Fitness and other struggles

There are some people in life who are naturally motivated to get fit. There are those early risers who are perfectly happy to get up at 5.30am and take a brisk jog around the block or enjoy a pre-work spin class. These people are also the kinds of people who will happily exist solely on kale juice, broccoli and turkey slices.

I, however, am not one of those people.

The motivation to get fit and stay that way has always been an ongoing issue in my life. I have a terrible habit of getting really in shape and then completely losing the plot and commencing to do absolutely no exercise and exist on a combination of burgers, biscuits and wine for an extended period of time.

A classic example of this is when, about 5 years ago (Jesus I’m getting old) I went on a girl’s holiday to Zante with my svelte friends. At the beginning of the summer I had ventured to New Look to try on a bikini and had a terrible shock when I saw in the mirror that I had unknowingly morphed into a beached beluga whale. I then went on a bit of a mission and spent the summer on a horrible cereal-based diet and going to the gym six days a week, losing a stone and a half before our holiday. Just how unattainable this regime was became overwhelmingly apparent when, after spending a week drinking and eating McDonalds in Greece, the weight began to creep back on.

And I am not, and have never been, an early riser. It’s not the being up early thing that bothers me all that much; it’s just the process of actually dragging myself out of my warm comfy bed in the first place. This is a pattern of behaviour that started at a young age, whereby I was perfectly happy and capable to walk, as long as someone physically stood me up onto my feet and made me do so.

This is a pattern that I am desperate to change. Not the eating bit so much – I’m pretty sure I’m never going to be happy just eating lettuce leaves and drinking varying degrees of joyless detoxifying green tea. It’s not even that I’d like to be skinny because I know deep down I’m always going to be curvy girl. I just want to be fit and enjoy exercise just as much as those people doing crazy yoga on the beach at sunrise and running marathons. That’s not too much to ask, right?

So I started this process last year. Firstly, I decided to go for a bit of nostalgia and joined a netball team. I hadn’t played since secondary school and I’m not that good, but there’s something really fun about playing a team sport and making some really great friends in the process. Our team, Hoops I did it again (great name), have since decided that because we didn’t win all that often, it would be wise for us to go to some training, or as someone else put it, to voluntarily put ourselves into netball boot camp. It may be freezing cold playing outside in January, but being part of a team motivates me to get off my butt and get moving, which is perfect.

Secondly, I signed myself up for a 10km run. This would have been an amazing idea, had I not then fallen down a step in the pub (sober) and pulled a tendon in my foot. Not ideal. I discovered, though, that simply injuring myself was not enough to warrant giving me a refund on the £40 I paid to enter, so in two weeks I will be dragging myself around the central London course in an attempt to not completely embarrass myself. Here’s hoping. I have given my friends strict instructions not to come to witness this particular failure of a sports venture on my part, but I’m pretty sure they may come anyway. Sneaky blighters.

I’ve also started a Saturday morning yoga class, where I last week discovered I can’t do a shoulder stand. I’m still convinced that I will be able stand on my head by week four, which is what, my friends, you call optimism.

And last but not least, I have the office. Most of the people I work with are having a bit of a gym moment and one runs marathons. So naturally I am bowing to peer pressure and have so far this year been to the gym 5 times. Mostly it’s so I can watch TV on the fancy treadmills as I don’t have a telly licence, but you know, whatever works.

So, so far in 2016, so good. I’m yet to become a morning person and I haven’t gone the whole hog and started running home from work, but you never know, by the end of the year I could be a whole new woman. After all, stranger things have happened.