Finding my joy.

Sorry sorry sorry for the absence. I've been busy doing exciting things---->  They say that life starts at the end of your comfort zone. After the last few weeks I have come to know that this is one hundred percent true. It used to be that the things that made me happy were lazy Sundays or Lord of the Rings movie marathons (I reckon that last one would still make me pretty f***ing happy). Now the idea of sitting still for more than an hour when I could be up, out doing something, anything makes me itch. It's why I make sure that my rest days are ones where I'm working or I know I would go cray cray with wanting to do something.

A few weeks ago I released a Facebook status.

I don't know why I didn't write a blog post the minute my feet once again touched solid ground but it's taken me almost a month to figure out exactly what that first half hour back on a horse meant to me. My first thought as I approached this beast of a horse was that he was absolutely massive. Of course he is, he (his name's Max btw and he is my new BFF-don't tell my cat) has to lift a (then) 16 stone unsure human as she tries to remember how to rise in trot without damaging her crotch. I took to the mounting block and then freaked out. I haven't told any one this so you're all the first to know. He's so tall, what if I fall off? What if I can't do this? What if I can't even swing my leg over his saddle? He kept moving about, wasn't close enough, was too close. All the excuses. I was once again the girl I was when I first went running back in July 2013. And then it happened. I threw my leg over, was sat on and we moved together. The tears happened almost instantly. Pure, unadulterated joy. When the half hour was up and I'd figured out how to get off of this enormous creature- I cannot stress enough just how large Max is- I stroked his face and thanked him for the most amazing gift. In that half hour, and every subsequent half hour, he has given me a part of life that I'd only ever really dreamed of getting. For months I'd thought that getting back on a horse was just so far off, and yet here I am with my booked in weekly 8am Sunday lessons (I am NOT a morning person, so you can work out for yourself how much this means to me) and loving every moment of the connection and every moment that I can feel my body getting stronger, more capable and increasingly up to the challenge that is horse riding.

I was thinking to myself on my way back from ballet this evening that a couple of weeks ago I would have said ballet and horse riding were my main joys. And they are. I clearly love that damn horse and I love rediscovering the awesome- actually kind of ridiculous- things I can do with my body that made me good at ballet in the first place. I was telling myself that the slog in the gym and running was remedied by the treat of ballet and my time with Max. Until today. I'd had a hell of a yoga class (this hot yoga is like on steroids or something, I have never sweated so much) and left with such a sense of achievement. With every run, I grow stronger and fitter, my endurance and stamina continue to grow and I get to think freely and just be with myself. In the gym I love competing with my own personal best, I love how competent I feel. Everything I do, activity wise, feeds into something else and my enjoyment and achievement of each activity enables a greater commitment to the others. When people say that I must be so proud of all I've achieved over the last 2 and a bit years I comment that it's not just a pride of the achievement. I have such an overwhelming sense of competency, of capability and that is not something I think I can truthfully say I've felt before.

This competency was tested with my latest challenge, rock climbing. To say that I've never been able to climb a rock is an understatement. I was always too afraid to lift my feet even a foot off the ground. But at my induction not only did I get to the top of the wall first time but, according to the instructor, I attacked the challenge with a gusto and a conviction that he had never seen in a first time climber. That is what this journey has given me. I haven't just grown to love activity- really love it this time- I am no longer afraid of the limitations of my body. Instead of automatically thinking I can't, I know that if I try anything with enough conviction it can be done.

There are 99 days left until I do Tough Mudder. One of my managers at work made a comment upon discovering that I was doing it that I must really hate myself to go through such an ordeal. I know that there are countless people out there that see obstacle runs and marathons and triathlons as some kind of punishment that only we masochistic individuals sign up for. Maybe that's true. But what I can tell you for certain is that, for me, completing Tough Mudder will be the culmination of 2 and a half year's hard work. Hard work that has shown me that I can do amazing things, if I only step out of my comfort zone.

An anniversary and an apology

The last few weeks in my life have been pretty awesome. This has not been caused by any one thing in particular but I can say with absolute certainty that I'm the happiest I've been in a good long while. So much so that I completely bypassed my second anniversary with Weight Watchers. It completely slipped past without so much as a howdoyoudo and I think that this is because this has become a part of my life rather than necessarily a conscious presence that walks along side my life. That's not to say that I don't still track and make decisions on a day to day basis that I think will benefit my life, it's just become a part of the furniture.

Whilst this makes me feel confident that I will be able to keep on keeping on- it has also made me a little complacent in recent weeks. I've just been pretty happily maintaining my weight, something that needs to change right now. I'm weighing in at 15 stone 12 currently and that's pretty cool and all but that means I'm one pound away from 8 stone lost and a step in the direction of goal. The focus on getting to goal has sort of just faded to the background. That's not to say that I haven't been engaging in activities that are leading to my betterment, mind, body and soul.  Whilst I am the fittest I have EVER been, I've forgotten to prioritise the ultimate weight loss goal- I need to remember that the two need to go hand in hand. I've become too comfortable so I need to kick it up a notch.

At work we talk about something called the 'stretch zone'. This is your optimum working position. You're not complacent, you're not comfortable but you're not panicking or stressing out. I seem, when it comes to weight loss at least, to very rarely sit in the stretch zone. Either I am comfortably eating mozzarella sticks at 2 in the morning or I'm stressing out over once eating a carb. Either I'm never in the gym and getting out of breath going up stairs or I live in the gym with a perpetual case of fatigue. Clearly, neither of these scenarios are ideal and, as a result of not being able to find this stretch zone I will not be doing the Milton Keynes Marathon next Monday.

This brings me on to the apology part. I feel, and have been feeling for weeks, that I owe you all some kind of an apology. That my failure to run the marathon is letting you down. I worked out weeks ago that the marathon was simply not going to happen. I'd been hit with a case of gastroenteritis when I realised 'crap. The marathon is in just over a month'. Before then I'd damaged my ankle again from overexertion after a bout of under exertion. In short, I failed to manage my marathon training correctly and, as a result, I've fucked up. I beat myself up about it over and over and considered 'just doing it' and sodding the potential damage to my body because I couldn't stand the idea of telling people that I wasn't doing it. That I was letting my charity, myself and anyone who has ever called me inspirational down. But all I can do, all anyone ever CAN do is remember how much I have achieved in the past two years and work to move forward; 'there are only two days that you can do nothing about. Yesterday and some day'. I know I WILL do the marathon, this Monday is simply not my time.

So, in the meantime, I accept my apology- I just hope you do too.

When in doubt, count it out.

First, let me start by congratulating myself. After months of only managing to get to a lowest weight of 18 stone 5lbs I have finally broken through my weight loss plateau. I have now lost 77.5 lbs, that's 5 stone 7.5 lbs or 11 silver sevens gone. I want to quickly talk about how I have done this because plateaus, I feel, are the single biggest cause of giving up at weight loss. It makes sense doesn't it? You work effectively for weeks, months even, and then suddenly- zilch, nada, not an ounce. Try as you may, nothing happens. You get dragged into a 'diet', you start taking questionable weight loss tablets and when that doesn't help, bad habits start to sneak back in to your day to day life.

Pretty big plateau that.

So, after one too many nights of complaining to my parents and crying about how exhausting it is to have been losing weight for a year and a half but to not have moved in that last half, I did what I perhaps should have done all those months ago. I took to the internet, that font of knowledge, and typed in 'weight loss plateau'. And without fail, every single page asked 'are you eating enough?' Simple answer, as I said in my last post, was no. No I wasn't. Or when I was, I was eating too much. Basically, despite the fact that some very clever people designed the weight watchers ProPoints system with a precise daily allowance, I was ignoring that advice because, I knew better.

I've now been back to basics, actually eating my daily allowance- like I did in the beginning-for three weeks and after an initial week of stabilizing where I gained half a pound, I have lost 4lbs. Last week I was back at the lowest I'd ever been, this week I am now two pounds lighter. So this is the lowest weight I have been in, conservative estimate, 10 years? I now feel so much more in control and, for the first time ever, I can actually see the weight coming off as it happens. I'm stronger, and fitter, than I've ever been (I'm running the Milton Keynes Marathon in May), I finally fit into the dress options I bought for my brother's wedding in July and today as I was sorting my way through clothes that were too big, the first new look dress I bought all those months ago had to go because it just doesn't fit any more. I think, until I beat the plateau monster, I was reticent to get rid of my over sized clothes because I didn't really believe I wouldn't need them again. As a general update, I will be taking 4 more rubbish bags to the charity shop tomorrow and other than clothes for work, my closet is almost empty...I get to go shopping. YES!

An empty closet is a sad closet.

But perhaps, the best thing that has come out of the whole plateau thing is that I now know I CAN come out of it. That my body hasn't just decided, nope, sorry I'm going to stay at 18.5 forever and ever- you'll just have to get used to this weight as your baseline. So I'm definitely not done yet. Better than that, I now have the facility to help others. Before hand I could share my experiences and make people feel like they were not alone. That we're all in this together and that with the right positive mental attitude, we can achieve anything. Now, I can sit in a weight watchers meeting and not just share 'this week I lost X', 'this week I really struggled' or similar; I can tell the new members from experience that to lose weight, as counterproductive as it might seem, you need to eat and I was lucky to have one lady tell me that until last week she was at the end of her tether and then I said plainly, eat your points.

Go Wildcats!

The system works, it can just be difficult to trust in it. But you CAN trust in your comrades and colleagues because you have shared in their experiences. So, as long as I remember my old mantra 'when in doubt, count it out' -useful for everything from knitting to weight loss and beyond- I should manage to maintain this consistent weight loss. Let's do it to it!

I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

Three weeks ago my brother and I went to the opening ceremony of the inaugural Invictus Games. For those of you who are not in the know, this is a sporting event where injured and ill servicemen and women from all over the world compete in a format very similar to the Paralympic Games. Those of you that know me will know that I have an enormous soft spot for our armed forces and as such I jumped at the chance to buy tickets to go and be apart of these games. What I hadn't anticipated is just how inspired I would feel.

Those of you who were regular readers of this blog, I apologise for not writing in over four months. I also apologise to any one who I have inspired for seemingly giving up after a first year undergraduate called me fat whilst we were on excavation together. If this made anyone feel alone or frustrated or worried that I fell unceremoniously off the bandwagon, I'm here to tell you that I didn't. But I very, VERY nearly did. The final weeks of university were hard. I took every opportunity to spend time with people that I could and as such I struggled to lose any weight. Over the months that followed I had a wedding to go to, birthday parties to attend and more than one barbecue to contend with. Every time I fell down I'd pull myself back up by the bootstraps and recommit but unfortunately this only really happened for a week and then I'd fall right back down again. Finding out that I hadn't got onto the postgrad program I wanted, severe tendonitis and plantar fasciitis resulted in my having to pull out of the Great North Run and then the death of my beloved (albeit ancient) cat caused me to slip further and further into the hole I was digging for myself.

Every day I would put more shit into my mouth and every day I felt physically unwell. My skin was sallow and greying, the rest I had been prescribed for my ankle left me weaker than I'd been in months and restless to the point of distraction and I have never wanted to track less than in those few weeks. I thought about giving up every. Single. Day. And then I went to the Invictus Games. And I saw individuals who had had limbs blown off, been shot through both hemispheres of the brain and had even been put in a body bag before the weakest, tiniest signs of life were noticed. These, truly extraordinary, individuals were competing at the highest level of athleticism and the fact that they stood their before us, proudly displaying their injuries and turning their disabilities into capabilities shocked me to my core. Here I am, in the prime of life and I'm giving up because it's 'too hard'.

Don't get me wrong, losing weight is incredibly hard. At this point in my life losing weight, or rather maintaining the commitment to lose weight, is the hardest thing I have ever EVER done. And yet, I know that this mission CAN be accomplished. The GB team captain David Henson, a double amputee and the gold medal winner of the 200m sprint, said in the BBC documentary prior to the opening ceremony that real legs are great things. And here I was bitching and moaning about a sore ankle. I resolved that I would return home and make a change because if these titans could return from such tremendous adversity and be winning gold medals and setting new records then I could certainly bounce back from all that I was struggling with at the time.

The time since then has been difficult, I cried in the kitchen to my mum because I was so frustrated to have been where I was months ago and no amount of motivational speeches gave me the confidence back that I had at the beginning of the journey, and yet I plodded on. I'm 9 lbs back on track but I know that it is still early days. However, as painful as it may feel and as frustrating as it certainly can be, the only failure will come when I turn off my scales forever and stop caring all together.

What I do know is this:

'I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul'  Invictus William Ernest Henley

And it is MY fate to succeed. This fight is not yet over.