), Strictly not long finished on the other side.  Judgement, judgement, judgement. Comparison after comparison.

You're not as good a dancer as him.  She's a better singer than you.

What about comparing yourself, to yourself. About progress.

I say this because it's a lesson I'm having to keep learning and relearning and reminding myself of over and over again as I go through my journey to get fitter, leaner and more body confident.

The 12 month program I signed up to uses past successes as a way to demonstrate how brilliant the program is.  Which had the effect of making me believe that if I did the program I would end up looking like them too.

Which of course, I don't.

I look like me. Only better, smaller, leaner and fitter.

But I do NOT look like the buff amazing gym machines in the photos. AT ALL.  Which meant initially I was massively disappointed and felt like a huge failure.

When I see other girls at the gym with less dimples showing through their leggins, I feel like  massive failure that my legs don't look like theirs.

When I see somebody in yoga take a pose deeper than I can, I feel a massive failure for not being as flexible as they are.

When I see somebody running without knackering their back, I feel like a massive failure for not being able to cope with simple movement.

Because I'm comparing myself to others.  I don't know their story, their journey.  But I do know mine.

me then, not loving that hill

me now, literally jumping for joy!

And if I compare myself now, to the me at the beginning of my journey, happiness doesn't even begin to cover it.

Strong is the new skinny

I can hardly remember a time when I wasn't trying to be skinnier.  Or just less fat actually as in order to be anything-er, you have to be a bit of whatever it is in the first place and (in my mind anyway) skinny is not something I have ever been accused of being.

My entire adult, and pre-adult before that, life I have been trying in some way or other to lose weight. To make that number on the scales and the clothes label, along with my bulk, shrink.  With varying degrees of success.  Most dramatically a few years ago by following the Dukan diet and losing 3 stone.

But I have always struggled with consistency.  I know all the dos and don'ts, I could probably write a book on diet and nutrition, but sometimes cake and ice cream still wins.  Unfortunately, emotional eating doesn't really care what you know, it only responds to how you feel.

And, as this blog will testify, I haven't always felt great.

One thing I definitely haven't always felt great about, not surprisingly, is said bulky body.  I've always scorned statements like "love your body no matter what".  Thought it a load of old pap that appreciating your body as beautiful and loving yourself would naturally lead to it magically morphing into the leaner more lithe body you (were now not allowed to admit) you always wanted. 

It makes sense when considered alongside all the positive psychology I avidly believe in.  It's basically the same premise as Shawn Achor's happiness advantage - success comes from happiness not the other way around (thin people aren't happier, happier people find it easier to get/stay thin); The Law of Attraction (and other similar less new age versions) advocates 'living as if' and working towards what you do want, not trying to escape what you don't.

So, whilst trying to pretend that I love my flobberyjobs I continued to pursue ever new ways to get rid of it.

Most recently by following a year long online coaching program that turned out to be much more about what's on the inside, than the outside and that includes a not-for-the-weak-hearted 6 times a week gym program.

Which has left me in quite a peculiar place.

Right now, I am not the lightest I have ever been.  I am not the skinniest I have ever been.  I am not wearing the smallest sized clothes I have ever owned and I don't have less body fat that I ever have.

But I am the strongest I have ever been.  And the stronger I get, the more I push myself, the leaner I get, the more toned I get and the more my body changes shape.  

Suddenly I understand what it means to love, and to be grateful to and for my body (although I don't think the feeling's mutual after a round of weighted elevated split squats).  Sometimes I can hardly believe what it's just been able to do. The weight I've managed to lift at the gym or the yoga posture I somehow managed to bend myself into, and then hold. Yes, I can now even do the yoga I always wanted to but never managed to, um, manage before.  I am more flexible and more confident, I have more stamina and I love challenging myself to go just a little bit further every time.

I've still got rolls, but I've also got muscles I never even knew existed before and the more I focus on those, the more those rolls get less roly.  I may not ever learn to love the rolls, but I certainly love the rest.

So, it turns out I had it all wrong in the first place. I was entirely chasing the wrong goal.  It is not about trying to get skinnier. It's not about trying to lose weight.  It's about getting stronger.  I can't control what the scales do, but maybe I don't need to care about that anyway.

What I can do is get off my butt, get to the gym, lift those weights a little bit heavier than before and high five myself for being so damn awesome.

Strong is SO the new skinny.

The naggy draggy side of blogging

The problem with writing a blog is that when I'm not writing, I feel guilty about it.

The problem with having two blogs is that guilt doubles.

It's not that I feel bad about not having anything to write about, that doesn't really bother me.  If I don't have anything much to say at any point then so be it, I'll wait until something crops up.

The problem is more about having too much to say - ha, who knew, me having a lot to say!? ;)

The thing is, when I know I've thought of something I'd like to write about, but for whatever reason I haven't yet put finger to keypad, it just sort of hangs over me.  And then it builds up, and up into this really annoying, anxious naggy, draggy feeling that I 'should' be writing.

Which is really not the point at all - I don't NEED to write anything.  There is no SHOULD about it.  I'm not being paid for it, it's not my job, I don't have a huge raft of subscribers baying for more (although I have had one anonymous post demanding an update).  Since the point of this blog in the first place was about exploring the area of happiness and whatnot, feeling a sense of duty, guilt and shoulding all over the place about it kind of ruins the point.

But it happens nonetheless.

And the problem with that is it creates a kind of blockage.  That one post that doesn't make it onto the screen creates a barrier behind which every other post I think of builds up.  For some reason, I get complete blog paralysis.  On my Feeding Happy blog I have about 15 posts stored up ready to write from the last month or so.  Which is ridiculous, because I now actually can't remember the recipes or anything about the food I want to write about. Which means I'm still not writing them until I try to remember/find what it was I did in the first place.

It becomes this huge insurmountable scary mountain of a task.

And I completely forget my own advice.

Like any huge looming massive job, the key is to break it down.  Managing to get through all those backed up posts is pretty daunting, but just writing a quick little post about something new that has cropped up is totally doable.

And the funny thing is, as soon as one post is out, they just keep flowing.  This is the fourth I've written today and I can hardly type fast enough to get it finished so I can get onto the next one.

The dam is down, the floodgates are open, I'm on a roll and am destined not to shut up again for a very long time.

Sorry about that.

Blue Mind

I have often wondered if perhaps I used to be a fish. Or a dolphin.  Or another equally aquatic being.

Ever since I can remember I have loved water.  Being in, on, near, or under it.  On holidays as children my brother and I would spend hour upon hour in the water, one of my favourite things about living in Maidenhead is the river and whenever we visit Alex's parents I never tire of walking up and down the bank looking out to sea.  Whenever I'm feeling uptight, cutting through cool water and having a good swim totally resets my mood.

I should probably point out at this point, that in a cruel twist of something or other, I am also massively sea sick - but we'll just over look that for the minute, or it spoils my point.

This summer, I didn't go abroad, but it
was one of the nicest, most relaxing and fulfilling summers I can remember - probably helped rather a lot by the fact I had 6 weeks off. And the amazing weather we  had. But aside from that I think it has a lot to do with the amount of time I spent in, near or on the water.

I sat by, walked along and swam in the
sea in three entirely different parts of the UK. I even sat and watched a seal swimming along on one occasion.  I kayaked up the river and lounged by and in a lake.  I floated about in a swimming pool and bobbed around a harbour in a little boat.

There is something about water that just changes my mood entirely and almost instantly.  I can't really describe it other than to say it's a real "aaaaaahh" moment.  It is so relaxing and restorative.  It's so real and honest and natural.  It's impossible to feel stressed or to get bored just staring at water.  I suppose, what I'm really trying to say is that water just makes me feel so happy, in a lovely quiet content, grounded sort of way.

Water has this amazing power to still the mind and point out how wonderful life is.

For me, anyway.

And it seems I'm not alone.  After I was reflecting on this out loud, Alex found an article in The Guardian about a book called Blue Mind: How Water Makes you Happier, More Connected and Better at What You Do by Wallace J Nichols.  One for the list I think.

I have to say though, I think my brother would probably beg to differ with the premise of the book.  Having spent the last 3 weeks sailing the most ridiculous stormy seas I'm sure he would argue that water, rather than make you better at stuff, makes it entirely impossible to do anything at all without falling over or bumping into something, thus making you anything but happier.  Stepping onto dry land again (and waiting for the ensuing weird rolling sensation to die down) might in fact make him a teeny bit happier.

So, perhaps its like everything in life, everything in moderation.

For  me though, I've yet to have my fill.

And I'm still convinced I used to be dolphin.  Blue mind or not.

Everything changes but you

This is not the post I imagined writing next.

When I wrote my last post I was full of the joys of achievement, reflecting on the progress I'd made  over the last 12 months . My glass was literally overflowing. I was loving the gym, loving the results, loving life in general and looking forward to continuing my journey.

Last week I had my final teaching observation and ticked a lot of the 'outstanding' boxes, I had the results back for my last 2 assignments (both As), handed in the final assignment for my PGCE and my first after school languages club was a great success.

I was looking forward to a trip to the seaside, a long walk and a generally lovely weekend basking in the glory of it all.

Then somebody drove into the back of me.

Now I'm signed off work, stuck at home with whiplash and sciatica as a result.

And I've been told not to do any exercise of any description. That my goal should be to get back in the gym in 8 weeks...not be back up to full speed in 8 weeks, but to first step foot back in the gym to start building up to full speed.

I am devastated.

It's taken me a year to get to this place, not to mention the years and years it took to get to the place I started this year from and now I've got to sit out for 8 weeks.  That might not seem that much of a big deal but it is basically 48 workouts missed and then another who knows how many pansying around trying to build it all back up again. So it is a big deal to me, and to my waistline, and my motivation and my sense of self and my progress and my momentum and...

So here I am faced with a bit of an uneasy dilemma type thing.  Here I am, this quite positive upbeat person, in danger of calamitous thinking, but this is rubbish and I want to moan, even though I know it won't help. My last post was about being able to fill the glass back up when you're in danger of getting down...yeah, except I'd already discovered that my glass gets filled up by keeping active and going to the gym and now that's specifically what I absolutely cannot do.  I've also noticed that since I'm not going to the gym and being all bouncy and active and jolly, my eating has gone a bit southward as well.

Hmmm.

This tells me a few things.  That my attachment to the gym is possibly as unhealthy as my attachment to food in a way.  I need to find a more healthy relationship with it, turns out I'm a bit too dependent on it for all manner of things, including my identity...it needs to be a part of it, not all of it.  I need to reframe it so that I go to the gym because I'm me, not I'm me because I go to the gym.  It's a bit ridiculous that everything else I value falls apart just because I can't go to the gym and am feeling a bit sorry for myself.  I need to find a way of internalising the whole healthy eating part of things as just a big a part of who I am as the exercise thing so that it can carry on going even when the gym bit can't - and especially when the gym bit can't.  Ironically, with a body full of inflammation eating well is even more important than the rest of the time.

Me thinks a little more 'inscaping' is required.

Having sat and thought about it for a few moments, I realise that all that moaning and harrumping feels a bit weird.  It's not really me.  It's something I used to do a lot of but I didn't really like it and as soon as I realised quite to what extent I was doing it, I stopped.  It's that old story again.  Why is it that when something happens to knock me off course a little bit I revert to the old story of me and not the new one...or the original one actually that just got drowned out by the old one?  It's like there are two tracks on the 12" and the slightest bump knocks the needle off the energetic, positive gym bunny track onto the whinging woe is me fat grump track.  Weird. Or not, haven't figured that bit out yet.

me!

But it is quite refreshing to note that actually, despite how quickly everything changed, I am still the me I'd
been quite enjoying getting to know.

That me says, it could have been worse. Much worse.  It is only 8 weeks and hopefully the progress I've made to date will assist any recovery.  Had I not been signed off and made to sit still I would probably have got straight back into things far too soon and too intensely and just made everything worse.  As soon as the sciatica eases off enough I can get walking. I love walking and don't get as much opportunity for it as I used to.  Now's my chance to correct that.  Fingers crossed my physio agrees!

And I'm just going to have to make eating the new gym.  I'm going to treat mealtimes like my workouts. They're going to be carefully thought out and mindfully executed, designed for maximum recovery and nutrition and minimal lardacious self loathing. And delicious.  I shall eat when I'm hungry, eat slowly, eat well, and drink plenty of water and green tea (for a change).

me, beating this thing!

But I'm also going to be a bit kinder to myself.  I think it's ok to feel a bit fed up about all of this.  It's ok to eat a few commiseration cakes. But not every meal and not forever. The time for weepy wallowing is up!  But it's also ok if I get a few meals wrong, I know I'm not going to make perfect choices every single time but at least I can set the intention and give it a good go.  I also know some days are going to hurt more than others. Some days I'm going to be more knackered than others. Some days I'm going to feel better or worse.  I'll just have to ride them out and see what happens.  I also know the scales will go up  (they already have) but to just try and ignore them.  And the workouts will have to be scaled back a lot when I finally get back in the gym...but maybe seeing how well I can progress them again can be my new challenge when it comes to that.


To hold myself accountable, as that does really work, I'm going to create a separate page on here to log how I'm doing: What I'm eating, what activity I've been able to do, that kind of thing.  I suspect it will be intensely boring for everybody else hence it shall sit on its own little page somewhere else so as not to clog up the blog proper.  Feel free to read it as some kind of non-medicinal insomnia cure.

In the meantime, I'm off to ice my neck, this typing malarkey hurts.  Must find more whiplash friendly blogging position...

**Update** Feeding Happy is now live and accessed via tab above in pages bar :)