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To Gym or not to Gym

You may remember that for several months I followed the 5:2 diet. It worked for me.  Losing over a stone (over 6 kg) I felt better about myself, had more energy, clearer skin, smaller waist. It wasn’t only the diet of course, I was walking three or four miles at a time and swimming regularly. Without so many bulges to manoeuver, my yoga practice improved no end. I slept better, and apparently my snoring stopped (I still dispute this – I don’t snore, I just breath a bit heavily). I flounced about with more confidence. It was great.

Until we went on holiday.

Oh yes, the bikini came out.  I know bikini’s on a sixty odd year old woman is unseemly, but believe me, this sixty something rocked it. No bingo wings to worry about when wearing skimpy cotton summer frocks. Swanning about in sarongs. Eating.

Oh yeah, the eating. We were in India. I love Indian food. What can I say?

It wouldn’t have been so bad, if we hadn’t spent the time we weren’t eating lying about in the sun, relaxing, chillin’, exerting no energy whatsoever. At all.  Consequently the pounds piled on.

Of course, when we got home my tubbier tanned body wasn’t up to doing much exercise.  I found excuses.  I couldn’t do so much walking because I’ve been suffering with plantar faciitis (still am, but getting better with the help of steroid injections), I’d got fed up with the weekly battle for parking, and the grim facilities of the local leisure centre – not quite the same as the infinity pool in Kerala. Even yoga got to be a bit more of an effort.

Then it was the food fest of Christmas.

Things have been going downhill ever since. I’ve put the weight back on. Energy levels are low to non-existent.  I’m not sleeping so well. The baggy belly is back.

So…. I’m tentatively back on the 5:2, but I still can’t walk the long distances I could, and I still don’t care for swimming at the leisure centre. So I’ve been considering joining the local gym.

There are one or two problems with this option though.

  • It costs money – lots of money
  • Other people, fit people, will be there
  • It takes a biggish time commitment to be worth joining
  • You have to commit for a whole year, yes, a WHOLE YEAR, and pay up front

I used to belong to a gym, when the kids were at school. It didn’t have a pool, but I’d go and use the equipment a couple of times a week, doing less and less on the murderous machines that I didn’t like, and more and more on the things you can sit down on.  I actually quite enjoyed it, but at the time I didn’t need to lose weight, I was more focussed on toning up a bit (this was before my yoga days).

The gym I’m thinking of now, is swish, like, really swish. It has a beautiful pool, sauna, steam rooms, Jacuzzi, fitness suites, lots of classes…oh and a café so that you can have a nice hot chocolate with marshmallows after your workout. It is so very tempting…

But…

Whilst a big chunk of me wants to join, believing it is my key to becoming svelte and energetic again, there is a growing niggle that I shouldn’t need to join a gym to keep fit.  I should be able to run about in the fresh air, garden more, yoga more, dance more…eat less.  This little voice keeps telling me that I am very privileged to be able to afford to eat more than I need to keep me going each day. I should be thankful that I am healthy if chubby, rather than skinny and sickly, and that I can afford to even contemplate joining an exorbitantly overpriced gym full of narcissists.  It is whispering that I should be content with who I am, be less vain, embrace old age with it’s niggly aches and pains and penchant for daytime naps.  Enjoy the fact that a bit of padding fills out the wrinkles. After all, I’m not actually overweight for my build, by BMI standards, I am apparently at a healthy weight for my height and age.

So I am torn. I know I would feel better about myself if I was fitter, slimmer, but I’m not sure I can do it on my own, or even whether I should want to.

Oh, but how I would love to wallow in that fancy Jacuzzi a couple of times a week… oops, sorry, I mean swim, and run, and lift, and stretch, and…

ooh now I’ve thought about it, I need a hot chocolate and a lay down!

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Every Tiny Stitch

DSC_0774

Creating the canvas with silken thread
Each day with different colours weaving
On whitest linen in smallest stitches
The complexity of life I’m living

Red jelly and custard birthday parties
a childhood spent in lonely play
Crepe paper hats and satin costumes
Kite flying on a windy day

Sunshine yellow of early teen years
Pop idol screaming in the park
Hot pants, boas, and minis and maxis
Cow bells, music, moon walks in the dark

Shocking pink in early womanhood
living dangerously on last tube home
first job jitters, first date delights
while family snaps to monochrome

Rich dark purple of dreams destroyed
Bleeding wounds traced in crimson thread
Tear tracks, pills, and Empty purses
Disillusioned, discarded, life filled with dread

But then the scarlet of surrender
The blush of finding first true love
Warmth of babes, new lives beginning
The tangerine joy of motherhood

Now the lavender skein is needed
As the empty phase begins
How my coloured garden sows those
Wild brown wrinkles on the skin

The final years with wizened fingers
forging murals bittersweet
‘til only the blackest thread remains
the tapestry will be complete

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Music on Monday!

Here’s another one of my all time favourites.  It really makes my heart soar and I inevitably end up singing, dancing and grinning when I hear it.  I can speak only a very little schoolgirl French so I’ve no idea what it’s all about (someone called Ginette…something about a supermarket??), could be something very rude for all I know… if so, I do apologise!

This is a live version and probably not their finest work (a few bum notes in there methinks!), but you get the gist.  Stick with it, you’ll be singing along with the crowd before the end I’ll bet 🙂

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Orangey

This week’s Daily Post photo challenge is to post a selection of photo’s on the theme of ‘Orange’.  As it happens my husband and I spent almost the entire weekend painting our new fence in ‘Harvest Gold’, which basically, looks orange, so a photo of that for posterity!!  Most of the others were taken on our travels, though of course, I had to include a still life I took as practice when I first got my fancy camera.

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What is that stuff?

Every now and then my husband and I (ooh hark at me sounding like the Queen) take ourselves off for a ‘date lunch’.  We like food, and it is good to spend a bit of quality time together now and then, so we find ourselves somewhere nice to go and pig out (it may be a date lunch, but we don’t stand on ceremony… well, we’ve been together for over thirty years now so we should just about be used to each other’s sloppy eating habits).   Yesterday we ended up in a really cosy pub, the log fires being just what we needed after being out in the gale force winds and unseasonal blizzard that suddenly appeared from nowhere.

All the food was yummy, as was the real Ale that we washed it down with, but what stood out for me was the chips.

Now, I’m not usually a big fan of chips.  They can be a bit soggy, or in French fry form, a bit burnt and over crispy.  I don’t have them often, but when I do, I drown them in salt and vinegar to give them some flavour, or if I’m feeling fancy, a bit of mayo a la Francais way.  I’m not a big fan of tommy k (tomato ketchup to you), so never that big red blob on my plate thanks.  Yesterday’s chips didn’t need anything though, they came ready seasoned and really crispy on the outside and soft in the middle (like an Armadillo as we say in our house…don’t ask… there was an advert once I think), 10 out of 10 for the chips then!

Of course, we ended up discussing what constitutes a ‘proper’ chip.  Do french fries count??

Anyhoo, what with the chips/French fry debate an’ all, it got me thinking about foods that aren’t like what their supposed to be, and how sometimes they are really yummy despite being completely weird and unrecognisable.  Like these goodies:

  • Tinned strawberries – now I don’t know what they were in a past life, but they look and taste nothing like the real thing. They are pink, sploshy and sweet.  Sometimes, I confess, I think they might be better than a freshly picked one that makes your mouth purse like a cat’s bottom because it’s a bit hard and tart or worse still, completely tasteless.
  • Pot noodles – does anyone know what that stuff is made from? Oh, I know what it says on the label – dried veggies and meat, but really? Nevertheless, who doesn’t love a naughty pot noodle from time to time? They are slurpily scrummy.
  • Vesta Chow Mein – I guess this is along the same lines as a Pot Noodle, being some sort of dried stuff with noodley thingys. But this is more of a meal. It’s crispy noodles a delight of crunchy oiliness, and it’s soft noodles, covered with the other…well, stuff, is again, a slurpers heaven.  Love it!
  • Crab Sticks – They are very pink. They are sticks.  They are not made of crab. I could eat ten of them in one sitting.  What more do you need to know?
  • Spam – Another pink food! Jellified meat that comes in a tin.  Sounds delicious doesn’t it? Spam is apparently ‘pressed pork and ham’, it tastes neither like pork nor ham, it tastes like Spam. It is amazingly versatile, in our house we have spam hash, spam kebabs, grilled spam, spam fritters, spam sandwiches…  I am a Spam fan. Many are not.
  • McDonalds fruit pies – Peculiar sort of sugary pastry stuff containing killer goo that will take the skin off your mouth and tongue unless you leave it for at least two hours to cool down. I think they are related to pop tarts. Yep, still good!
  • Cadbury’s Crème Eggs – Yes, it’s the time of year when all our thoughts turn to how many of these little devils we can stuff in our gobs before Easter. Hooray!! Chocolate ‘eggs’ filled with errmm…what is that stuff…?

These are just a few examples, off the top of my head, of weird yet wonderful foodstuffs that are filled with e-numbers and calories to start you salivating. I’m quite sure there are many more (I bet I think of them as soon as I press the post button!). I’d love to hear your favourites!

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Writing 201, Poetry – Day 10

The last day.  I just knew it would be a bloomin’ sonnet… and ‘Chiasmus’ what the…..!!! Ben Huberman sure knows how to set a challenge.  Anyhoo… it would be churlish not to give it a go.  The theme for today is ‘Future’.

Before I start though, I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone involved in writing 201 – it’s been a blast, and this final poem (sonnet or not) is for you cruel lot!

To be honest, I’ve no idea if this really counts as a sonnet or not, but hey ho…

And so to the future…

I feel so sad on this the final day
of themes and challenges that stretched my thoughts
verse and rhyme that left my mind macramé
and tied my tongue in never-ending knots

Wittily challenged, challenged wittily,
Each sunrise came with devious demands
Devices and words spewing awkwardly
From unobliging pen in clumsy hands

But slowly, slowly with encouragement
From distant friends within the common web
My courage soon replaced embarrassment

And now my pen is sweeping ‘cross the page
Broad strokes of rhyming rhythm in its wake
more learnèd now I bow from this great stage

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Writing 201, Day 9 – Landscape

Oh my, today’s challenge gave me a fright! The task was to write a ‘Found Poem’ using words from random articles, books, etc, on the theme of Landscape, using Enumeratio (listy stuff).  To be honest I could have spent several days playing with this, but with only an hour or so to spare today, this is what I’ve come up with. A little lacking in Enumeratio, but hey..

Not sure if it makes any sense whatsoever to anyone else, but it kinda works in my head!  What I’ve learnt today is that I’m pants at cutting out and sticking – I’ve made a right old mess 🙂

Nonetheless, I did what I was told, and cut out and stuck (with thanks to The Guardian), but just in case you can’t read it for the excess glue, I’ve typed it out below.

PDP 3How Much Should We Laugh?

Streetwise city
silencing the bagpipes
brings home heroes
with promise of new stars and harmony
They were not scared
rising from the rubble
for there’s no better time to build

Still

No distance between them
they were still alive
ready to kill us
I saw the muzzle flash
fall down buried in
the void the blood
There’s no damn reset button

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Writing 201, Poetry – Day 8 ‘drawer’

Today the prompt is ‘Drawer’ and the poem should be in the form of an Ode (in praise of something or someone) using the poetry form Apostrophe (no, not one of them, but it’s a term that means a poem that speaks to an individual).

Right ho then.

Well, I’m a day late. I spent a long time yesterday morning working on some verses ’til my mind was drowning in mediocre metaphors and sinful similies.  The resulting ‘poem’ turned out to be utterly awful and actually quite a bit ‘off piste’ too. So it’s been abandoned (stuck in a drawer) I’ll go back to it another day and when I eventually finish it it will delight you with its wonderful wordsmithery and melodic meter. In the meantime, well….

I can only apologise….

An Ode to my Knickers

You’re not big bloomers or tiny thongs
Just Marks and Spencer cotton ones
You give my bum a soft embrace
Without the need of frills or lace
You smooth my contours, hide my flaws
What would I do without you drawers?

My muffin top would surely flop
above my trendy trouser top
There’d be a draft about my aft
I’m sure my rear would get quite chaffed
But with the help of your elastic
Oh dear drawers, I feel fantastic!