Day 22:
I woke up on day 22 feeling great. My clothes were looser and the pain in my right glute and calf, that had been driving me nuts, had gone.
When Luke asked me how I was feeling I replied “If someone had told me a month ago that I’d be feeling this great, I never would have believed them.”
The bright idea/big mistake of the day was to try to replace the pure fruit jam on my peanut butter rice cakes with an organic fruit puree. I thought that it would be less sugar because it didn’t contain concentrated apple juice. The result of my little experiment is best described as baby food on soggy rice cakes. I ate it though – obvs.
Training was amazing; it was tough but I felt great afterwards. I told Luke that he was evil for expecting me to do 15 tricep dips. As I write this on day 83, once again I look back and laugh at the weakling that I used to be 9 weeks ago.
I didn’t really feel like dinner so I cobbled together a smoothie and some cold turkey which I rounded off with some dark chocolate.
Day 23:
I had a really bad night. Yesterday’s training had tightened everything up in my right arm and shoulder. A long standing wrist niggle also flared up and I prowled the house in the night looking for painkillers. On reflection I think that I lifted my chin too much during the bent over rows which put a strain on my neck.
I did a walk before breakfast to try to loosen things up and as I couldn’t decide between a rest day or a cardio day, I went on a bike ride in the afternoon which was lovely. Exercise for fun…who knew?!
I wasn’t feeling at all hungry so I ate whatever I felt like (within reason).
Day 24:
Training today was the hardest session yet but I loved it. I would have done 4 rounds but my knee was playing up more than usual and I didn’t want to put myself out of action for the rest of the week.
Day 25:
I woke, weighed and lost a pound, which meant that I’d lost 5 pounds in total.
The weather was beautiful; it was a beautiful a perfect spring day. The Lovely Girl #1 and I jumped on our bikes and cycled down the glorious country lanes of Worcestershire, chatting and laughing in the sunshine. We reflected upon how it felt as if the lanes had never aged. We could have been in the 1940s, all we were missing were the Land Girl dungarees and headscarves.
We got home and received a call to say that my mother-in-law’s secondary cancer had spread, there was nothing that could be done and that we should go and see her sooner rather than later.
It put an awful lot of things into perspective. We battled with whether we should all do a 4 hour round trip with the whole country in lockdown; we talked ourselves around in circles trying to weigh the potential risks to us and the rest of the family.
I promised my family at the outset of the blog that I would not write about them. However, when I look back at the last few months, the rapid decline of my mother-in-law was critical to my decision to get as fit and healthy as possible (and to actually do it this time).
I can’t give a true account of my mood, sleep patterns and eating habits without mentioning in passing the extremely emotional events that had been going on in my life and the lives of those around me.
Day 26:
We decided that my husband would go up alone to see his mum. I spent the day stressed and edgy, the Lovely Girls were upset and I had the overwhelming need to grab handfuls of carbs, shove them in my mouth and swallow them without even chewing.
For the first time ever I simply acknowledged that I had stress related food cravings and accepted the issues that triggered them. I ate regularly to keep my blood sugar levels under control and to ward off an all out carb binge.
I didn’t feel like working out but I did it anyway and felt much better afterwards. The recent bike rides had caused my dodgy knee to flare up and I had to stop during the jump squats.
I texted Luke in delight to tell him that I could finally do 15 tricep dips without stopping and that my planks were immaculate.
Day 27:
Day 27 was a difficult day. My mother-in-law’s consultant said that there were a few weeks left. I craved comfort food and wanted hot buttered toast, my mum’s homemade cake or biscuits dipped in tea – the types of things that I used to eat as a child when I got home from school.
I hated school and getting home and having a snack with my mum was always the highlight of my day. Forty years later, the small child inside me was searching for the things that had previously brought comfort; the things that transported me to the safety and contentment of my mum’s kitchen
Left unchecked I would have eaten everything in the house.
I texted Luke and told him about the tsunami of food related meltdown heading towards me. He said that I had trained hard and if I needed to have an evening of eating whatever I wanted then it would be ok.
Having been “given permission’ to eat anything, suddenly, I didn’t want it. I had worked so hard, I had never missed a day’s training so what was the point in throwing it all away? I knew that whatever I consumed wouldn’t be eaten slowly and savoured; it would be gulped down to suppress the upsetting emotions that I was experiencing.
I went for a bike ride instead.
Day 28:
At the end of my first month I had lost 4lbs, 2 inches off my waist and 1 inch off my hips. I took my progress photos with glee but even showing them to my family was scary.
I had a good day, I ate well, trained hard and felt happy with my progress.
End of week 4 progress photos:
I had absolutely no intention of sharing my progress photos, even with Luke, until one of my Lovely Girls gave me a good talking to. She said that the 28 day photos were amazing and if she had put as much effort into training someone as Luke had with me, that she would want to see the photos.
Obviously I didn’t simply spring them on the poor chap. I’d told him in the morning that I was taking them but that the start photo was so awful that it would probably break WhatsApp if I tried to send it.
Later I explained to Luke that I was under orders from Lovely Girl #2 to share them and, if he wanted to see them then I would. He is a professional fitness coach who specialises in body transformations unsurprisingly he said that he definitely wanted to see the photos, provided I was sure that I was ok with it.
It was a huge step for me. By sharing my start photo I had to take ownership of the state that I”d allowed my body to get into. I could only bear to send the week 1 and week 4 comparison photo of my back.
My covering text said “So what follows is a photo that is for your eyes only and you must be deleted when you have seen it. I’m ashamed of the before – not quite so much of the after – although we still have a long way to go. However, it is sent with the most enormous amount of thanks from the bottom of my heart for all of the support that you are giving me.” Followed by “Cringe…but the difference it extraordinary”
By sharing my photos I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off me (no pun intended).
