Fat Girl Fit

Couch to 5k

Back to the road running attempts. Started tonight with the nhs couch to fivek podcast programme as it was recommended to help my pacing.
Nice little episode, warm up then sixty second run followed by ninety second power walk. Times eight.Didn’t really tax me too much as I tend to do fifteen to twenty mins at a time on the treadmill but I still felt it.
So did my knee :-\ ice packs for now but I’d recommend this for people starting or returning to running.
It’s called the Nhs couch to 2k, free on iTunes.

Stayed in bed and didn’t go to the gym. Feel like Crap now, both literally and figuratively. Shit.

A curious and arguable progress.

Well life goes on, as do my fatgirlfit efforts. 

Weight loss is still at a zero despite keeping up my gym visits. It fell off for a bit the week before last but I’ve been in for the last three mornings and even managed the best part of a seriously slow fifteen minute run today with no apparent spaz leg issues. Don’t give a shit? Well I do, I was really pleased and pretty surprised with myself for managing it. I could have gone on I think but the fear of my knee popping combined with limited work out time won out over the curiosity of how far I could go and made me move on the exercise bike. It’s been genuinely great to feel like there is some palpable progress with the healing process. Beyond the absence of mind numbing pain that is. 

I dwell on the negative though, yeah I’ve lost no weight and I wont be signing up for any marathons. But hey, I’m running again, and I’m starting to see a definite firming of legs, arms and chest. A bit more squat dedication and my arse will surely follow suit eventually. But the biggest step forward seems to be, shock horror, in a startling down turn in my own personal shame. I’ve been working on my own inner loathing for many years, let me tell you but the efforts of recent weeks have seriously dampened my ability to worry about other members of the human race realising how grotesque I am. I mean, I have a flubby belly and I sweat a lot during activity. My bingowings wobble and my hair is bad and from the side with no make up on I look totally like my 59 year old father. But you know what? You’re not so fucking perfect yourself. I don’t care, if you don’t like it you don’t have to look. I’m not saying I’m happy with how I look, I’m not, but I’m trying and I’m not going to be ashamed about it any more. I’m no monster. I’m not squealing with terror in the corner of the changing rooms any more, hiding behind my towel and struggling to get changed without ever exposing more than six square inches of flesh at a time. Sod that. 

Not that I’m poster girl for body confidence all of a sudden, far from it, there were tears on a solo clothes shopping trip this week but with patience and more work will come more results. I believe that for the first time in a long time. 

Plus, on that shopping trip I might not have liked how those clothes looked, but they were a size smaller than expected. So there. 

Today Was A Good Day

Following a successful 5 mile hike yesterday, albeit a very flat and slow one, it was amazing not to wake up paying for it this morning with a weak leg and an achey back. I put this mostly down to all this physio finally paying off and a bit down to getting into a mega hot bath last night. 

Feeling oddly energised and envious of many a spring evening jogger seen on the way home  I found myself donning the sweats as soon as I got back from work today and throwing on level one of 30 Day Shred for the first time in months. 

Oh. My. Good. God. 

It hurt. I shook through the last ten minutes and thought I might puke through the last five. Managed most of it, gayed out on some of the jumping jacks more from fear of the bad knee flaring up than any actual discomfort. You know, other than the general discomfort of any Jillian work out, which tends to be immense. That’s why it works. 

But I made it through and rather than throbbing quads and a twitching agonised foot, I feel better. It’s a novelty, not just for the endorphins and the stress release, but also because I was painfully aware all day of just how tubby I look now in my black work dress. I’ve not put much on in weight, but there is flab, and it’s all belly flab which we know is the worst kind and even though one work out isn’t going to get rid of the extra inch on my spare tyre, I’ve done more to fight it than I did yesterday. 

Leg holding up, diet back on and I can handle a level one shred work out, things are looking up. I feel more positive about the scheduled physio milestone of managing a short jog next week.

It’s nice to go to bed worn out rather than burned out too. Fine I’m exhausted and feel kind of dizzy when I stand up but hey, no pain no gain right! 

A good day. 

Recovery regime, Day 1

So yesterday the physio lifted my activity ban and the new regime was issued, it goes a little something like this:

Walk. A lot. And a little bit more each day.

Daily sets of various quad exercises including a bitch round of prisoner squats.

Daily round of stretches for hamstrings and, er, that bit up over your hip and butt cheek (what do you even call that?)

Frequent nerve stretches of entire leg- basically holding leg out and flexing foot back and forth.

Today it began, with a mile and a half walk into work. Used to do this daily but hve been a bus bum since March. Felt ok at the time but knee has been killing following this, but probably more to do with all that manhandling of said joint yesterday. Some aches and pains, but walked it home with a small rest stop in the M&S foodhall (d’oh) and got straight into the flexing and stretching. 

It really, really hurt. Much of it felt like having hot straps beaten over my knee cap. Familiar finish of stabbing pains in my bum whenever putting weight on that foot. But it’s done, and I feel better for it, maybe just for getting a decent sweat on and knowing that this is the way to get better. For so long all activity has just raised the dread that it might make things go bad again. 

Onward and upward anyway, and so what if I end up eating dinner with a bag of frozen peas tied to my thigh, if this keeps up then this time in September I’ll be back to boring everyone with my jog blogs. Imagine that!

Minutes of actual exercise: 72

Painkillers required: 1

Comedy nerve sensations in dodgy leg: 4 

Added about half an hour later: spaz leg appears to have shrunk about an inch in length and still going. Lower back sort of locked out too. Ah well, no pain no gain. 

Happy of the day

Rumour has it after another afternoon being yanked and prodded by my physiotherapist that walking and swimming are off the banned activity list. Continuation at this rate will result in running by the end of the summer. Hell yeah!