This Sunday 23 September marks 100 days until the end of 2012.
What an opportunity to set a goal or two. To make a change.
I am setting a community 100 Day Fitness Challenge. For 100 days you do some exercise every day. Each day you do, you contribute between 50p-£1 to charity. It can be anything from a walk, to a swim to a football match or aerobics class. It doesn’t matter what level of fitness you are. You do what you can do. Each Sunday I am going to run a free outdoor exercise session for challengers to attend and join in with. It is also a chance to bring donations in for the week you’ve just completed.
The charity is one close to my heart. The Weston Price Organistation was founded to educate people on health through good nutrition and food. It’s an area I am passionate about and am excited to do this challenge for them.
This Sunday 23 September (the first session) will be held at 0900 at Bearwood Recreation Ground in Winnersh. It will be a fitness test to ascertain where everyone is starting from. It doesn’t matter where you start from, it’s your test, no one else’s. The tests will be:
bleep test
press up test
sit up test
burpee challenge
vertical jump test
We will meet again on 31 December to remeasure and see who has improved the most. The winner of the 100 Day Challenge will be the person who has both raised the most money and improved the most.
My own regime will be posted in Facebook so I can hold myself accountable each day. Join me there! Or join in virtually.
Let me know you are coming along on Sunday by email (heidistrickers@gmail.com) and I’ll keep you posted with updates.
And here are the most important facts (and funnies) I took from the day.
Women are twice as likely to suffer with gut or digestive problems then men.
In Japan it’s a government health recommendation that you chew your food 30 times before swallowing. In studies obese groups who chewed 30x a mouthful lost more weight than those who didn’t.
People who have had the diseases measles, mumps and rubella are protected from auto-immune disease and allergies.
Our western world has many more nutritional deficiency related diseases than the developing nations. This is because we are sanitised and vaccinated to a ridiculous level, allowing every bug and germ to attack our vulnerable systems.
Your gut flora is only as good as your mother’s. You get your gut health from her though the birth canal when you are born. If you are a caesarian delivery then your gut flora is that of the environment around you at that time. When pregnant it is imperative to look after your gut flora to give your child the best prevention against common conditions like asthma, eczema, autism, dyslexia.
Cholera is the only condition that will completely clear out your gut flora meaning you have a chance to restart (not recommended!)in this instance the body keeps a small reserve in your appendix. I’ve not got mine anymore — what about you?
78% of people don’t realise they have coeliac disease.
Frequent mouth ulcers can be a sign of coeliac disease.
In studies probiotics produced better pain reducing results than morphine in people with abdominal pain.
Stop being so clean! Let your children and babies get a little bit grubby, eat some mud, lick a shoe, stomp in a puddle. They’ll be stronger for it! 🙂
Damaged and unhealthy gut flora is an epidemic in modern societies. It should be the first place to rectify before any thing else when addressing chronic health problems. Consider too that your gut flora is instrumental in some vitamin production, so if it’s damaged you won’t be able to produce the basics to keep you healthy.
What is constipation? Having a bowel movement fewer than three times a week. Hard stools, needing to strain.
What is diarrhoea? Having more than three loose bowel movements a day.
There are trains of thought that suggest that the second phase of the menstrual cycle (the two weeks up to the period) when progesterone is higher is one of the reasons that women suffer more with gut problems than men.
Want to know what your poo should look like? Thought not, but I know you will ! Stool Chart
IBS is likely to have psychological links. Look for patterns by keeping a food, mood and loo diary.
Constipated? Try linseeds soaked in water, have a weak black coffee or two a day, make sure you’re not dehydrated or stressed and remove wheat.
Diarrhoea? Try less fruit, reduce alcohol, remove coffee and dairy, reduce vitamin C supplementation. Drink black or green tea.
Men have faster transit times (food passes through more quickly) than women.
This was disputed, but pumpernickel translates to ‘Devil’s Fart’ — which I thought was funny as rye really doesn’t agree with me, if you know what I mean!
Finally — got wind? Go wheat free, chew food well and eat sat down and slowly, remove beans and lentils, reduce onions, leeks and artichoke. And avoid flying…! How practical is that? “I can’t travel to (insert city of choice) Mr Boss-Man, it aggravates my wind”
Yesterday I went to London to spend the day learning about gut health, but mainly Women’s Gut Health. It was organised by CAM Conferences and was held at the Cavendish Conference facility in central London. (quick facts here!)
The structure was five, very tight to time lectures from industry speakers on issues like coeliac disease, gut health, irritable bowel syndrome and constipation. It was to aimed mainly at women’s health (more women than men suffer with some sort of gut disorder) but all speakers did touch on how the conditions varied between men and women and also how treatments could be used for all.
Christine Bailey spoke first, she called it ‘the Starbuck shift’. I thought that was pretty appropriate as there was a Starbucks just around the corner and many cups wandering in for the registration. She was talking in depth about gluten intolerance and coeliac disease. Two different things but both suffering with one of two problems. 1. GPs not recognising the symptoms early enough to help people with symptoms and 2. Patients not realising quite how much of a change to their diet they need to make to avoid it. Christine spoke of shampoos and shower gels containing gluten which will still cause symptoms after all gluten has been removed from someone’s diet.
Coeliac disease has been associated with conditions as far ranging as unexplained infertility, chronic fatigue, menstrual problems, dental and oral health problems, early menopause and blood sugar regulation to name but a few.
Coeliac disease has been found to be 2- 3 times more prevalent in women. And for many the first sign that something is wrong isn’t digestive or bloating issues, but anaemia.
Discussing with your GP that you want to be tested is also a bit of a minefield. Having the test once you have already gone gluten free won’t produce a positive result as there are no longer any antibodies in your body. This could send you off on another journey to find out what’s wrong when actually you are a coeliac.
There are genetic marker tests which show if you have the gene for coeliac disease. If you have the maker it doesn’t mean you will get it, but the chance is higher.
There are also soon to be launched saliva tests from nutritionists who will be able to give you even more precise testing.
The inflammation caused by coeliac disease needs to be calmed down and Christine spoke of reducing other foods which can aggravate an already vulnerable system. Foods like: convenience and take-away foods, sugar, grains, lentils, soy, beans, dairy, high carbohydrate diets, hydrogenated oils and fats and seed oils. Therefore eating a diet rich in vegetables, fruits, meat and fish is going to really help heal the system.
Healing the gut with supplementation in the short term is an option too and vitamin D, probiotics and fish oil, iron and vitamin B12 were all discussed.
If you have had long term, underlying health issues that you and your GP can’t get a handle on then it may be worth considering a gluten intolerance. Try removing gluten completely from your regime (foods, cosmetics and hygiene products) for 3 months and see how you feel.
Our next speaker was Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride (she’s the reason I went!) I saw her speak at the Weston Price conference in March and was just so impressed with her presentation, results with clients and passion for her topic.
Today she was talking about the role of the immune system and gut micro-flora and it was fascinating. She speaks very fondly of our gut bacteria! At one point referring to them as 90% of all our cells, making us just 10% “a shell”. Makes you think doesn’t it?!
She said many immunity problems (that we are seeing in the Western World) are down to us trying to be too clean, too sanitised, too vaccinated. We need to teach our immune systems to protect us. That is their job, they cannot learn about disease if they are not subjected to bugs and germs and parasites. The fixation with fat free diets and even worse, no saturated fats in diets is proving to be our downfall. She said that fat and the immune system were inter-locked. We need the fat soluble vitamins like A, D, E, K in their most useable form. We get that from animal products and fats. Remove these from your diet and you are setting yourself up for more illnesses and health problems. Hooray for butter, goose fat, lard and cream!
It’s not just what we lack that can damage our immune system but these too:
antibiotics, the pill, stress, dental work, old age, pollution, bottle fed babies … the list went on.
The relationship between the immune system and our gut flora is hugely important for our health. If you have allergies, intolerances, asthma, IBS, colitis, arthritis, depression, substance abuse, dyslexia, dyspraxia, OCD, ADD/ADHD all of these are linked to the health and function of your gut. This can be treated, with nutrition and Natasha’s research and clinical expertise has lead her to write about it. Her website is www.gaps.me and has a raft of information on it. But it’s one area I would like to be more proficient in and am looking to do her next GAPS Practioner training course next year.
Here is a little video I did with Dr Natasha about the importance of gut health and allergies and intolerances. It is quite noisy in the background, but if you turn the volume up you should be able to hear her!
We had three more speakers talking about more specific gut disorders, Dr Peter Cartwright on constipation, Dr Nick Read on Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Dr Alan Stewart on how to help people with chronic gut disorders.
It was all very interesting, there were some areas of conflicting information which left the audience a little in limbo, but that’s what these events are about. Not merely taking what you hear as truth, but finding out ways that you can help client and patients as each of us is different and may need a different approach.
Finally, I have never been to a conference though where smoking was deemed to be beneficial! It was said with tongue in cheek, but when discussing cures for constipation a cigarette and coffee was shown to be useful!
Travelling back through Waterloo (how appropriate!) I saw this man carrying a chair. Are trains that busy?
And this man who, despite how much you may not like your job, has a worse one! He walks around the station with a Burger King sign. All day.
Dale and I spent a very lovely day at Sheepdrove Farm this week learning how to make bread. Now I like baking as you know and I love all things homemade, natural and healthy. So this was like Christmas and birthdays all rolled into one.
Suzi is the very lovely chef at Sheepdrove and she welcomed us to her ‘office’ (the most beautifully airy kitchen) with coffee, homemade biscuits and chit chat. She had prepared three different bread types for us to make and got us started in a way you just don’t get taught at school…going to mill your flour!
There is a wonderful flour mill at the farm which you chuck grains in and out comes warm, ready to use wholegrain flour. However, at the crank of a lever you can separate the bran and get a finer, whiter flour if you wish. It’s all very rustic, large and quite noisy. But the freshness of the ingredients cannot be called into question! The wheat we used was the Red Fife grown on the farm.
Suzi had already made up some ciabatta starters that we would work on last, so they were already resting and proving nicely in the kitchen. So we started with a traditional wholemeal loaf. There was lots of kneading, discussions on ratios of white vs wholegrain flours (it didn’t matter) and discussions on the precision of bread making. I was pretty pleased that it came down to my long used approach of using your initiative. A book or recipe is merely a guide, using your instinct is best. Hooray! Most of my cooking is a journey of discovery anyway.
Part of this dough was to be used for making a mini-pizza which we baked in the bread oven.
Mini pizza
This bread oven is brilliant, every kitchen should have one, because although it is called a bread oven it can be used for anything that needs really, hot cooking. So using a proper pizza paddle thingy we had to whoosh our pizzas into the oven and ta-daaaa! 2-3 minutes later it was cooked and bubbling ready for testing. Damn fine it was too!
Then we made a Ploughmans Soda bread. I make soda bread fairly often at home, but never like this! Basically there were 3 rules. Get flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Then you could do what you liked! I used beer as the liquid, added cheese, chives, chunks of apple, onion and garlic and mixed it all together. Turned it onto a tray and cooked it. Simple, rustic and (when we got it home to taste) very lovely!
The final bread was the ciabatta (slipper in Italian apparently) and we had the chance to finish off what Suzi had started. It was very sticky and took some work but 3 slippers later we all had bread ready for baking.
One of the attractions of this course was that it included lunch! We weren’t disappointed. We had a flan with a salad from the garden all decorated in flowers. I thought, how nice that will do me nicely. Then out came steamed chard and some ratatouille dish which I couldn’t eat as I was already over-stuffed. However I did manage to try some fruit sorbet and blackberries before feeling like I would burst!
Flowery Salad
It was a great day, and I thoroughly recommend it, however having two people from the same house on the same course means a lot of bread and Dale and I came home with 10 loaves! Not bad for people who don’t normally touch the stuff!
Bread anyone?
If you like baking, using good quality ingredients and picking the brains of someone who loves her job, is happy to share and give her time and answer questions then this is probably for you! If you’re happy with your Warburton’s … it might not be quite your cup of tea, but then again you never know how it might inspire you!
I’ve just made one of the biggest, life changing decisions for a very long time. Even bigger than stopping my course earlier this year. I guess you could say I’ve decided to give up the day job. I’m quitting teaching exercise in gyms and health clubs from the end of the month. After ten years of fabulous, energetic fun I realised last week it was time to quit.
It manifested last week when despite it only being hubby and me at home we were living like students. The house was a state, it looked like Wayne and Waynetta Slobs ideal environment and I didn’t have time to sort it out. That bothered me.
I also had 61 unread emails in my inbox which I had to sit down and sort out and I hadn’t. That REALLY bothered me.
I’d agreed to do favours for people that I’d forgotten about the minute we’d stopped discussing it. Not at all useful.
And I was generally trying to be everything to everyone and not doing any of it well, if at all. At that point you know something has to change. But there was something else I was getting irritated with too. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was like an annoying fly keep buzzing around my head. It had been there for weeks, making me ratty. Then I heard it, this little voice in my head saying “give your classes up, you need to give them up”. It wasn’t a case of devil vs angel on my shoulder, it was a nagging, persistent voice that wasn’t going to stop until I listened. Something really needed changing.
So, there and then I thought about it. Realised ‘the voice’, my intuition call it what you like, was right and decided there and then that they were all to go. I didn’t feel sad about it, I didn’t feel concerned that I was knocking a hole in my income, or that I might get fat if I no longer exercised regularly (all the things that had kept me going before!) all I really felt was quite relieved that I didn’t have to do it any more. That’s when you know the decision is the right one.
Teaching group fitness has made me what I am. I think I only really became me once I put shorts and a microphone on and had to exercise in front of 25-30 people each week. I loved it. Infact I’ve loved it for 9 years and 10 months, but just recently it has become a bit of a J.O.B. I never wanted that. If I’d have wanted a job I would have also expected pay rises and holiday/sick pay. You don’t work as an instructor if you want those things! You do it for the passion of it, not the financial reward or the glamour!
Finding a career that you love, having a job which isn’t work is a dream for many. I’ve had that with group fitness. But now it’s time to move on, I have plans for much more — all things food related, health and nutrition based, Fit Camp oriented, out door exercise sessions, the list goes on. But to make space for these things happen, something has to go.
So bye bye my lovely members who have been so loyal to me year in and year out. I’ll miss the singing and heckling, the leotards and the leg-warmers, the moaning, groaning and laughing and I’ll miss your mock appreciation for my singing and humour. I’ll miss the silly fancy dress outfits at Christmas, the lunches, the themed classes and the charity events. I’ll miss the thrill of getting everyone moving at the same time in the same direction and the satisfaction of a good workout well done by all participants regardless of ability or fitness.
But I won’t miss the early mornings, the last minute choreography learning, the heavy feeling of the third pump class in 36 hours, trying to cover classes, the drip of sweat off my elbows, the warm smell of over-worn gym kit, the gazillionth reminder of how to do a move and the nights out working…oh no I won’t miss that one bit!
I wrote this blog post originally in August 2011 following my own fasting experience having read the book ‘Eat. Stop. Eat’. It is a great book and a fantastically referenced resource for those people who want to give fasting a try. The Horizon programme this month has bought fasting onto the radar for most of the public. My concern is that some people will think this is both a magic bullet with which to address their weight issues without really considering what their real problems are and also a way to eat without consideration on feed days.
The basic principals of Eat Stop Eat (ESE) are that:
on one or two days per week you undertake a 24 hour fast.
that on the other days of the week you eat normally.
you lift weights about twice a week to retain muscle mass.
In the Horizon programme there was an alternate day fast introduced. One day you eat one meal of 600 calories, the next day you eat normally. There was no reference to exercise. The Horizon programme did give some good information but suggestions that on the ‘normal eating’ day you could eat whatever you wanted did strike me as a bit counter-productive. Stashing up on junk food isn’t great for your long term health, satiety, cravings or energy.
I think that adding fasting into your regime can be useful but you need to know a few more basics about you and also how to make managing it easier:
if you have weight issues because you have unresolved food and/or body image issues, this probably won’t help fix the root of the problem. If you already spend all day thinking about food, wondering what you can have next, eating without thinking about why, eating crap foods all day, feeling guilty, having food anxiety or body image problems. I think this will be tough.
if you expect it to fix all your problems really quickly by the very nature of the fact that you aren’t eating anything ergo it should be quick fix. It’s not. You’ll probably lose 2-3lbs per week.
you need to find the best 24 hour period of time for you ( I prefer dinner to dinner) whereas my daughter preferred lunch to lunch. And if you are going to include a 600 calorie meal in your fast each time, do you really know what 600 calories is?* It is incredibly easy to eat too much or choose foods which make the rest of the fast difficult.
if you do include a meal make sure it is one that will satisfy not amplify your appetite. If you eat fruit or sweet foods or simple carbohydrates like bread, pasta, jams etc. you will make your hunger so much worse for the rest of the fast. Eat protein and vegetables to keep you satisfied.
drink enough water when you are fasting. My husband has taken a shine to soda water with a squirt of fresh lemon juice. The bubbles fill you up!
start with one fast day per week. Two days a week maximum and never next to each other, allow a feed day inbetween. If you are attempting fasting for weight loss, coming back to once per week is good for maintenance.
unless you know your body really well, I’d avoid fasting on an exercise day. Get to know how you respond to a fast before doing that.
I would still aim for good healthy choices on feed days. You know that if you eat crap, you’ll feel like crap. Therefore feed days should still be lots of vegetables, good quality protein, limited wheat and processed carbohydrates and sugar. It is for improved health after all that many of us aspire to. Eating healthily is still by far and away one of the absolutely best ways to do it! 🙂
*Starbucks Berry Scone is 436 calories (without added butter or jam)
*Starbucks Chocolate chunk cookie 499 calories
*Starbucks Carrot Cake 560 calories
*Starbucks Raspberry & White Chocolate Muffin 498 calories
*Starbucks Sausage Buttie 479 calories
I think fasting is useful for sure. However it’s not for everyone. It’s not a quick fix and it requires some good will power! Here is the original blog post …
August 2011
Eat Stop Eat is an online and audio book written by Brad Pilon which goes into understandable but great length about the benefits of intermittent fasting for health and weight loss or weight management.
I found it easy to read and listen to and found Brad’s indepth research and referencing to his material to be useful. I like his style of writing, there is no fluff, nothing to pad out the book to make it more than it is. He refers at one point to most diet books being half detail and half recipes. His is not like this. He explains how fasting can benefit health as well as weight management and explains how the over-worked statements like ‘starvation mode’ or ‘breaking down your muscles for fuel’ have no scientific evidence in short intermittent fasting.
I have been following this method now for three weeks. Each week I chose two days when I won’t eat for 24 hours. I have found I work best when I go from something like 18:00 – 18:00 or dinner to dinner (whenever that may be). My daughter however found that she functioned much better when she did it 14:00-14:00. I also found that if I was busy it was easier, if I am sat at home doing admin at the PC it’s way too easy to fall into grazing mode.
It’s way easier than I was expecting. It has helped me to focus on real hunger. Stopped me thinking about whether I should eat or not that day (not! then eat as normal* as soon as the fast is over) and given me time to do other things rather than prepare meals! *normal being healthy, avoiding foods I know to be unhealthy rather than binging for five days because I have fasted for two.
In this time I have lost 4/5lbs and look less rounded around my belly. So I am going to be keeping with this as a great tool for calorie restriction and weight management without having to reduce calories all day every day in an attempt to shift extra pounds. And for those of you who are wondering how I manage to teach classes on no food, it’s achievable! My preferred days have me teaching both cardio and resistance classes during the fast without any detrimental effect.
For more information on Eat Stop Eat — Click Here!
Please note that purchasing this product will generate a small commission back to me for making it so easy for you to buy!
This blog has been going for about a year now. I started it because last September I had 5 weekends of courses lined up and thought I would share my learning with people. One of those weekends was a conference at Sheepdrove Farm in Lambourn (that post is here!). I had a spectacular day there and it probably kick started my love affair with good quality, local food which has been slowly simmering ever since.
Toothpaste tube partitions
I saw they had some open days planned and took the husband along to show him what all the fuss was about. I was a bit worried that going when there was no seminar on may be a problem (the seminar had been excellent!) or whether my memory was distorted and that he wouldn’t see the attraction as I’d built it up so much. Not to be!
Driving into Sheepdrove Farm through Lambourne is beautiful, rolling fields and countryside and a reminder of life beyond Fit Camp, sweaty gyms and the Olympics. It is a working organic farm and visits are planned, you can’t just appear and hope to be seen! They also operate an eco-friendly and sustainable conference venue for meetings and weddings making it a unique experience.
You are welcomed into the airy foyer with hot drinks and homemade biscuits. These aren’t any old biscuits someone has knocked together, they are made with flour milled each day, from cereal that is grown on the farm in a sustainable and organic way. Today’s delicacies were nutty flapjacks, shortbread, mini rock cakes and some chocolate thingy. I didn’t move on much past the first two 🙂
Free Range Organic Turkeys
The tour had us on a tractor trailer sitting on bales of hay (much to the husband’s delight) and we were told about crop rotation, seeded borders for bug control, that borage nectar is the best tasting honey, that turkeys are thick as two short planks and mummy sheep don’t care much for their scared lambs when it’s raining.
Land Managing Pigs
We also investigated the working reed bed for water filtration on site and saw pigs living in the wood as ‘land managers’. These were the most healthy looking pigs I’ve ever seen. They were huge for a start (but only 10 months old) not at all sweaty or mucky and their coats shone! They loved ruffling up the earth, eating nettles and being petted — talk about happy! And no, they weren’t going to be culled, they were purely land managers.
We did see some outdoor bred pigs and their piglets who answer to “pig, pig” and came charging out of the woods to see who called them. They were two weeks old. They were happy, but yes were part of the food chain.
Once inside we had a fantastic two course lunch made from freshly harvested ingredients. All produce is handmade or produced on site, including Elderflower cordial, bottled water, vegetables, herbs, eggs. If they don’t produce something (dairy) they source a local supplier with the same high standards that they employ.
Menu today
Soda bread with roasted peppers from the Red Fife wheat, grown on site and milled that morning.
Pork (!) with crackling, roast potatoes, chard, courgettes and beans, carrots and French beans, served with homemade chilli and apple jam. Plus (like we needed more) salad leaves from the garden garnished with flowers. It looked very pretty and one little girls kept going back for more flowers. It’s a good start towards eating more veggies I suppose!
Pudding at Sheepdrove Farm
Pudding was sublime! Pavlova or summer fruit tart or homemade ice-cream. When I say ‘or’…you could read that as ‘and’…
The whole experience was exceptional. If you wanted to take your children to see a working farm where people care about the environment and are doing what’s best for the land and community PLUS a meal! Then you should give it a go. If you don’t have children, don’t worry, it’s not just for them. You can pick the brains of the Farm Manager Dan, who knows each tree, bird, crop, weed and pig. He was fascinating.
Well worth it and a great way to come down after the excitement of the Olympics!
I put this post on Facebook today as I am going to be a little bit empty without the Olympics. Since I posted it, a few other thoughts transpired that I think are just as important.
Here are some of the things I’ve loved, liked and learned this week.
1. That Lord Coe needs more than a medal for pulling off what has to be the biggest ever Event Management job. Having been an events manager in a previous life — I know that was a biggie!! He needs Knighting, can you be Sir Lord Coe?
2. I discovered Radio 5 Live. Barmy, bonkers and chaotic. But all the presenters so excited about being involved with the games. It’s also where Colin Murray and Mark Chapman disappeared to from Radio 1 many moons ago. That’s staying on my pre-sets in the car.
3. That being successful is overwhelmingly down to your self belief and absolute dedication to succeed. Obvious I know, but Chris Hoy is 36 and winning yet more gold medals but has been cycling since he was 8 years old. What have you done for 28 years to get to the very top of your game? 🙂
4. Britain can pull together and lose cynical, sniping, criticism en-masse when needed. Each time we won a gold and the whole stadium sung the National Anthem I cried.
5. That the sports which are physical like the swimmers, athletes, boxers etc are made up of good looking people. Why? Because exercise, good nutrition and doing what you love makes you ooze health and good feelings.
6. The BBC deserve a medal for it’s coverage. From the app on my phone, to the multiple channels, to the web, to the presenters, to the pundits, to the behind the scenes screeching from Denise Lewis and Colin Jackson. Brilliant!
7. Showing boxing in slow motion isn’t pretty or necessary. Wobbly faces being hit doesn’t do it for me!
8. Handball should be played more! What an amazing game. It’s fast, fun and you need to be fit!
9. Look at the 4 x 100m USA ladies relay team — solid legs, short and sturdy and damn strong. Compared to the 4x400m USA ladies relay team — taller, leaner legged, strength and endurance build. Please remember that you need to aim for being the best you can be, you’re never going to be size 8 if you have size 12 bones…
10. Doing what you love. Whether it’s presenting, running, diving, coaching, refereeing, being a physio, organising, …the list goes on. Everyone involved in these games is brilliant at what they do, and that’s why they have produced successful athletes. Everyone has found their passion to work as a team. Focus on the goal and you will get there.
Extra points
1. Sport crosses all backgrounds, cultures and religions. Compare the cost of getting a child into horse-riding or BMX biking. Dressage horses I am told are very, very, very special. More than a lottery ticket win if you don’t mind! Compared that to a BMX bike for an 8 year old. It therefore unifies people. You can tell from the interviews that it crosses all divides. Everyone is equal.
Team GB from Team GB Facebook Page
2. The good natured praise of losing athletes to the winner. Yes, there have been some exceptions and yes there have been some stories of terrible sportsmanship in these games, but almost over-overwhelmingly losers were at least gracious in defeat.
3. The bravery of people to complete what they set out to do. The GB hockey ladies injured in their first three matches (I think) and one playing with a broken jaw. The relay runner who ran with a broken leg so as not to let the side down, the German diver last night who dived with such a damaged shoulder he couldn’t use his arm to get out of the pool.
4. Ticket sales for both Olympics sold out. Inspiring.
5. THE QUEEN! How could I forget the Queen?! What a girl!
How has it changed me?
It has. I’ve decided a change is afoot. You can’t progress and move on or improve if you don’t do something different. I am going to do something different. It happens soon, watch this space!
I feel compelled to write this after several conversations recently with regards to what people aspire to. I mainly see it through clients who aren’t happy with their figure, their weight, their bum, their thighs, this little bit just under my chin — well you get the idea.
I also see it in Facebook comments and status updates about “I wish I was like you…”, “I wish I had legs like that…”, “I wish I was a size 8”. And then from people about their success, more snidey comments like “how’s he managed to do that, he’s not that good anyway” or “I would have done that differently” the quotes go on.
You know what? Stop comparing and start being the very best version of you that you can be. For example I am NEVER going to be a size 8. I don’t have size 8 bones. At my absolute adult lightest I was 9 stone 7lb — I looked emaciated and my hip bones stuck out further than my belly. I was a size 10. An unhealthy, wastrel of a size 10.
I am also never going to get into skinny jeans. My thighs are substantial and put me in size 14 trousers. So what? Who cares? It’s clothes.
When it comes to achieving what you want to achieve. Be the best you can be. Don’t compare yourself to others, you don’t know their story or their journey. They’ll have demons they are dealing with too. If you don’t like something about yourself then change it. Take action and do it repeatedly until it becomes second nature, then you’ll be the best you can be. Yes that’s tough, but that’s why the successful people are successful because they keep on doing…
So what are you going to do to be the best you? Consider this quote from Oscar Wilde “be yourself — everyone else is taken” — love that!
I posted on Facebook today that I finally caught up with Laura’s blog. I’d not read it for well over a month and before you accuse me of being a rotten mother (which I obviously am on the ‘keeping-up with blog front’) I Facebook chat with her pretty often so I know she is alive and kicking!
Reading her entries made me laugh out loud and cry with happiness. She wears her heart on her sleeve and tells all. Too much sometimes, but it’s her. It’s honest and it’s a life experience filled with passion and fun and happiness and you know exactly how she feels about any moment. I love it. I love her and I love people who follow their dreams, do what they are destined for and thrive on it.
Fragile at South Hill Park
It’s been a weekend for it. On Friday Dale and I went to South Hill Park (a true gem in the middle of Bracknell) to see a tribute band called‘Fragile‘. He has seen them many times before and I followed along as I thought it might be a night out. They are a Yes tribute band and quite astounding. I think some tribute bands are a bit crap and hope to do well on the very basis of the original band being successful. But Fragile are extraordinary. For those of you who don’t know Yes is not a simple pop band. Their music is complicated, varied and diverse. I learned that you cannot get the sheet music, these chaps have pulled each piece apart to learn it, then put it together again to sound like the original. They were awesome. Infact they have had in the past one of the Yes members join them as he thought they were so good! Their passion and love for their art shone through too, you could feel it in the way they played their instruments and got swept away with each piece. It was eye-watering.
We have to do what we love. Even if it is in our spare time. Don’t stop doing what you love. It will keep you more alive and vibrant than you will ever realise. If you love to paint — paint (please Nic, do it!) if you love to sing, go sing. If you think working with kids is what you should do, GO AND DO IT. My sister did and she has worked bloody hard and scrimped and gone without to make sure she did and she is now teaching and LOVES IT.
Ask yourself what it is you yearn for. Then make a plan to do it. You must.
I yearn to cook. To bake, to look for food, cook food, write about, taste, touch and talk about food. Today when I should have been working. I baked. I don’t feel guilty. I feel content.
This Sunday 23 September marks 100 days until the end of 2012.
