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I’ve joined a Healthy Weight Programme…

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I wasn’t sure whether to write this post, not because I’m particularly fussed about publicly admitting I’m overweight (guess what? I’M OVERWEIGHT) but because I always fear jinxing something if I say “I am about to do X” rather than “I have officially done Y”.

I could have waited til I had results pics, inch losses and sassy anecdotes about how cucumbers have changed my life, but I just need to get it out there in the open that I’ve started a programme because a) I am having to drink a LOT less booze on this new plan and I’m reeeeeeeally bored of explaining to people that I’m not preg and b) I’m quite proud to be taking some positive steps to help myself. Caring about our bodies isn’t a luxury we always afford ourselves, but we should. They’re our houses! We only get one! And so on and so forth.

I am your classic yo yo dieter. I’ve been varying degrees of ‘overweight’ (in the BMI sense) for the past 15 years. There was a magical interlude at the very beginning of my twenties where I was a normal healthy weight (which of course I didn’t appreciate at the time, *stupid past me*) but I have recently crept up to my all time high weight. A weight I haven’t been since I was 18. A weight which isn’t exactly fun and is 100% a direct result of being so sedentary I may as well be comatose.

The sedentary part is the killer (literally, if we want to get depressing about it). I work from home and can near enough roll to my desk, where I sit tapping away for what can feel like years at a time, only to get up to wee and….errr….get food. It’s not exactly a kind way to treat a human body. You gain a pound, then another. Then pounds become half stones and half stones become stones and suddenly you’re nearly 30 and very aware that legs weren’t made to be shoved under desks for 10 hours at a time.

I’ve tried all sorts of things in the past: gourmet delivery services, protein shakes, 5:2, SlimFast (not recently, but I’m not going to pretend I haven’t done it!) and even those ludicrously silly tablets that don’t let your body absorb fat (and we all know where the fat goes instead so let’s just gloss over that disgusting episode of my life – GAG). But I’d say calorie counting and food tracking have been my most consistent ‘diet’ of choice over the years.

Long-time readers will remember I became swimming obsessed a couple of years ago too (you can find some of my swimming posts here) but that wasn’t about getting slim so whilst I did lose weight in the process I was still overweight. I was very fit, but I still ate badly and drank too much. You can’t out train a crap diet, as they so eloquently say.

The most successful weight loss I ever had was with Weight Watchers, where I lost two and a half stone between the April and September of 2005. My goal was to be a healthy weight before starting uni and I got there, but as my baby cousin starts uni next week it hits home that in the ten years since that exceptionally happy weigh-in day and gold star badge, I’ve put it all back on.

I did try Weight Watchers again three years ago, but the approach had changed a lot and the leader’s style was very different. I was desperate to get on with it as I loved the group setting – the idea of a supportive club, weekly weigh-ins, classes and having a leader to ‘answer to’ and keep me on track. But it really didn’t work for me. There was a worryingly heavy focus on processed food (all their own brand, natch) and I couldn’t find anyone who’d talk sense when it came to food AND exercise. I wanted to get fit and strong, not ‘just slim’. It drove me a bit crazy so I quit.

But anyway! Back to the here and now.

As I said at the start of this post, I’ve joined a new programme – Nuffield Health’s Healthy Weight Programme. It’s run at Nuffield Health gyms (not all, but loads of them do it!) and from my limited experience so far, I really really like the concept. It’s a twelve week programme that is tailored to you, with an emphasis on YOUR goals and YOUR lifestyle. The emphasis is on health, as opposed to size.

I’ve only just started but the first thing it involved was having an hour one on one consultation with a nutritional therapist and then a further hour having a ‘Health MOT ‘. Being shoved a booklet and told to get on with it, this was not.

The Health MOT looks at the whole picture and is what really made me think that this is the right programme for me. Yes I was weighed, but I also had my cholesterol and blood glucose levels checked. I wore a heart monitor. We discussed my sleeping patterns and energy levels and all my hopes and dreams for a new and improved me. This wasn’t a quick fix bikini body lesson in starvation, it was about ALL the pieces of the puzzle that make up ‘health’.

Will I be slimmer by the end of the 12 weeks? I hope so. I know I’ve learnt a lot about food from my one on one nutrition consultation already…and that’s as someone who thinks they know a lot about food. I can’t quite believe I’m not going to obsessively calorie count, opting to look at the nutritional value of foods as a whole instead. It’s a weird but liberating feeling. And I’ve started swimming again! So that’s making me cheery.

I’m not just doing this Healthy Weight Programme with Nuffield Health ‘to blog about it’, I have wanted to do something like this for forever I just didn’t know the service existed. I have to admit I was invited by Nuffield Health to try it, but it’s something I would definitely have signed up for anyway had I discovered it first and I’m doing it alongside ‘real’ members – nobody at the gym knows I’m there blogging about it so I’m not getting any VIP treatment. (Although there was classical musical playing in the pool yesterday, so I definitely felt like a VIP. More swim sessions to Bach please!).

Prices start at £12 a week and you can find out heaps more about it here. If you’ve ever wanted to join a programme which is flexible enough to consider your individual needs and goals whilst looking at the bigger picture of health and not just ‘summer bodies’, this may be just what you’ve been looking for.

I really hope the programme works for me. I’ll be back in twelve weeks to tell you either way! I may do an update post sooner, at six weeks perhaps. And will inevitably rabbit on about it on Twitter and Instagram as and when.

PoppyD Healthy Weight Programme

Wish me luck…and fog-free goggles.

x

p.s I have taken some cracking ‘before’ pics, but OBVIOUSLY I am not jinxing myself by posting them til there’s some after pics to compare them to. I may never post them, but let’s just say they’re suitably amusing.

An update…did I make a change for the better?

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At the end of September I posted about a challenge I’d been set by Special K to ‘make a change for the better’. This post might make more sense if you read that post first.

It’s quite easy to make a promise to change, but it’s a lot harder to follow through with it. Luckily, in this lovely internet era we live in, it’s impossible to make promises go away. (Even if some people like to pretend it isn’t.)

I pledged to try and change in five different ways and this is what I pledged to do:

  • I want to get a decent routine at the gym sorted which will be designed to support my swimming. To do this I’m going to make a couple of PT appointments which should help me to ACTUALLY LEARN what the hell to do, rather than my usual clumsy guesswork.

 

  • I want to really push myself to try and go to six classes at my gym. That’s two a month. I hate classes, I have a massive irrational fear about exercising in a choreographed way with other people. I can do live TV or radio with no qualms whatsoever, not so much as a butterfly, but Zumba?! GET OUTTA HERE. If I actually get through these classes, it will truly be a massively positive change for me in terms of my self confidence.

 

  • I want to learn how to use the sodding Power Plates. They look so cool in the corner of the gym, but I don’t get them. At all.

 

 

  • I want to get my five a day. This one sounds silly, but when you see what the government considers ‘a portion’ of fruit and veg, you realise it’s not the easiest thing in the world to achieve. Just because a Pret salad has seven types of veg in it, doesn’t mean it’s coming out at more than two portions of veg. Whilst I almost definitely eat five different fruit and veg a day, I don’t get five decent portions that would add up to the ‘official’ five a day we should aim for. If I get more fruit and veg I should naturally eat less crap. And my skin will be better! And my swimming will be better! AND I MAY TURN INTO BROCCOLI! But that will be fine.

BUT. And here comes the but. I didn’t manage it.

I never wrote about how ill I was after my final Thames swim, because I was wary of publicly saying THE THAMES MADE ME VERY SICK INDEED. I was wary because I would never want to put someone off open water swimming – and I know that most non-swimmy people I talk to already assume open water swimming comes with vomming and ‘other end’ vomming as standard. It doesn’t.

I enjoyed open water swimming in various lakes, real and man-made, from Spring onwards this year. I never got sick from it.

The Thames race I finished with in July had ‘famously’ left over a third of competitors sick the year before. I was very nervous about it as it had been so bloody hot in the run up that had it been a tri event, westsuits would have been banned. I donned my wetsuit and swam it though. Hated it. (More on that here). And in the days afterwards a sense of great achievement washed over me that I’d actually bloody well done it. Not only had I done it, but I had met my £3,000 fundraising target for Barnardo’s. And best of all – I wasn’t puking everywhere!

Little did I realise that the types of bugs people catch in the Thames tend to have a two week incubation period…and sure enough within a fortnight I was a broken mess.

I didn’t go the doctors (because I’m STRONG! My body should LEARN! etc etc) and I progressively became more and more ill. To the point where I was excusing myself from fancy restaurants to vomit in the street (still very embarrassed about this, felt the need to explain to passers by at Chez Bruce that it’s “just parasites – but they’re not from here!” in between heaves) and I was unable to touch a DROP of alcohol without spending all night in the bathroom. Then at one point I realised it was October and this had probably gone on for a bit longer than normal.

Blood tests became hospital tests became really gross tests became WAITING became sad.

Listening to people worry about your liver is, in itself, very worrying. Phlebotomists would joke about what exotic third world countries I’d been to – “just Kingston”, I’d reply.

Luckily they didn’t find the grody Hepatitis that they were looking for, but I’d been left with some pretty bad ulcers by not treating the original infection (nice one, me) and that was why I felt like I was carrying around an 8 month pregnancy of poison, evil and broken glass. A six week ‘diet’ of very plain food, strong drugz and no booze FINALLY fixed me. Honestly you can touch my tummy now and I won’t vomit. COME HERE AND TOUCH IT! Honestly, nothing will happen.

But this was all very time consuming – and meant I wasn’t exactly fulfilling my promises of hot dates with PTs and Power Plates. I met a fair few hot doctors, and I DID make a change for the better in that I finally stopped feeling like I was going to die, but I didn’t exactly do what I set out to do.

I was sick when I made my original pledges, but was convinced it was all about to fix itself ‘any day now’ so didn’t feel too bolshy making such promises. But yeah, it all went a bit tits up.

ALL is not lost though, it’s not like I’ve done nothing since my original post except feel sorry for myself in various bathrooms. I’ve felt human and well for exactly one month now – and in this time I HAVE made some changes for the better.

I HAVE incorporated five proper portions of fruit and veg into my meals each and every day – and feel very alive for it.

I HAVE started taking my skin seriously, I met with Caroline Hirons as I pledged to do and I’ve followed a brilliantly thorough skincare routine twice a day since. I’ll be blogging about that properly this week. This has made feel so happy though, it’s silly how much it has pleased me. I love having so much ‘bare face’ confidence. I think Special K would be pleased with how much this has transformed me, as it was kinda the point of this campaign.

And whilst I have only just gotten back into swimming properly since being sick (literally last week) I have made one other major change and that has been taking on the 5:2 diet. I am four weeks into this (basically, been doing it since I’ve felt well again) and I’ve lost seven pounds – and that’s without having really been swimming.

I know it’s easy to praise a ‘diet’ within the first few weeks, but 5:2 really doesn’t feel like a ‘diet’ in the traditional sense and I’ve found it surprisingly easy for the simple fact that five days of the week I’m not a deprived calorie counting maniac.

Over the next month, I want to continue with 5:2, fruit & veg and fabulous skincare – but I want to revisit my original pledges too and try to tackle these now that I’m well.

So I guess I can only apologise that I’m not updating you with evangelical “I’M A BRAND NEW HUMAN BEING” news, but I know that Special K just wanted to help a few bloggers become the best version of themselves – and I’m physically well, busier than ever with work and feeling pretty healthy for the first time in ages….so whilst I may not have Ennis abs or a twice a day gym fetish out of nowhere, I do feel like a better version of myself. And I guess that was the point 🙂

x

Make a change? Ok, if you insist…

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*Note: You should really read this post with MJ’s Man in the Mirror playing in the background – and you should definitely join in as loudly as possible for the MAKE THAT CHANGE segments.* 

Earlier this summer, not long after completing the Great North Swim, I received a rather exciting email from Special K.

“OMG,” I thought, “THEY WANT ME TO BE THE SPECIAL K LADY!”.

It would make sense of course, I tick a lot of the boxes. I’m brunette, booby, partial to having cereal for dinner and I spend a LOT of time in a swimming costume. Plus, if we’re going into favourite colours then red is the clear and obvious choice.

Alas, I was not being called up for red dress duties. But what they were emailing about was still rather exciting.

Special K have recently changed their recipe (for the first time in 30 years) to a new 3 grain and wholegrain recipe…and to celebrate this they’re also changing the way they position themselves. They’ve dropped “Drop a Dress Size” and are instead focusing on championing women (because women are great) and encouraging women to be the best version of themselves.

That’s where “making a change” comes in.

Special K are sponsoring a number of bloggers for three months to “make a change for the better” (you’re listening to the MJ track still, right?) and I am lucky enough to be one of them. You can see some of the other bloggers and what they’re doing to make a change here.

I’ve struggled to decide what to change as I’ve changed SO much this summer with the swimming, but as we head into Autumn and the lakes close, I think now’s a particularly important time for me to keep up the positive changes I began in the Spring.

Of course there are some brilliantly obvious changes I could make, I’d like to change my handbag for this one…

loubie1

Christian Louboutin – £1,165

And a clutch change has been necessary since first spying this Sophia Webster design…

saymyname

Sophia Webster – £340

And I would like to be blonde, thin and fluent in French. Évidemment.

But somehow I think I need to be more realistic.

So I’ve thought about it and I’ve decided that I’m going to really take advantage of this support from Special K and make a few changes over the 3 months that they’re helping me out for.

  • I want to get a decent routine at the gym sorted which will be designed to support my swimming. To do this I’m going to make a couple of PT appointments which should help me to ACTUALLY LEARN what the hell to do, rather than my usual clumsy guesswork.

 

  • I want to really push myself to try and go to six classes at my gym. That’s two a month. I hate classes, I have a massive irrational fear about exercising in a choreographed way with other people. I can do live TV or radio with no qualms whatsoever, not so much as a butterfly, but Zumba?! GET OUTTA HERE. If I actually get through these classes, it will truly be a massively positive change for me in terms of my self confidence.

 

  • I want to learn how to use the sodding Power Plates. They look so cool in the corner of the gym, but I don’t get them. At all.

 

 

  • I want to get my five a day. This one sounds silly, but when you see what the government considers ‘a portion’ of fruit and veg, you realise it’s not the easiest thing in the world to achieve. Just because a Pret salad has seven types of veg in it, doesn’t mean it’s coming out at more than two portions of veg. Whilst I almost definitely eat five different fruit and veg a day, I don’t get five decent portions that would add up to the ‘official’ five a day we should aim for. If I get more fruit and veg I should naturally eat less crap. And my skin will be better! And my swimming will be better! AND I MAY TURN INTO BROCCOLI! But that will be fine.

So that’s what I’m going to get up to. Like I said, you can see what the other bloggers have pledged to do here, but I’ll def update here on the blog over the next three months on my progress.

I am by no means a Special K spokeswoman by doing this “make a change” challenge, nor am I the official lady in red, sadly. So yeah, if you have any questions about the new recipe then I’m probs not the best person to ask – except I will tell you that I think Special K Creamy Berry Crunch is THE ONE.

Wish me luck! Send me vegetables! AND SEE YOU AT BODY ATTACK!

x

My weapons in the fit not thin battle…

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Perhaps the headline is misleading, I’m not exactly battling being thin – my lifestyle means that it would be nothing short of a miracle if I was – but there are no words for how happy I am that the fashion world are embracing a new mantra…”fit not thin”.

When I was working in Australia earlier this year I noticed a stark difference in the ‘fashion girls’ of Melbourne and Sydney, they were slim – yes – but they weren’t thin. Nobody looked hungry and absolutely nobody looked skeletal. Instead, tanned toned legs showed off flexing muscles which revealed lunch breaks spent running and evenings spent swimming. There wasn’t that moody air that often hangs around the European and NY fash pack, usually caused quite simply from low blood sugars. In short, the Aussie women looked happy.

Now I’m not going to make a sweeping statement that implies Australians are happier and never count calories, but the cultural emphasis did seem to be on fitness than thinness. Of course, they have the benefit of living somewhere where year round outdoor activities are much more the norm…but it seems the trend for placing health and happiness above jean sizes is hitting our shores too.

As our sleb heroines are changing, The Sunday Times have thrown all their weight behind a Fit Not Thin campaign. Staggeringly, my own gym kit even made the newspaper last weekend! (See above pic, next to Jenifer Aniston – natch).

I’ve watched my life change dramatically since I took up swimming at Easter and being fitter has made me happier and healthier all round. I sleep better, I look better, I feel better. I’ve even found things like my asthma improving the more I work my lungs in the pool. I’m not going to be able to ditch my inhalers, but it’s amazing to feel like I’ve taken some control over my breathing.

So back to those ‘weapons’ of mine, head on over to my MSN column to read five simple ways that I’m striving to be fit not thin 🙂

Originally posted on MSN, read full article here.

Why crap workouts don’t matter…

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When we workout, regardless of our chosen sport, we generally have a goal in mind. It might be to run a certain distance, keep up with the pace of a class, do a set number of laps in the pool or just keep up whatever it is you want to do for 40 minutes. But what happens when it all goes gloriously wrong?

I just emerged, coughing and spluttering, from an almost hilariously bad swim.

pd

Work commitments have meant I haven’t swum for a week or so but I had a break in my day today and, buzzing with new week excitement, I thought I was really up for a good swim sesh. That enthusiasm waned about 15 metres in, when a coughing fit saw me clutching to the wall trying not to die. Why does that only happen when TWO lifeguards are on duty and everyone in the vicinity is gorgeous? *Sigh*.

Anyway, I plodded on realising my set wasn’t going to be what I’d planned. I never caught my breath once, changed my plans entirely and just about managed 600m of technique stuff before calling it a day. A glorious 17 minutes of exercise. GO ME.

When I first started swimming it was easy for me to beat myself up about something like today, but now? Not bothered.

Okay, I am bit bothered, I’d have liked to have done better, but one thing I’ve learnt with this exercise malarkey is that you don’t always get your way.

Usually I know why a workout hasn’t, well, worked out. Often my crappier swims can be blamed on lack of sleep, lack of food, hangovers (ahem) or muscle fatigue from previous swims. Today? I don’t know what went wrong. Sometimes I’ll just feel really asthmatic for no obvious reason, but sometimes we’re just physically tired even if we’re mentally up for it.

So if you find yourself in a similar crap workout situation, try and remember the following…

  • Something is better than nothing. I firmly believe this. I didn’t swim the distance I wanted today, but I swam.

 

  • It was bloody hard. It may not have been the workout you intended, but if you found it hard it was definitely a work out! You want to get out of breath and sweaty and ‘OMG I HATE THIS’, so as long as you get to that state…even if it’s from an embarrassingly low level of activity – you’ve had a work out.

 

  • Routine is important. I often find that if I miss even one planned workout, I can fall out of the swing of it altogether. Going and doing less is better for routine in the long run than skipping going.

 

  • Nobody else cares. Ridiculously, I wanted to announce to the other people in the pool that I was a good swimmer and I was just coughing because of asthma and partying too hard yesterday and you should see me in here tomorrow! etc etc etc. Other people really aren’t paying that much attention to your workout, if they are then they’re not working out hard enough themselves. So forget ’em.

 

  • Respecting your limits is cool and clever. You HAVE to listen to your body. I wanted to do a decent set of front crawl today but I simply couldn’t pick up the pace, if I’d have pushed it I’d have gotten into difficulty…and hurting yourself or putting yourself in danger is going to be a lot worse for your fitness than having one reduced workout. I changed my plans and worked on technique, still useful – just not the cardio workout I intended.

 

So my swim today was bad, but I logged it in the Speedo app anyway and you know what? 600m still comes out as swimming 1% of the Channel…and I’m happy with that 🙂