And then suddenly you’re doing the impossible…

Around this time I started to read a lot more about eating Paleo and excluding highly refined carbohydrates such as white flour and sugar.  I decided to give it a go and tried my best to exclude anything with wheat/gluten/refined sugar.  I also took up strength training, initially once a week, increasing to twice a week a couple of months later – I needed to rebuild my poor pathetically neglected muscles.  And that was literally my routine for the next six months, bike to work five days a week, strength training (Bodypump classes) twice a week and curbing my sugar/flour addiction, and my weight continue to head in a downward direction until one shiny day I reached the ‘goal’ weight I had set myself.

In my head I readjusted what I thought my goal weight should be given I had figured out to loose weight in a way that worked for me in a healthy fashion.  My body was stronger than it possibly had ever been – I was gradually increasing the amounts of weight I was lifting at the Bodypump classes and my body had adjusted to burning my excessive layers of flubber as opposed to the ginormous amounts of refined carbs I had been consuming previously.  But I lacked the focus that I had when I was determined to get to my ‘goal’ weight – it was almost like my subconcious was going awesome – tick – done that – what’s next?

Setting goals, working towards them and achieving them is how we build self-esteem and feel awesome about ourselves and I now had none.  I was floundering a bit – I got bored (which with me is fatal) with the Bodypump and the biking to work and Christmas and all it’s goodliness was fast approaching.  I decided to do some extra longer bike rides (by this time I had a slightly lighter, faster hybrid) – the first time I went out with just a bottle of water on a 45km round trip and I quickly found out what the term ‘BONK’ meant.  I also figured out that talking to my legs to get me home when I’m running on fumes works!  I started thinking about doing a sportive which was quite a bit scary and pushed the boundaries of my comfort zone.

Around Christmas time my Dad and daughter came to visit from NZ and all exercise stopped and I ate and drank without much thought for what I was putting in my body – just enjoyed their company and the season to be jolly.  I loved having them over and was sad to see them go but I needed to get back to work and back into it.  I started biking to work again but I left the strength training at the door and promptly forgot about it – I needed my Saturday’s to go for long rides – except that I couldn’t as it was snowing outside and generally crappy (although this didn’t stop me cycling to work).  So I did some investigative work and found out that the local uni had a set of Watt bikes – perfect.  So I would walk or catch the bus down to the uni and spend a couple of hours on the bikes and come home feeling satisfied that I had done enough.

One of my Christmas pressies had been some Amazon vouchers and I happened across a review for Chrissie Wellington’s autobiography A life without limits and decided to give it a go – her story was pretty cool.  The woman was a machine when it came to Ironman mowing down her competition with a determination that made grown men wilt just a little on the inside.  By the end of the book a little seed was sown – not that I realised it seeing as how people who do ironman triathlons were legends and so far up the payscale I couldn’t imagine doing that!  No riding my bike further was enough for me and I had entered the  ballot for the London 100 which followed the Olympic route and crossed my fingers.  I had also entered the ballot for the Royal Parks Foundation Half marathon on a whim on lazy afternoon at work – it was only entering a ballot no harm in that!

Then around the end of January I had the last of my Christmas vouchers burning a hole in my pocket and saw Andy Holgate’s Cant Swim, Cant Bike, Cant Run: From Common Man to Ironman just winking at me on my laptop screen.  By the time I had finished his book that seed planted earlier in the season began to sprout itty bitty wee shoots spurred on by an offhand comment by a relative saying ‘Wow that’s a long bike ride – next thing you know you’ll be doing an Ironman…’.  Which I laughed off saying ‘I cant run and I definitely cant swim – biking is the only thing I know how to do – so just no’.  But those few words and Holg’s many started the gears wurring in my head – well why couldn’t I? Hmmm I had to do some thinking and went over to the Runner’s World site and checked out the triathlon forum and the Pirates.  They were an interesting bunch of people with a sense of humour similar to mine and sharing in the highs and lows of training for both long and short course triathlon races.  I didn’t know it but I was hooked – it was a slippery slope from here on in.

I had found my next challenge and it was a doozy – I wanted to be an Ironman.

Then do what is possible…

I had to get up at 5.30am to be out the door by 6.30 and at work by 8am at the latest.  It would take me an hour and a half when I first started.  I would arrive at work out of breath, red in the face and sweaty, but I turned up and got the job done.  My co-worker would then take pity on me and drop me off on her way home close to home.  I did this for about a month and I lost about 2 kgs which at the time I was well chuffed with since I hadn’t seen the wee red needle on my scales go in a downward direction in at least 15 years.  At the time I got the job, my mother, whose health had been poorly for the last 20 years and more so in the last five years had been told she had not much longer to live as the medical profession had nothing else to offer her other than palliative care.  I suspect the fact that I had a job and structure and routine back in my life helped me cope with the extra stress that her impending death presented.

Expats will tell you, especially when you are living a half a world away from your family, that a death or a very sick relative can be one of the most stressful life events there is.  And I have to say they are right.  I said goodbye to my Mum that night for the last time and caught the plane the next day.  My employers were amazingly supportive allowing me to take a month off to go home and help farewell her.  Surprisingly over the month I was away from the UK I didn’t gain or lose any weight – I wasn’t doing any exercise, nor was I watching what I ate at all.  I was helping make sure the whanau (family) and friends were taken care of I don’t think I paid that much attention to food.  I flew back to the UK and jumped right back into my routine of walking and getting a ride home at the end of the day.

Another couple of weeks passed and the little red needle continued to slowly move downwards, and I thought well if I can do this without changing my diet – what can I do if we change the size of our portions?  I talked with BH about it, since he did most of the cooking, and he agreed to make changes in both the size of our portions and the calorie content.  He would make tea for us and divide it in four – half for tea and half for lunch the next day.  However, the early starts were beginning to take a toll on both of us and I said to BH that I needed to get a bike asap if this was to change.  I then eyeballed eBay looking for a bike that would not cost a lot and have a comfy seat – this became important.  I found a dutchstyle bike with six gears – the terrain wasn’t particularly hilly so I thought that that would be enough.  Although that was an incorrect assumption it was probably exactly what I needed in terms of what I later decided were small bursts of high intensity training.

The first day I biked to work I pushed the bike up the small hills (bumps really but we will go with hills) and coasted down the other side.  I arrived at work red as a beetroot, very sweaty, slightly nauseous and just a little bit light headed.  And best of all my backside hurt like all get out, but I did it and I kept on doing it.  It would take me 40 minutes, which was a dramatic improvement on walking for an hour and 20 minutes.  My backside kept on hurting for about six or seven weeks then it just gave up and got used to it when it realised I wasn’t stopping just because it was complaining.  My shorts rubbed on my inner thighs and I could’ve taken out shares in the babywipe company (my employer had no women’s showers) but I kept on going because I didn’t have any choice – if I wanted to get paid I had to get to work.  Best motivation ever.

Having a bike ment I could sleep in a little more and BH was happy and I certainly was happier.  I began to notice that I could go a little further up the little hills than I could before and I would challenge myself to go that bit further on the bike before I had to get off and push.  It was quite a heavy bike, none of this light road bike stuff – so I like to tell myself that it was both cardio and strength training all in one.  When I got home I would have to carry it up two flights of stairs to our apartment and in the first early weeks of me having the bike I would drag the bike up stairs and literally have the strength to knock on the door (BH gets home before me) and BH would take the bike and I would totter off to have a shower or a quick lie down on the bed.

I was pushing the boundaries of what I was actually capable of, in effect I was doing HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) – not that I had any idea what that was.  These short bursts of exercise (it took me 45 minutes to get to work) twice a day, five days a week in conjunction with the change in diet I started to see more weight loss and an increase in my fitness (including the ability to bike the whole way to work!).  I was enjoying the decrease in my waistline and the necessary shopping that went along with it as my size 18/20 clothes no longer fit me.  I started taking pictures in my altogether so I could see the progress I was making – no hiding the changes going on.  Every now and again I still look at the video I put together of these and remind myself of how far I have come.

Start by doing the necessary…

I would like to say I had a blinding moment of clarity about the state of my body and fitness.  About how it came to me that I was eating crap and not exercising and that I was going to die sooner than later, and not live to see my baby girl’s children’s children and that I promised myself then and there that I was going to change like Scarlett on the lawn of Tara. But I would be lying, it would make for a good story but for me that wasn’t the truth or what happened.  The truth is my weight loss happened as a side effect of another choice I made.

I had moved to the UK from New Zealand as my husband had got a job at a major university and had settled in a small satellite town.  My beloved husband would leave for work before 7am and return by 5 every day leaving me to amuse myself for the better part of the day.  I knew no one in the town or even near us so that I could visit people and the number of times you can visit the local shops before they lose their sparkle is countable on one hand.  I was applying for jobs left, right and centre and feeling like I was getting nowhere fast.   I had chosen to try and get a job in a rural area in the middle of the worst economic depression since the 1980’s – it was also just after a number of scientific employers in the area had pulled out and closed their doors leaving a number of well qualified people looking for work.  Needless to say the longer it went on the more I got depressed, the more I got depressed the more I ate comfort food and the more weight I put on.  It was a bit of a vicious cycle.  By the time this picture was taken I was the heaviest I had ever been, weighing in at around 84.5kgs on my 5 foot 1 inch frame.

My BH tried his best to perk me up and get me to exercise – but as it was hard enough to get out of bed in the morning it was a very big ask to get me to go for a walk.  He would ask, cajole and eventually I would give in and tie up my shoes and we would go for a very slow walk where I would walk as fast as I could and generally not enjoy the countryside I was walking through.  I hurt during day to day incidental exercise – it hurt to go up stairs, it hurt to go down stairs, getting up out of bed and standing up killed my feet – let alone going for walks that were several kms long.  Walking would make my face red and I got blisters easily.   I sweated a lot (there was no glowing like a lady going on here), my inner thighs rubbed together to the point were I couldn’t wear skirts anymore I only ever wore shorts or jeans.  I had heat rashes under my 18DD breasts and under my flabby tummy.  Nope exercise wasn’t my friend and I avoided it like the plague.

I didn’t realise it but at the time my BH was really worried about my health and my ever increasing size (I had put on around 14.5kgs since I met him).  He never once said don’t eat this or nag me about my weight or the fact that it was blatantly obvious that I wasn’t getting out of bed until just before he got home.  He just keep trying to get me moving and out of the house.  He was to tell me later (much later) that he had been about a month away from forcing me to do something about my depression.  So what changed?  I got a job is what changed.  I got a job in the ruralist of rural areas in which there was an almost non-existent public transport system going anywhere near where I would work.  It was four miles from our front door to work and we had no car (environmental greenies), my BH biked or worked to work.  I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to work (and I was desperate to)   so I said yes please and thank you very much and tied up my shoes, put on my shorts and walked out the door.

I still have the picture that they took on the first day – it’s a head shot and my face is showing my extra weight and my cheeks match my purple/fuschia shirt.  In retrospect I looked terrible but at the time I didn’t care.  I had a job and that was awesome.