Ha! there is no easy way - you knew that! If I knew an easy way to get fit I'd make milliions... No, what I mean is that it's not rocket science. So I amaze myself by my own shortcomings on this score. Over the last 6 months, while I've been in almost constant motion. I have had no end of excuses for allowing myself to get seriously out of shape - 'it's hard to find healthy food when you're constantly on the road' (not true), 'I've no time to exercise' (not true), 'I can't run' (unfortunately true, due to pelvic stress fracture).
But the rot has to stop. I feel almost disabled by my gain in weight and loss of fitness. To gain 35 pounds in 6 months feels really weird, like I've woken up in the wrong body. I was limping while my pelvis was painful, and my walking still feels off-kilter, like a pregnant woman leaning backwards to counter the extra weight of her belly.
Inspiration arrived this morning from Greg K - read it and see if it works for you.
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Ever envied a model for their beauty? Envy no more - you too can be beautiful. All you need is Photoshop. Take a look at this.
A friend sent this link to me today, with uncanny timing. This morning I went to see a therapist - a complementary, energy-working, spiritual kind of a therapist. I won't even begin to catalogue my list of problems (amazing I still function at all, given how utterly bunged-up all my systems apparently are) but his fundamental ethos was that I need to love myself. And my body. Even the squidgy bits. Maybe ESPECIALLY the squidgy bits.
It's not an easy thing to do, to totally accept myself as I am. The therapist also diagnosed in me a bad case of stubbornness and competitiveness. Competitiveness thrives on comparing myself with others. At least now I know that some of those others have been photographically enhanced, it makes me more forgiving towards my physical imperfections.
If you have time, read the forum on the Campaign for Real Beauty site - messages from teenage girls already feeling under pressure to be thinner, prettier, better dressed.
What kind of a crazy world is this, when we aspire to look like somebody who isn't even real, somebody who exists only in softcopy, courtesy of photographic software manipulation?
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I've had my eye on the Body & Soul section of The Times ever since it first appeared as a new Saturday supplement several years ago. Body & Soul simply seemed to sum up what I'm into. And at last I've made it!
I am reliably informed by the freelance journalist who interviewed me 6 months ago that I am in today's edition. I guess they must finally have run out of more interesting features and dug me out from the bottom of the pile. :-)
Click here for the article online
Footnote: Some of the information is inaccurate and/or out of date. I won't spell out all my corrections here, but the most important ones are:
- First and foremost: I was the 6th, not the 1st, woman to row
solo across the Atlantic.
- Not only friends are invited to rendezvous with me on the Pacific. Friends, strangers, anybody except pirates in fact, is welcome to follow my progress and if they happen to be in the area, I would love a visit.
- Since the stress fracture to my pelvis I have not been able to run, and may never do so again, so I am not going to be running a marathon in New Jersey next month.
- I was in fact a complete novice to sailing: my only waterborne expertise was in rowing, which is a very different ball game (?!)
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Today I stepped off the earth for a while... by going up in a hot air balloon. It was strange to see the earth from a (high-flying) bird's point of view. Traffic roundabouts, railway lines, York Minster. Suburban homes with green-lawned gardens, grand houses with tennis courts and swimming pools. Football players running on pitches, children bouncing on trampolines.
I love to snoop into other people's ordinary lives - at this time of year in England I love to walk along residential streets at dusk and not-so-discreetly peek in at uncurtained windows. Being in the hot air balloon was similar, but even better, because it also offered that little thrill of adrenaline that comes from doing something human beings weren't designed to do. I gazed down at the ground and enjoyed the delicious scariness of thinking, 'What if I jumped?'
It was surprisingly peaceful up there, in between the bursts of flame from the gas jets. We moved at the same speed as the wind, so there was no rush of air past our ears. We drifted silently across the plain of York, everything below us transformed by our new perspective.
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