I’ve not written a piece about midlife for a while and whilst I am enjoying my current adventures I think it is important to recognise that I am traversing Western Europe whilst being middle aged. Is this a sensible idea? Am I fit enough to do this?
Historically I was that child who at school would do anything to avoid being outside in the cold playing netball or worse still hockey in my sports shirt and minuscule skirt. Conversely I would happily get up at the crack of dawn to jump over the back garden wall, walk across the playing field to reach the farm my Dad rented and attend to my horse. I loved horse riding and showjumping and after ten years I’m guessing I was fairly physically fit.
But then life took over. My career became all consuming. Going to the gym was something I got no pleasure from. I just felt inferior and frumpy when all the super fit, slim, sporty types exercised in their clingy sports clothes alongside me.
I’m not sure why I worried so much because even when I fell pregnant with my first child I was still a size 10 but then I put on three stone! I managed to lose two stone before falling pregnant for my daughter. But by the time she was born I was another stone heavier. Overall nett result from pregnancy, two stones extra!
By the time single parenthood came along five years later I had managed to lose weight and was fitting back in my size 10’s. I had actually joined a gym for about six months in order to prepare for a charity trek, completing the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in November 2001. It was actually being away on this trek that finally ended my marriage!
Once I was on my own the weight started creeping back on. I tried addressing it a few times, trying various slimming groups but life was hectic enough with two children and a full time career without counting calories or syns or fat units!
Fast forward to 2015 when I met Phil and I was probably nearly five stone heavier than when we knew each other back in the early 80’s. The biggest problem was I could look in the mirror and see myself as I’d always done and not as an overweight, clinically obese, middle aged woman!
Amongst all the many conversations we had in the first three months of our relationship health and fitness did rear its head. We knew we wanted to be together forever but how long was forever going to be? Neither of us was fool enough to think we could live forever without making some changes but it still took us another couple of years to be serious about it.
New Year’s Day 2017 was a turning point. We made a commitment to each other to ensure we would have twenty good years together, fulfilling our dreams of seeing the world. To do this we both knew we needed to have a better balance. We needed to eat healthier, lose some weight and exercise more.
We started by taking the decision to give up processed food but we still allowed ourselves the odd takeaway. Bear in mind, at this stage, Phil had given up alcohol in 2001. I had given up caffeine in the same year and had changed my diet in 2004, to alleviate a medical condition, eliminating alcohol and spicy food.
Cooking from scratch became the norm for us and to be honest with both of us happy to cook, either separately or together, it wasn’t a hardship.
January 1st 2018 we gave up takeaways completely and I joined Slimming World. I wasn’t intent on losing weight so much as maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Slimming World
Food optimising is the central mantra of following this way of life. It’s not a diet, you don’t have to count calories but it does mean you have to change what you eat forever.
Every day you can have two healthy extra A’s – this is your dairy allowance. I struggle to do this as I have a problem with dairy. I’ve never been properly tested but I cannot drink milk, it just makes me feel sick. I manage with skimmed milk in my tea but that’s about it for the day.
I can’t eat cheese except goats cheese or cooked cheese when I’m guessing the enzymes have been broken down. Eating cheese will make my gums swell up, my whole mouth and throat itch and I start to develop a rash on my arms.
I can eat eggs but not to excess.
You also get one healthy extra B which is your bread allowance. If you actually eat it as bread it has to be wholemeal, which is fine with me. I tend to eat mine at lunchtime unless I’m planning to have homemade burgers or wraps for dinner.
Most fruit, veg and salad count as free foods and within this certain items count as speed food. Speed food can be eaten the most as they are very low in calories and ideally should make up a third of your plate at every meal.
Finally you can eat 5-15 syns each day. This can be spent on non free foods at meals or snacks and sweet treats. There is a really useful app where you can look up the syn value of any food that’s not free using the supermarket bar code.
I have lost weight, over two stone at my last check in, but not as much as I would like and probably not as much as people reading this would maybe expect. However for me it was more about healthy eating and if I lost weight this was an additional benefit. I have never eaten so much fruit, veg and salad as I do now. The recommended daily allowance is five pieces a day and I eat double that. I try and eat thirty different types of fruit and veg a week.
Slimming World is also about the camaraderie you develop with your fellow Slimming World members that you meet through your group and see each week when you weigh in and stay behind for IMAGE Therapy. IMAGE stands for Individual Motivation And Group Experience. I feel really lucky because the people that attend my group on Wednesday morning at 9.30 are all super friendly and helpful. We share ideas, hopefully inspire each other and together motivate each other to stay on track.
The final piece of the jigsaw at Slimming World is Body Magic which is all about exercise.
Exercise
In September 2021, three and half years into my retirement I finally retired properly. As I’ve explained on a previous post, retirement didn’t really come easy to me but at this point I felt I could finally take control of my own life and in so doing decided to try exercising on a regular basis.
Up until this point Phil and I had been walking regularly and trying to hit 10,000 steps a day. We have probably half a dozen books at home that cover local walks from 2 miles to 10 miles and had reached a point where 7-8 miles was within our reach. We had walked both the Sharpness to Gloucester canal over two days and the Stroudwater canal from Saul to Sapperton over another three days. Our peak was over 27,000 steps in one day whilst on a city break visiting Prague.
However the stress on my knees pounding the pavements was beginning to take its toll and I needed to find some other form of exercise to keep myself fit which wasn’t so hard on the joints.
I honestly never thought I would change my perception of exercise or become one of those middle aged ladies that exercise every day but here I am!
I started in September 2021 with one aqua aerobics class on a Wednesday morning after Slimming World. After two weeks I increased this to two classes a week and then gradually within ten weeks I was doing five classes a week (Monday to Friday) including Aqua Zumba on a Monday, which I love. It was a complete change for me not just the exercise but the positive effect it had on my mental health. I felt so much better in myself. I felt like I had a purpose again.
By June 2022 I felt comfortable enough to have a full Boditrax assessment which gave me an overall analysis of my body.
By July 2022 when we got married I was at my lowest weight since I’d had my children 25 years earlier. I wasn’t at target, as I’ve previously explained, but I felt so much better, my shape had changed and I felt fitter than I had for years.
On my return from honeymoon in August I started trying some different classes: yoga, pilates and aerobics. Soon my voluntary weekly regime was made up of three aqua classes, two aerobics classes, two pilates classes, a swimming lesson and even a session in the gym itself!
I suffered a few set backs over the winter with a bad chest infection, a couple of UTI’s and a stinking cold but my motivation is still intact. When we are home, for three weeks in May, between our two big adventures, I will be back to five aqua classes a week to ensure my fitness stays level.
In the meantime Phil and I walk just about everywhere while on our adventures averaging at least five miles a day. This includes the fact that in every eight day period we include a day off to recuperate when we try and relax and walk very little.
With a little help from some deep heat my knees are bearing up and we are over halfway through this midlife adventure in Europe!
A Midlife Adventure 