Right idea, wrong time

As a follow-up to my previous post, I finally made the decision to quit the gym.  As with every decision I make, it involved a lot of soul-searching and list-making...! At the moment, I am nowhere near ready to return, my health is shockingly below par and it's going to take a long time before I'm back in shape, but it's a vicious circle - need to go to the gym to get fit, but not fit enough to go to the gym.  I feel like one of those "Biggest Loser" contestants when they've just entered the ranch and are falling to pieces when they take their first steps on the treadmill.

In  an act of self-compassion, I'm not going to call the great gym experiment a 'failure'; it was just the right idea but the wrong time.  Just another speed bump on the road to fitness.  And boy oh boy, has this summer been the wrong time.  So what comes after the last chance saloon?  Another round, I guess...

Having been here in this situation so many, many times over the last few years, the most important thing is that no matter how overweight or unfit you are, that every day is a new start, a clean sheet and another chance.  I'm not going to say that I'm going to lose (x) amount of pounds or inches in (x) weeks or months; that just puts the pressure on.  Life at the moment is tough enough without all that self-inflicted pressure and unrealistic expectations.

I mentioned self-compassion earlier in this post.  I've been reading a lot about this and feel it's something I need to practice more of, as I often give myself a tough time for stupid things, particularly over the past couple of years.  Last year and this year have been rotten for so many reasons. both personally and on a wider scale, for this country and for the world.  And from the personal to the global, there is no sign of things getting better any time soon.  Compassion, it seems, is in short supply.  We need so much more of it - for ourselves and for others.

So I'm aiming for fitness but at a very slow and manageable pace.  No dieting, no gym, but sensible eating, making good choices, and exercise on my own terms.  I used to call it my "Frank Sinatra Diet". (I did it my way!) So in the words of the great man himself, "start spreading the news" because hopefully "the best is yet to come" ! :)

EDIT 31.07.16: Unfortunately I plummeted again.  Self-sabotage, binge eating, and maybe the realisation that I've been going through a little bit of a depression without really acknowledging this. I want to be well again, but right now I'm not in a good place.

Summer Fitness Plan 2016: Oops.

I haven't been to the gym for 4 weeks.  2 of those weeks were spent recovering from that horrible shoulder/pectoral injury, which only began to ease off during our short break in Wales, and in the remaining weeks I have had the most spectacular fall off the fitness wagon, returning to old binge-eating habits and now feel further away than ever from the healthy living mindset.  

And then there was the massive weight gain in just 4 weeks.  I'm not going to say how much, but even by my gain-weight-quickly standards, it shocked me.  What has also shocked me is how quickly my fitness has deteriorated again.  Last week I was running for a train and literally couldn't go any further.  The pain in my legs has returned and even getting back on the exercise bike at home last night was a trial.  All of these facts are telling me that things have to change.  Now. 

Inevitably I have done much soul-searching over the past week about where it all goes from here.  Do I quit the gym and go back to exercising at home?  Do I stick to my original plan of going to the gym until September and then continue at home?  Am I well enough to even go to the gym? It's been a tough decision to make.  But I wouldn't want to give up so quickly without having had the chance to prove that I can make progress.  I don't want to pay for a membership which I'm not using either.  

The one thing I have decided on is to ditch the weekly weigh-ins.  These have placed unnecessary pressure on me to lose weight every week, and quite frankly life is too short to worry about something so insignificant.  

As for the gym, my first two months have been a stop-start time.  More stop than start.  But every day is a new day and a new start.  In all my years of writing about dieting and fitness on here, I've lost count of the fresh starts and the last chances.  But as long as I live and breathe, there is one more last chance.  I can't be stupid though and rush into something too quickly only to get injured again.  

So I have decided to return to the gym in the next few days and will take things very slowly indeed; I need to try to salvage yet another "big fat summer" before it goes completely out of control.  

One year

They say that as you get older, time passes more quickly.  That is so true.  Time seems to be rushing away at the speed of light.  I have been blogging for just over 9 years and they have gone by in a blur. And the same can be said for the last 12 months.

One year ago, on 2 July 2015, my mum passed away. So after all the other first year milestones - Christmas, new year, her birthday - this is the last one.  The anniversary.  My mum wasn't big on birthdays and even death anniversaries weren't really marked.  Her view was that there's nothing special about an anniversary; you miss someone every single day, you remember them every single day, and therefore it's just another date on the calendar.  Yet it was impossible to ignore, although if I'm honest, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  The sadness really kicked in from Tuesday to Thursday of the past week, as I relived her admission to hospital and her death 48 hours later.

After last July, the next 52 weeks were a learning process as well as a grieving one.  Learning to live on my own, learning the basics of running a house from day to day - the easiest things often turned out to be the hardest, and vice versa.  But I am getting there, slowly but surely.  I just need to find a way to address the binge-eating which I have turned to over the past year. But that's for another day...