A New Approach

Yesterday, I decided to write a to be list for 2014 rather than a to do list.  Why? Because it occurred to me that sometimes we get too focused on the things that we do (or could do, or should do), rather than thinking about the things that we are, or want to be.  Or at least I know I do.  I think "oh blow it, I eat too much", but I rarely think about the fact that I'm generally quite kind.

So I'm not making the usual resolutions.  For a start, they have never worked for me.  I've never been any happier as a result of making them, or slimmer, or more well-rounded intellectually.  So I'm not doing it. 

Here's what I am doing.  I'm chucking away the bathroom scales.  I saw this on Twitter the other day.

And it's true.  So I weighed myself today and that will be the last time that I weigh myself until 1st January 2015. During the year in between I'm going to worry less about what I weigh, do things that make me happy and we'll see what happens.  Doesn't that sound fun?

In other news, Murdoch turned nine recently, which was very exciting.  He celebrated by burrowing his way under my duvet and farting excessively.

Happy New Year everyone!

Happiness

When Murdoch and I started on our latest adventure in dog training, my biggest hope was that we would be able to get Murdoch walking calmly on a lead without lunging to attack other dogs while we were out and about.  However within a matter of days Murdoch had progressed from lead, through long line to being off lead with a muzzle on.  We'd already exceeded my expectations and I thought we'd reached the limit of what we'd be able to do.  And I was so proud of my boy.  I can't describe the happiness that I felt every time I saw his fat little staffie bottom running away from me with his tail in the air, making his crazy little noises as he ran about with the other dogs.  

The one downside was that I couldn't see his staffie smile as he ran back to me; it was covered by a muzzle.  And he just couldn't let that muzzle be, he was dragging his face along the ground, using branches to try and hook it off, nuzzling his face against peoples' legs (bruising them in the process - you should see the state my calfs were in!).  It was starting to damage his face, which had constant red marks where he had rubbed the muzzle, desperately trying to get it off. 

Last week, as we neared the end of our Friday morning walk at the Dog House, G suggested that I take Murdoch's muzzle off so that we could see how he reacted.  I nervously agreed and my boy did not let me down, he was just great.  Veered a little close to his arch nemesis Nico a couple of times, but was corrected and didn't do anything stupid.  He then did the remainder of his walks that day without his muzzle and was the very model of a well behaved dog.  Had a good chat on Friday evening and G made it clear that I couldn't use the muzzle any more, otherwise I risked setting Murdoch back.  

I'm not going to lie.  This makes me nervous. Murdoch's behaviour is still a bit of a worry to me; he behaves much better at the Dog House than he does out and about alone with me.  This is because I get nervous and he feeds off that energy, so I need to build some confidence to make sure that we continue to succeed.  To help me get started with this, I spent quite a lot of time with the Dog House guys over the weekend, walking Murdoch without his muzzle, both in the usual walking location and in a couple of new places.  On Saturday afternoon we did a walk at Blackheath near Wonersh.  This is a regular walk, but it was our first time there.  I knew some of the people, but most of the people were new to me, so Murdoch didn't know their dogs either.  At the end of the walk, G confiscated the muzzle.  I am not allowed to have it any more.  I don't need it.

We also did a Sunday morning walk at Ockham Common which we've done before.  This walk is very German Shepherd heavy and Murdoch had issues with this breed after his run in with Nico so I thought it would be a pretty good test of his behaviour.  On both walks he was a perfect gentleman and had a great recall too.

This morning I did my first solo walk without the muzzle.  I took Murdoch to one of our local haunts in Farncombe which is part of the Surrey Wildlife Trust's McAlmont Reserves.  It's a mix of fields and woodland and we usually encounter other dogs there.  Today was no exception.  And when he saw a dog ahead of us, Murdoch did his usual full pelt hurtle towards it.  I didn't much like this, as by this time we were at the corner of a field and I couldn't see what was going on.  So I really don't know what happened, but when I called Murdoch in, he came back to me and the other dog walker waved at me as I entered the next field, so Murdoch clearly hadn't tried to eat his dog!  We encountered another staffie as we headed back towards home and Murdoch again went hurtling off.  Both Murdoch and the other staffie came running back to me and she jumped up a bit which made Murdoch a little hackly and growly.  Instead of correcting him, I grabbed his collar and guided him away from the dog.  That wasn't the right thing to do, but I didn't panic and I'm learning on the job here, so bear with!

I can't adequately explain how happy all of this makes me.  I never thought that we'd be able to achieve this and while I'm still a little bit nervous, we're just going to keep at it and take each situation as it comes.  Life is good.

Also, today is weigh in day.  Over the past two weeks I've managed to drop 3.5lb.  Huzzah!  This is very good news, especially with my holiday less than two weeks away (GAAHHH IMPENDING HOLIDAY WEIGHT LOSS PANIC SPIRAL OF DOOM!).  I have bought a new bikini, but I don't look very nice in it - too much podge and not much I can do about it in the time available.  But it doesn't really matter.  I'll do what I can in the next two weeks and then I'm going to go and enjoy my holiday, which I've been looking forward to for ages.

*WARNING* Boring blog post

I've sat and stared at this blog post since Tuesday and have been unable to think of a single thing to say to make it less boring. So here it is. Sorry.

It's been two weeks since I last posted and quite a bit has happened in that time (both personally and in the world generally!). I guess the biggest personal news is that I have now returned to work for the company that I left five months or so ago. I was in a really frustrating situation with the new job - I'm not sure that they were ready for someone in my role just yet - so when my old company contacted me and asked if I'd like to come back, I was really happy to do it! I've had a bit of a promotion and given that the company has been bought and is now part of a wider group, there is more room for advancement, which was my only real gripe with the company in the first place.  I'm sad that I won't be seeing some of the lovely new people I met on a daily basis anymore, but this is the right move for me. 

It's been quite a stressful time and as a result the diet went completely off the rails. In all honesty, I've not been giving it the focus that it deserves since I got started. Frankly I've had much bigger things to worry about. Now that I feel so much happier and more settled it's time to get the rest of my life in order!

I weighed in on Tuesday at 13st 0lb. It doesn't take a maths genius to work out that I gained 3lb over the past couple of weeks and that I'm now almost back to where I started.

But this is a fresh start and I'm going to give this some welly. In addition to more focus, I also have more time again now that I'm not commuting to London every day. The downside is that I am officially not allowed to run at the moment. Have had two sessions with a physio and I'm not currently allowed to do any weightbearing exercise, including things like the crosstrainer at the gym. My problem is that I have very poor range of movement in my calf muscles - they are very tight. Apparently the usual range is 10 - 20cm and I had 6cm in my left leg (the one with the ouchy heel) and 8.5cm in the right. Oops. So for now it's only gentle walking, swimming and cycling, core work at the gym & many, many calf stretches for me. I'm also going to try and fit in a body balance class - that should help with the stretching.

I feel like such a heel

Goodness me, where does the time go, doesn't it fly when you're having fun etc etc.  Two weeks have positively zipped by and yesterday was the big day - the fortnightly weigh in.  So how did I do?  Well I am now down to 12st11lb which means I've lost just over 4lb in the past four weeks. Overall I'm happy with this - 1lb a week is fairly steady measured weight loss, but really I wanted a bit more of a kick start to the process.  I don't see any reason why I can't lose 1.5 - 2lb per week, at least at first while I still have quite a bit to lose.

The past week has been a bit difficult in terms of exercise.  As I mentioned in last Monday's post, I had got a touch of plantar fasciitis following the sprint training / long(ish) run combo I did at the weekend.  This meant that I did not exercise at all last week, until Saturday when all felt ok again and I decided to head to the track.  We were doing 2 sets of 8 x 200m - to be run at around the mile pace that we're aiming for.  My aim was 60secs, but I was comfortably and consistently coming in at 50 - 52secs, so I was feeling really pleased with my performance and despite a bit of heaviness on my chest (more on that later), I was feeling strong for the entire first set.  The heel was niggling a little, but nothing that concerned me until I started the second set and had to give up after 3 reps.  The heel was really complaining now and given that I was down to run in a league 10k race the following morning, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and called it a day.

Woke up on Sunday morning.  Got out of bed.  Fell back onto bed yelping.  OOOOOOOOOOUUUUUCCCCCHH! Serious amounts of pain when I put any weight on my left foot.  Much hissing, swearing and hopping about the flat later, I realise that I'm out of the 10k for that morning.  Boo.  I then spent the rest of the day sunbathing *ahem* keeping the weight off my foot and rolling it on a frozen water bottle as recommended by my good friend Andy.  Thanks mate, it really helped and by the end of the day, the foot was comfortable enough to take Murdoch for a decent walk.  

On Monday I already had an appointment scheduled at the doctors' surgery, so mentioned my heel.  The doc looked at me as though I was an idiot for having run on it (has she never met a runner before? Surely we're FAMED for running when we probably shouldn't?!) and told me to ice, stretch and most importantly REST the foot.  So no weight bearing exercise for me for the next week or so and longer term I'm looking at some physio - I found out that I'm covered for it under my Dad's private health insurance, which means no NHS wait list for me - phew!

So I now need to think about how I'm going to exercise if I can't run.  Usually my best time for exercising is a fairly intense 30min session in the gym at lunchtime.  I usually go and pound out some swift intervals on tbe treadmill or sometimes just a plain old simple run.  So if anyone has some suggestions on half hour gym sessions that I can do which do not involve any weight bearing stuff, I'd love to hear them.  I guess I could do some interval stuff on the bike / cross trainer?  And it's probably time that I started doing some core work too.  So I'm trying to look at this as a positive thing that's going to expand my exercise repertoire, rather than something that is imposing limits on me.

On Monday evening I went to the pool and did 70 laps, felt pretty good, but then yesterday morning I woke up feeling pretty terrible.  Everytime I stood up, I got really dizzy and felt all congested and tired and horrible - really difficult to breathe,  Spent most of the day lying in bed doing intervals of feeling sorry for myself mixed with some intensive rest periods (Zzzzzzz).  

I had a really weird dream late morning.  I dreamed that Murdoch was not a real dog, but a sad tattered soft toy that I dragged around everywhere with me.  Everyone humoured me because I was a mad person and to me he was a real dog.  So I'd look down and see my little waggy tailed piglet, but to everyone else he was just a soft toy.  I woke up in a bit of a panic and had to run (oops stop slow down dizzyhead) and check out the situation.  Murdoch is definitely real (and didn't appreciate being woken up so I could check). Or, if he's not real, then I'm still crazy and I'd appreciate it if you could leave me to it :)