Pride

Written before completing the 3 Peaks Challenge, having lost 3 and a half stone since starting my fitness and health journey in March of that year. Now, 16 months after starting, I’ve lost over 8 and a half stone, reduced my BMI from 47 to 26, lost 39cm from my waist and 45cm from my hips, walked 7 mountains and will be running my first half marathon in 8 weeks:-

August 2017

Pride. Comes before a fall. Is one of the seven deadly sins. Everyone is telling me I should be proud of myself, for how far I’ve come and for how hard I’m working. And yet I’m not. Really, not one little bit. There have been some rumblings recently about my a) negativity, and b) lack of confidence. The former I dispute somewhat. I call it realism, mixed with a dark and dry sense of humour that many would call sarcasm (inherited largely from my father). The latter I downright disagree with. I have never lacked in confidence in my own abilities. Again, if you mix it with a large dose of that realistic sarcasm, maybe it could manifest itself as a perceived lack of confidence. What I see in myself is an honest look at what exercise and fitness means to a morbidly obese (those horrible fuckin words again), former fitness instructor whose body went AWOL a long time ago and whose brain is stuck in some place in the past when she could do, and did do regularly.

This is not the first time I’ve tried to get back to some level of activity, but it’s the first time it’s started to stick. It’s never easy. Never ever. And nor should it be. I know that. However hard we work, we’re constantly upping our levels. Speed, intensity, distance. Well, maybe intensity and distance. I’ll always be slow as fuck. But slow as fuck now, is actually still a little bit faster than slow as fuckity fuck was when I started! My downfall is that my brain can’t yet get over the fact that I used to be able to do all this and so much more. So, while I’m pleased with my progress, psycho-analysing it is double edged. It’s unrealistic that 20 years older, and probably nearly double the body weight, I should be able to do anything like the levels I used to. But I also know that even then, I never worked this hard. Never pushed myself this far. Never felt it so intensely. Never been so wrecked, so psyched out, so overwhelmed by the whole health and fitness thing and never felt so underwhelmed by ‘progress’. So, for every little tiny step forwards (and so far there have been nearly a million and a half), there is the reality that I should never have got here, and, since I have, that there is still so bloody far to go to put right everything that went wrong.

So, will I make 3 mountains? Yes. There is no doubt in my mind that, (barring some horrendous injury when the mountain pushes me overboard), I will go up and then down (fuck me, the going down is so hard) Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon on 3 consecutive days. How do I know this? Because, it seems, I am not lacking in confidence! I am, however unfortunately, my father’s daughter. When bloody minded, stubborn, obstinate, headstrong, shit for brains was handed out, I was right there, front of the queue, demanding more than my share and getting his genetically modified version. Mother was a bit strong willed too, in a quieter, less obvious, more ‘how to survive a shit life’ type of way. The strongest woman I’ve ever known, and while I pale in comparison next to her, I never really stood a chance! She would never have walked physical mountains, although she climbed metaphorical ones every day. She’d have made the mountain shift out of the way!

The fact that I have trained so hard, and had a fuckin amazing trainer to call me out on my shit through it all, (and offer the odd bit of exercise and fitness advice and guidance to boot) means I’m hoping to do it without dying (either during or afterwards). This is where I become ‘negative’ or in my mind, realistic. Completing the challenge doesn’t mean it’s not going to hurt. Loads. Physically, without question. Emotionally. Mentally. Psychologically. It’s going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I know, without a shadow of doubt, that the only reason I’ll be completing it is because of that whole bloody-minded thing. And then I’ll be over it and it’ll be on with the next. Because no matter how much of an achievement it will be, I’m still a million miles from where I want to be. For those who are proud of me, I’ll take that, but I won’t be proud of myself. We’re calculating it on different criteria, that’s all. I know how hard doing this stuff feels and I’m not proud of that. I know how far I have to go, and how easy it would still be to give up. I’m not proud of that. It’s not an end, it’s only really the beginning. When I get where I’m going, maybe, just maybe, I might be a little bit proud of myself. Next time I might pick a slightly easier beginning though!