move your body

I have started exercising again. Moving my body. I do it a lot, to be fair. But then life gets stressful and movement takes a back seat.

But moving your body brings life to your capillaries.

Life to your fingertips.

Your hips.

Your sadness.

You can be sad, but when you move, your sadness sort of dances. The wobbling self pity fountain stays away. Dry eyes, smile lips.

I cycle down the Great Shilling Way. Sounds grand, doesn’t it? I like to think it is. It’s the path old soldiers during the First World War took. On their way somewhere. There are metal figurines of these men in their oval helmets, carrying rifles. Iron-wrought poppies. Fields to the right (or left, depending which way you’re coming), and the main road on the right.

Or left.

The Great Shilling Way.

So I cycle. I also own some weights and I use those at home with a resistance band I bought years ago on Amazon.

I go to the gym. I lift heavy weights. I can squat 40kg now, and can leg press 100kg. I’ve always had super strong legs, probably why I enjoy cycling so much.

Red face. Red capillaries. Strong legs to squat down and pick things up whilst carrying my heavy 12kg baby.

Happy mood, movement, energy levels soaring. Tired muscles, but the kind of tired where you can feel the strength quietly building.

I hope this movement spree lasts longer than the last one.

Moving my body is fantastic for my mood.

Image Credit

All By Myself

Today I am going to have a house completely to myself.

All to myself.

Did you hear what I said?

ALL. TO. MYSELF.

With no risk or possibility of anybody coming home from school or college or work, no kids screaming, nobody. Nobody except me.

I will be free to walk around in my underwear. I will be free to have a long, hot shower without the risk of anybody knocking on the door telling me to hurry up or using the taps in the kitchen making my shower icy cold.

You know what I am going to do?

I am going to raid my mother’s freezer and cook myself a nice healthy nutritious meal. I am going to workout in the living room, window wide open, and something nice and loud playing. I am going to weed her garden, and throw away some junk in my sister’s room. I am going to hoover the whole house, make myself a banana and honey hair mask, and plop a bathbomb in a nice hot bath. I am going to watch a film in my mother’s massive bed, and sing really loudly. I am going to be FREE.

After three months of living in two houses full of humans everywhere, with very little private time, today looks like it will be simply magnificent, and I will enjoy every. single. moment.

Did you hear that, everybody? EVERY. SINGLE. MOMENT.

Also, it’s really sunny and warm today. It really feels like spring!

Adios, folks, and happy Good Friday to you.

Image Credit

Muscle Mania

Iron Girl by Dani Jennings

 

We woke up this morning to malignant ice covering every surface. It appeared to have sprouted it’s frosty tendrils overnight, like some sort of arctic fungus, through roads, pavements, cars and roofs. The whole world was blanketed with a frosty white. The air was sharp with cold. The biting kind, that creeps up on you when you least expect it, and causes your fingers to go numb.

The ache in my muscles is raw.

Today is a rest day.

I have been going to the gym every day this past week. My clothes are saturated in sweat by the end of it. I feel pumped and happy, even though the pain is near unbearable.

I got up and pottered about, getting ready to leave the house. As I pulled off my pyjamas, and stood in front of the mirror under the harsh white light of the bedroom, I noticed how wobbly my legs were. They weren’t exactly shapeless, but in the mirror I could see that the skin was not smooth and tight over my muscles. There was fat in places there hadn’t been before, and the shape wasn’t as streamlined as I like to imagine. In fact, I realised that although I had already put in so much work, there was still a very very long way to go.

They feel amazing though. My legs. All my muscles ache and ache, I can feel them slowly tightening. So at the moment I don’t care the they don’t look that great. I am getting there, slowly but surely. I can feel it, that’s all that matters right now.

Tomorrow is Abs and Arms day!

My mother in law very kindly made me a sandwich and gave me a snickers bar to take with me,  the latter of which I slipped into my husband’s drawer when she left. Clean eating, I thought to myself, is the only way to see satisfying results, rather than only feel them.