Lincolnshiregirl

Today has been tough as I’ve not had a chance to work on any of my goals, I skipped intervals at the gym this morning as I had a late night last night, then a friend suggested we do a zoom workout together (she is self-isolating) but had to cancel at the last minute as some client stuff came up and need to prep it before our meeting tomorrow.

It’s on days like today that I question why I’m doing this transformation and adding extra stress to my life, this is usually the case when I’m tired and feel like I’m not making progress and I know that I need to be more realistic that there will be days when life just gets in the way and that’s ok.

I still meditated this morning, it’s now a daily ritual which really helps to set me up for the day, I’m on a 109 day streak using my meditation app (insight timer), I love the variety of meditations on offer and the ability to maintain a habit.

I also have done my gratitude/giving thanks list tonight as I find that’s a great way to end the day on a positive note.

What do you do to keep on track with goals/actions/dreams?

A short and sweet post today as it’s late and way past my bedtime. (Bed time is usually 9pm, as my alarm is set for 5.11am)

Car update is that I’ve still got the loan can and more conversations with the garage is needed to work out what to do next, the next step is 95% out of my hands and I’m at the mercy of the garage really, which feel utterly rubbish and just reaffirms to me why I need to do this transformation.

When money is tight and you have very little wiggle room with it, when life challenges you, you are limited by the lack of choices you have as the lack of funds drives these choices.

Becoming more financially stable is one of the big aims for this year so that I feel more in control of it as well as having some rainy day funds if I need it.

Like all areas of this transformation, this will be challenging as not only do I want to review all my spending, look things I could sell that I no longer require and someone else could make good use of but also deal with my money mindset which I believe maybe causing some of my ongoing issues around money, abundance and financial security.

Ending on a positive note, I had a lovely afternoon with a friend, did a workout with another friend and then she cooked me tea and we had a great catch up and chat.

Today hasn’t been a great day! Call from the garage to say that the car is completely broken and no good to anyone, not really what I need right now! Like I said yesterday it feels like just when everything is slotting into place and bang you get hit with another challenge to deal with.

Thankfully the garage I use are really focused on great customer service and as I’ve been a loyal customer over the years they have said that they will do everything they can to sort me out a newer car.

Not thought of much else today and this is often the case when I’m hit with challenges, they consume me and my mind starts to play against me as I will question other areas of my life or wonder why these things keep happening, I know that some of this is down to unresolved negative experiences from the past and repeated behaviour – one of the main reasons I’ve doing this transformation is to tease this stuff out and address it once and for all, once the car is sorted I’m going to do some meditation around the feelings that have come up in the day or to and see if I can answers to why I am like this and how to think different next time.

On a positive note I managed to do a workout with a friend via zoom, they only live less than a mile from me but are currently self-isolating due one of their children being COVID positive, good to get moving and sweaty at the end of the day.

Tomorrow is a new day and a new opportunity to develop oneself!

A vlog post today as I wanted to try a new way to record them and a good friend suggested using YouTube and do a private live stream and then imbed it into the blog, so that’s what I’ve done!! Fingers crossed this works as it was quite easy today! Apologies for the mild swearing!!

I made it to the gym again today, which felt amazing again.

My exercises of choice are Crossfit, open water swimming and occasionally running.

CrossFit is a global fitness sport, I was introduced to it seven years ago when a new box opened in my city and I’ve loved it ever since, despite being a personal trainer myself and able to create my own workouts. I love that the very core of CrossFit is that it’s constantly varied, the idea being that it prepares you for anything life might throw at you.

Being global, the great thing about CrossFit is that they have a number of workouts which are called benchmark workouts, the standards for these are set and anyone across the globe can do them, log their scores and see how they compare with other people. This is a great way to monitor your fitness as you could repeat certain workouts at set intervals to see how you are doing, these benchmark workouts are a double-edged sword because as much as they can show improvement they can also show when you have lost fitness too. In my early days of CrossFit , my scores on the board so to speak meant something to me and I would agonise over them for days if I didn’t feel like I’d performed as I should have done and there have been many tears post workout when logging the score and realising you’ve done worse than you have done before.

However, as I’ve matured I now take my scores with a pinch of salt, yes I like to see myself improving but don’t give it a second thought if I haven’t, all I care about is moving my body and feeling the buzz from exercising and knowing that I’m improving my health with each workout.

I will though during this year pick a number of workouts to use as measurements of progress (SMART goals), one of these is a 2000m row, I love indoor rowing (my body shape is well suited to it). When I was at the peak of my fitness I was able to do this in under 8 minutes which is pretty good going. I did this workout today and did it in exactly 9 minutes which I’m really happy with considering I’ve not exercised consistently for over 6-8 months and done very little rowing in that time. Taking one minute off my time might seem like a lot but I know that if I consistently go to the gym and work on it then it’s do-able in 12 months.

After my workout I headed to a local lake for a quick dip to cool down, this is my normal Sunday routine and I love it!! Open water (OW) swimming is fairly new to me, I’ve only been doing it a couple of years and again like CrossFit I started off trying to swim as far as possible in the sessions and it made it feel more like a chore that had to be done and for a while I stopped enjoying it. Then I realised that I was doing enough other exercise that the OW swim could be just for pleasure, I don’t put any expectations on myself when I get in the water, I simple swim for however long I feel like and just enjoy the sensation of being in the water. And even better today it started to rain, this is my favourite thing in the world, it makes you feel so alive and at one with nature, if you’ve not tried it, then you are missing out!!

For the first time in god knows how long I started to feel more like myself, I set my alarm to go to the gym like I have done several times this week and I actually woke up wanting to go!!

Saturday is an intervals day at the gym which means it is purely cardio work and usually you are paired with someone and you share the work. For as long as I can remember I have loved cardio, strange as it may sound I love the feeling of pushing my heart and lungs to their limit and then the buzz you get afterwards.

However, at the moment I’m always a little nervous to be paired with anyone (usually a male as they try to make it as fair as possible) and as soon as the pairing is announced I apologise to my partner as I feel bad that they’ve got me!!

Today was no different, especially as it’s been weeks since I’ve done any kind of intense exercise but I do give it my all and if that’s not good enough for my partner then tough sh*t basically!

After intervals I do my food shop, I love food shopping! For those who don’t know me I am a massive foodie, my parents are chefs and had a food business from when I was 6 months old until I turn 16, after school I went to agricultural college to study food technology and since then I’ve been involved in the food industry in some shape or form (over 25 years!!).

Saturday is a housework and chill day for me so that’s exactly what I did!! Some time on the sofa reading my magazine and watching the tellybox and sometime doing housework. I also started noting down goals and ideas for this year, as the days go on I’m aware that I need a plan of action and crack on with it.

One of the reasons for doing this year long project is that I’m guilty of trying to do everything at once and hopefully having a year to do stuff will stop me from doing this.

Today I’ve been thinking about my health and fitness as Saturday is the weekly food shop day so I wanted to make sure I get my act in gear, plan my food for the following week and make a shopping list for everything I need. This is something I used to do all the time and really helped when I got busy with work as I just needed to look at the plan and the food was there ready to be cooked or warmed up.

The challenge with health and fitness is that actually you kind of have to do it all at once – I was thinking do I sort my health out first and then start exercising again or start exercising again and then the health will follow. In reality you have to do both at the same time but do the exercise in moderation and build it up slowly so that’s what I’ll do.

I am booked back into the gym on Saturday so getting back on it and forming that routine again. I’m both nervous and excited about it as I know my fitness is nowhere near where it used to be and it’s hard to accept this so I have to remind myself to be kind to myself and know that if I go consistently from now on in my fitness will return soon enough.

Over the weekend I will also fill out my own nutritional therapy paperwork and go back to basics with my health and approach it as I would a paying client and see what comes up.

Today I haven’t done anything on my transformation as I’ve simply had a lot of work to do, however, my mind has been active!! I’ve started to mentally make a list of all the things I’d like to get done in the house and garden.

At the weekend, I’m going to go around the house from room to room with pen & paper and make a list of things that I want to do in each room, this might be decluttering, decorating, small DIY projects, moving furniture around.

I’m looking forward to do this as once I know what needs doing, I can start to make a plan but I’m also dreading it as I think it will highlight all the things I’ve let slip over the years and probably stir up some unwanted emotions which will need to be dealt this.

I know that over the coming weeks and months if I truly want to transform my life I will have to face emotions head on and deal with them as they come up! Wish me luck, thankfully I have lots of techniques to address them and if I can’t do it on my own I have a number of very good friends who have expertise in a number of disciplines who I will call on to help me.

Yet again I didn’t make it to the gym this morning, had all good intentions last night and prepped everything ready so that I wasn’t rushing around too much this morning.

Woke up and simply couldn’t seem to actually wake up, so fed Sophiecat and meditated but still didn’t feel very awake.

In the past going to the gym was a non-negotiable for me, in fact it never entered into my head not going, I simply got up, out and on it without question and last year during lockdown I also had this mentality (not going anywhere, but exercising at home first thing in the morning).

I know I’ve got quite a bit of work to do at the moment which was also playing on my mine so after my meditation I simply went to my office (spare bedroom) and started working before I headed out for the day at the university.

I get annoyed with myself for not going and when I look in the mirror I don’t particularly like what I see looking back but not quite sure how I lift myself out of this funk right now, I’m hoping this year long goal I’ve set for myself will help but ultimately for it to happen I have to start to take big action including getting back into exercise! AAAARRRGGGHHHH.