The upside of putting in the effort against all the odds is now paying off in huge ways this last year.

My body has been through the ringer as you may have read from my other posts, and when having experienced crippling exhaustion from: ME/CFS, POTS, Fibro, and EDS (Hypermobility Syndrome) rebuilding the body and exercising has been at times like hiking a mountain. At first it wasn’t possible, all I could ask for was some basic movement.

Unless you’ve encountered these bodily experiences, it’s hard to imagine how impossible cardio vascular exercise is. But keep the faith!

Luckily I never beat myself up when I went from a size 8 to a size 14. At the outset of my nose dive, I lost huge amounts of weight, likely because of sky high cortisol levels. Then I had the opposite experience and added a whole layer of blub around me, but in a way I was glad that I could move into this stage.

Food became very important, because it was one of the easiest things to focus on, and to bring some slight joy into my eventless, barren life, that largely existed of getting washed, dressed, and down to the garden and up again for the day, with some other things thrown in, like TV time, doing some stretches and some computer time.

Luckily I had more important things on my mind instead of worrying about my weight. For example, being able to get around more, get to work and generally back to functioning which did take around two years!

However, right from the outset, I have kept up my own tailor made movement / exercise programme for six years. Even when it was simple floor movements and light Pilates in the garden, then moving onto more complex routines, longer walks, and now I am happy to say that as a bonus I’m a size 10 again, and I think I’m rocking these jeans Yipee!

Continue reading →

I want to inspire you to believe you can do the things you once did, before the time you crashed, before your body had a fall, and your life changed, perhaps somewhat, or more drastically.

Please be motivated by this post, because I wish that I could have spoke to my suffering and frightened self a few years ago, to reassure myself that things would change.

Recently I completed a massive goal that had been seemingly impossible for a long time, and this in turn branched off into more goal progress in other areas, which I’m now going to talk about, as those little branches, and roots are what keeps the journey evolving and spreading out like a positive, healing wildfire.

I went on my first holiday abroad in a very long time, see another post about the adventures with this big triumph, and during this big achievement I solidified something I had been trying to do for a while, which was to extend to my next exercise level.

I love to swim and a beach holiday was a prime opportunity for more playing around with this deep desire.

The sea, and the holiday pools I had fun in recently, helped me to strengthen a goal that had got somewhat waylaid in 2017. Swimming!

During the recovering stages it’s trial and error for a long time, or so I found out. Swimming has always been a big love for me to get back to. My husband would often say, oh you’ll get back to swimming at some point, and despite my strong desire to achieve, if I’m honest, my mind would automatically chirp up with, “I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.”

Continue reading →