Tag: life

How do you build consistency?

Jess GuthLeave a comment
Blossom in our Garden

Consistency. The mythical thing that will make everything fall into place and become joyful and easy… . Apparently. I spend enough time scrolling on social media to have read several idiotic takes on consistency and on how habit not motivation will build consistency. And I get it. I remember (vaguely) a short period of time where running was just something we did. We didn’t really think about doing it, we just did. It wasn’t a decision to make. But that time was brief and also, it might be fictional. Perhaps it was never like that. Perhaps getting out the door has always been the hardest part of running. My brain is good at making shit up and maybe remembering a time, whether it actually existed or not, where getting out to run was easy, isn’t a bad thing.

Anyway, there I was scrolling like we all know we shouldn’t and the claims about how to get your shit together were just getting more and more outrageous. Advice that seemed to boil down do ‘you just need to be disciplined and get up at 4am and exercise and drink your electrolyte infused water and eat the right macros, take the most expensive supplements on the market and here’s some guidance on what to say so you’re not seen as weak at work and then here’s your evening relaxation and skin care routine and and … I am exhausted and bemused just seeing the posts, never mind reading or engaging with any of it. It does however bring me back to a question – how do normal people get their shit together? Like not 4am runs every morning and mapped out to the second daily routines (It is now 19.02, time to relax for precisely 19 minutes) but normal. Normal as in, my job can be a bit random, sometimes the cat pukes on the bed at 3am throwing everything into chaos, or I was so busy that I am both completely dehydrated because I didn’t drink anything and desperate for a pee because I haven’t had time for a toilet stop or I am not going to the gym for love nor money today because – ew people or the world feels wrong and I need to hide under a blanket and cry. That sort of normal. Which reading it back might not in fact be normal. What I mean is, how, in all the chaos that is normal life and without the desire or will power to be really regimented, how do you build consistency? How do you get to habit, to where the brain just assumes you’re going to the gym or for a run so you don’t have to do battle with yourself each time? How do you get motivated enough to get past the need for motivation?

I know, if I could really figure that out and bottle it, I could stop with the academic nonsense and retire ungracefully. I don’t think there is just one answer though. I read a post that suggested you set an alarm with a motivational quote to get you up and out of bed – yeah that will elicit a sleepy string of expletives and not much else while I turn off the alarm, turn over and go straight back to sleep. Another post suggested sleeping in your gear. Yeah – the only time I will sleep in a sports bra is if I am too exhausted after a run to attempt getting out of it. Other suggestions included telling yourself you can come back if you still really don’t want to be out after ten minutes. That also doesn’t work because that is a given for me. If I am miserable I won’t force myself to push through. I am too old for that shit. Hard – sure. Miserable, nope. More suggestions – same time each day for exercise of some description – hello chaotic schedule. That might work if I went really early in the morning but anyone who has met me will know that that will go wrong very very quickly. If I don’t get 8 hours sleep a night for a period of time, armageddon will ensue. I am being negative. Sorry. Of course I will eventually (and into the summer it’s easier) get up early more consistently and run after work more consistently and just the line between doing hard and being miserable will move so I will do more. I know this. I just find all the social media stuff annoying and unhelpful because none of it strikes me as realistic but I also can’t quite shake myself free of the expectations that my ducks should be more in a row and I should be able to be more disciplined. (I know! I’m paying for therapy, I am working on the people pleasing good girl thing)

Anyway, given that I am too old to take the influencers seriously and too intelligent to believe the nonsense around fitness and health and wellbeing and getting your shit together that fills my feeds, I had to come up with something else to try and keep up motivation while re-developing habits. And what does work, always has worked for me, is a challenge, a medal and some sort of game. Ideally all three. The challenges we had set haven’t kept me going. I haven’t been able to work towards them and they haven’t provided the kick up the arse required. So just entering another race or setting a park run target or whatever isn’t going to work – its not immediate enough. So I decided I would try a virtual challenge, something that tracks as you go along rather than something that is just an end goal; something that provides interest over time and an incentive to reach the next thing and something that allows me to go at my pace. And of course I need a medal at the end. A quick google and I landed on the Conqueror Virtual Challenges. I signed up for a challenge (I’ll tell you more about which one and why that one etc next time) to see if it might just work and keep me motivated through the really hard bit of starting again.

Well, it did its first job which was to get me out today when I really just wanted to curl up and stare into space and work out how I managed to work all day without having anything to show for it. I went out only because I wanted to see if the app worked, if my strava would sync to it and what the look and feel of the app and challenge would be. So yeah – gamification works. For me anyway. I did 2 miles again. Run/Walk at 30/30 intervals. This time for the full two miles. I went the same mile out as previously but ran past a guy I know who was out chatting and we had a friendly exchange but I really didn’t want a second interaction on the way back so I turned off and went down hill. So I did run a slightly easier route in terms of slopes but I kept the run/walk going until the 2 mile beep on my watch. Then I walked the .70 of a mile home up the hill. Happy with that. Oh and me not wanting another interaction had nothing to do with the guy, I was a proper no people zone after work today.

Einstein receiving instructions from the Dino gang
Odin – not too sure about being watched while having his tea

Anyway, I will tell you more about the challenge and the app as I get into it but for now there is one thing I want to mention because it pissed me off as I was completing the registration on the app. It’s a distance challenge, right. You can count all sorts of exercise to contribute, all good. I like that because it makes it really inclusive. But then the app asked for me height and weight. Annoying in itself. It doesn’t need that to track distance travelled. It’s irrelevant to the thing the app is designed for. And then, as if asking for weight wasn’t bad enough, it asked for ideal weight. So there it is. Just like that we have again made the assumption that exercise and signing up to a challenge must be about weight loss. Had they asked these questions before I signed up for the challenge I wouldn’t have signed up. It annoys the hell out of me. There is no reason for the app to need the information. The challenges are based on distance traveled, that doesn’t change based on how much someone weighs. I am not doing a challenge to lose weight. I am not running to lose weight, I am not going to the gym to lose weight. I am not doing anything to lose weight. I am doing the things I am doing to be fitter and stronger and so I can keep having adventures. My weight bobbing about a bit is a side effect of that, not a driving force. Anyway, I had already bought the challenge, so I completed the app registration, gave them my current weight as both the current and ideal weight which might fry their algorithm a bit at least and got over myself.

Next time I will tell you where in the virtual world I am and why I chose it and any other musings. For now, I have some more marking to do – you know, academic and that time of year!

Time for Big Girl Pants!

Jess Guth1 Comment

And just like that we are in mid April. I mean what the actual fuck are we doing in April? Remember my happy run back in January? The one where I felt good. Yep, can we go back to that please. It really felt like I was getting somewhere again and that fitness was slowly coming back and that running could be really fun again. And then I got flu. I was off work for most of January because I just couldn’t shake it. I feel like I was not only off work, I feel like I may have stepped off the world – I don’t really remember January. I was asleep or reading or watching romance fiction – because that’s normal for me (not). I am not having a go at romance readers here – you do you. It’s just not my thing generally and I am still at a loss to explain why it was then. Anyway, February just felt like a battle to get through a day without falling asleep. I did very little in terms of moving off the sofa/ chair. I went to work when I had to but otherwise I was just a couch potato because anything else was too exhausting. I went for a walk at Bolton Abbey and then needed a 2 week rest.

Towards the end of February I thought that maybe it was time to get moving again. I was scared of running though. I didn’t want to get down the road and not be able to function. So I got on the bike in the garage and actually it wasn’t horrendous. I did two days back to back of cycling for 45 minutes ish taking it easy, not following a programme, just sort of peddling along thinking about nothing much. Then I did another virtual ride a week later. And there we are in March and I can still barely move – clearly running the Kielder 11 mile night run was never going to happen. We still went to Kielder Water even though neither of us could do our races and we had a couple of lovely walks instead of our planned runs – but I was tired. I slept lots, lounged in the hot tub, did some very gentle yoga.

When we got back from Kielder Water, we decided to try the gym again. We’re too old to get away with not strength training so we have been going – not lots but at least once and mostly twice a week for a good weights session. We went really early on a Sunday and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Maybe I just hadn’t woken up yet. So the gym has been the most consistent. Yoga is second. On the 23rd March I finally went for a run. Just a mile at run walk of 30/30. It should be easy, right. Well it wasn’t. But I did it and tried hard not to be grumpy about it. But then I was scared again so ended up not doing anything, then going back to HITT once or twice and then today I went for another run. Same thing: A mile run walk and then turn round. This time I kept going a bit after I turned round so in total I ran/walked a mile and a half and walked half a mile. Progress is progress.

I’ve deferred Rasselbock’s Sherwood Big Loop event that we were looking at doing next weekend to their 2 day winter event instead and we have a plan for that – watch this space. The next thing booked is the 23k at the Lakeland Trails in July – I am not thinking about it really. I am not likely to be ready and that’s ok. I can’t rush this. I just need to build some consistency, just get out there one step at a time. Motivation is hard because running is actually just hard at the moment. It isn’t fun and I am struggling to access the memory bank of fun running.

So anyway, that’s where I’ve been in case you’ve missed me. I’ve been hiding and grumpy and frustrated and paralysed by the task ahead. But being grumpy about fitness lost and scared of how hard it’s going to be will not actually make me feel any better and will also absolutely not get me fit again. So it’s time for big girl pants. I am a 47 year old woman, I am generally fuelled by perimenopausal rage (and caffeine) – I can do anything.

Struggling

Jess Guth3 Comments
From our Early Dec trip

It was my birthday yesterday. It was a lovely day, as was Christmas day before that and Christmas Eve. They were all lovely. They were as we planned them, they were calm and quiet, I enjoyed cooking and yesterday I enjoyed Kath taking over and being looked after and spoilt. We had lovely food with our mums, cuddles with cats and not a ‘should’ in sight. It was exactly as I had hoped it would be. And today I feel completely flat. Somehow it feels like the last 2 or 3 days were not at all what I wanted, like they were all about other people and not for me. I don’t know why I feel like that. There was absolutely nothing in those days that would indicate that. Had I described what I wanted before the 3 days, I would have described our Christmas.

I know my birthday is sort of a nuisance. I mean, who wants more people, socialising or food on Boxing Day, who wants a birthday celebration? I am so used to it obviously and it doesn’t actually bother me, except today it does. I am irritated by happy birthday wishes on Facebook – assuming that people only sent them because FB reminded them to, same with LinkedIn. As if that is a bad thing (if you did write on my timeline – thank you. It was lovely to hear from you in the moment even if my brain is being weird today). I am actually just irritated by everything. The fact that it is Saturday has annoyed me all day, as has the fact that I put the ‘wrong’ socks on this morning. The wrong socks? I mean FFS, I just put on socks… at some point my brain decided they were wrong. It’s just an annoying, irritating and fucking stupid day.

I renewed my Body Coach app today. Obviously that was annoying because I had a discount code that I then couldn’t find and it should have been a 2 minute job that took forever. Given my total lack of fitness and the brain fuck that comparison therefore is, I decided to re-set the app completely and start all over again. As part of that I had to put my height and weight into the app… So, I am 47, the heaviest I have ever been, probably also the widest but I am saving the joy of measurements for tomorrow. I am also unfit as nicely highlighted by our Christmas morning run/walk and our Birthday trot out which was a mile of run/walk and then 2 miles of walk because my hips and feet were protesting. We went for a walk this afternoon. A lovely walk that was fucking annoying and which sent my right hip and right foot into proper bitch mode. Guess who hasn’t been stretching enough and who hasn’t done any strength work for months. Oh me, that’s me. Idiot.

And then, because today is a stupid day, I was scrolling, and I suddenly realised that for weeks now, if not longer, I have been bombarded by weight loss or fitness content on my social media. It’s relentless. Every second post I see is either ‘hormonal weight gain gone with this magic exercise/herbal tea’; ’50 habits you need to ditch of you’re heading for 50′; ‘ten things peri menopausal women are doing wrong in the gym’ or some nonsense about how you can get lean in 6 weeks in just 15 minutes a day… No wonder my brain is fried. Every bit of messaging seems to be ‘you need to be thinner’. Didn’t we do this already in the 90s? We do not need to go back there! I thought we had switched to ‘strong not skinny’ and a different way of thinking about exercise. I thought movement was good per se, not because movement might help weight loss. I see some content that acts as a counter balance but I have to go look for that. I nearly didn’t renew the Body Coach app because I saw several transformation pics as I was looking for my discount code – all of them emphasised the weight loss. All – Of – Them.

The fitness stuff on social media is awful. I have been scrolling past almost all of it because I don’t care what some teenage influencer thinks I should or shouldn’t be doing, or how fast, according to some hot shot, let me check, social media personality, I should be running a mile or whether I run a 5 k faster than a list of supposed celebrities. Or at least I thought I didn’t care. But just the fact that it is there constantly has obviously had an impact. I am less keen than ever to go back to the gym. I don’t belong there. I don’t want to get on the bike, don’t belong on Zwift either, that’s for people who can, you know, actually cycle rather than go backwards at the first sign of a hill. And as for running. Hm. I have no business being out there pretending to be a runner. I am not a runner. Maybe I was once but maybe those hopes and dreams about things I wanted to do should just stay dreams, maybe they are no longer achievable. That. Or maybe today is just a really stupid, annoying day. Maybe I just don’t like forced transitions and artificial cycles and the pressure to re-invent myself. Birthdays are one of those – ‘what’s it like to be 47?’ Such an idiotic question, I am a day older than yesterday… nothing is different. And then of course the new year is coming at us fast with all that comes with the New Year, New You crap. And for me birthday and new year are annoyingly close together giving me a delightful double whammy of ‘do better, be better, this is your time to make changes and improve, become a better version of yourself…’ Urgh. Is 2026 going to see the new me? Is this year, where I, aged 47, finally get my shit together? Is 2026 going to be my year? I fucking hope not. That sounds exhausting and people-y.

Anyway, I think the best thing that can be done with a day like today is to turn it into yesterday as quickly as possible. I am not even going to try and read because every book I have picked up today has been irritating. Tomorrow we stretch, take our magnesium and take it one step at a time and maybe some of those steps have purpose, maybe some of them are even running steps… because today is just a fucking stupid, irritating and annoying day but I am still me and the impossible is still out there, waiting to be done.

Showing Up For Yourself

Jess GuthLeave a comment

I have had a funny week. I didn’t run until Thursday. And I nearly didn’t then. I was so tired on Thursday. I just felt dead and empty. I struggled to focus on work. I had a window at lunchtime and I was so tired that I had to do something. My initial thought was to try a power nap but I was really worried I would sleep through the alarm and miss a meeting in the afternoon. So I put my gear on and went for a run. It seemed like a slightly insane idea but it worked. I felt better afterwards. I did the same again today. I had fallen asleep on the sofa watching something on TV. I felt groggy and worse than I had before I fell asleep. As much as I didn’t really want to go run, I laced up and went. I feel far less tired and dead than I did before. The thing is, I know that doing exercise will make me feel better in almost every circumstance. It just will. But knowing that and showing up for myself to do it are two very different things. So I have been thinking about this idea of showing up for yourself.

In general, I think we are pretty conditioned to show up for other people, to not let others down, and to do what is expected of us. Women in particular are somehow expected to put others first, do the stuff that others need doing before even thinking about what we might need. The idea of showing up for yourself, doing what you need not what other people want you to do is portrayed as selfish and uncaring or even rude and unreasonable. I am not suggesting that we carry on regardless of whether what we need is harmful to others. I am suggesting we stop being harmful to ourselves while attending to everyone else’s (and society’s) needs and expectations.

I should note that I am pretty lucky here. I am not as conditioned as many in this area. I don’t really care what society expects or what women should or shouldn’t do and I never really have. I do have a bit of a thing about doing a very good job at whatever it is I am doing though which isn’t always helpful. But as I was thinking about the idea of showing up for myself, I realised that it’s not expectations or putting others first that stop me from showing up for myself. Nope, it’s two other things – the first is the needing to do a good job and the other is that I simply haven’t given enough thought to what showing up for myself means to and for me.

So this week I am accepting that I didn’t do all the things I had planned, that Saturday was a completely dead day and am instead choosing to be really pleased that on 2 days where I was tired and my default position was to retreat and hide rather than do, I did the thing that was most likely to make me feel better both short and longer term – I showed up for myself and got the running done. The rest I need to think about more. So watch this space.