Beat The Heat challenge - Week Seven

1 - What have you done this week to work towards your goals?

• I've lost all but one pound of what I put on over my "holiday week" with the parents. Our food hasn't necissarily been healthy all the time, but being busy we've not snacked on crap at the end of the day and this has certainly helped. I've totally dropped off on the calorie counting...I feel disillusioned with it, I've not gained healthy eating habits but have managed to gain a few unhealthy ones, which are too numerous and actually ridiculous to list here. I've plans to take up Weight Watchers for a fresh perspective and a new kick start, so in the meantime I've been very focussed on eating healthy sized portions and three decent meals a day.
• Not sure I'll be making hand made Christmas presents for everyone as planned. Doing that was a response to being unemployed (and therefore skint) but now having a job I find I'll have the money to buy, but without the time to make...see my predicament? I'm currently aiming to finish the knitted piece I started in the first place by the end of the challenge.
• I started my weight loss tracker bracelet last night and would have finished it except tiredness hit me suddenly like a brick wall! Should be finished today though :)  - Just finished it after this blog entry, but as I have to be leaving the house in fifteen minutes I shall show it to you all tomorrow ^_^
• I've had to really work on keeping up with my chores, and it isn't helped that I sometimes have to run around putting shit away that should already have been put away in the first instance (like fighting a loosing battle at times) however it gets done. I officially hate cables and wires, but it gets done!

2 - What did you do to make yourself feel fabulous?

I've had a bit of an epiphany week. I feel fabulous this week because I find myself wonderfully happy with my lot in life right at this point in time!

3 - If your house was on fire and you could grab ONE thing (outside people and your laptop/computer, they are all out) what would it be?

This is a toughy. If I was thinking logically it would be my file of all our paper documents. I thought I might say my asthma meds etc but they can be replaced for free...however passports, birth certificates etc all cost a bomb to replace! However if I was thinking emotionally it would probably be my jewellery box. I don't have a lot of jewellery but everything I wear on a regular basis has special meaning to me for one reason or another.

4 - Tell us about your blog. Treat it like a book, what's happened so far?

Well it started off in January of this very year as a way to record my last few months in Liverpool as we were planning on moving back to the North East, and to create a more personal link for friends in Liverpool to keep up with me (there's only so much you can say in a facebook status!). It was meant to tell a story, but as it became evident that we would not be moving it morphed into more of a tale of personal development and progression, epitomised by the various challenges I signed up for. These are no fluffy little challenges either; it has helped me to change a few aspects of myself that I wanted to change. I probably could have changed these things without the blog, but that doesn't mean I would have.

5 - Tell an embarrasing story about yourself. No dodging.

When I was 16 I started going to Taekwondo classes. My dad had done it as a teen/young adult and wanted to get back into it to loose a few stone, and my sister had also dabbled in it in the past. It seemed like a great way for us as a family to get fitter. The instructor lifted weights as well as doing Taekwondo and he was really big on physical fitness, therefore only about half of our session was dedicated to the topic at hand...the first hour was always spent doing laps around the hall, push ups, squats, stretching, you name it we did it. It was a rigorous warm up and physical conditioning programme, and looking back on it now if my stupid local yokel doctor hadn't been an idiot and keept me on an 11 year old childs dose of "preventor" inhalor for my asthma (I was already at this point at least 5ft 10" tall and about 224 pounds - I did NOT have the body or lungs of an 11 year old child!) I could have fit as a fiddle. Either way, I was the fittest then than I'd ever been before or ever have been since.

But I was still 224 pounds (probably a bit more, but I know I've put on about a stone in weight for every year of my life so that's just a ball park figure really) with a big round tummy and a big bum, and what many call thunder thighs. I would say it was more like big bass drum thighs because there aint no thunder like the thunder in my thighs right now, but I digress.

You'll all have seen the kind of uniform you have to wear for martial arts. Taekwondo shirts aren't wrap arounds (thank God!) but they're all prety much white pyjama suits. They don't come in ladies size 20 (I think I was about a ladies size 20 then, or wavering between 18 and 20) you order them based on your height. They're pretty spacious anyhow, they have to be to allow for movement, so when my first set finally came I was delighted. It was a bit tight around the hips perhaps but nothing tragic.

Oh how I was mistaken.

All that fitness we did beforehand? After our 30 laps or so, the instructor lined us up in rows, and in order of seniority, seniority dictated first by grade (belt colour) then by age, the most senior at the front and the least senior at the back. It just so happened that this evening we had two black belts, one or two other intermediate grades then a whole army of us new beginners, so I was stood in the front row with everyone else right behind me as our instructor had us begin standing squats.

I can still remember the rip roaring, ear drum bursting BANG that sounded as my butt burst the seam of my "pyjama" pants right open, infront of pretty much everyone in the room. And let me tell you, these aren't cheap old pieces of tat. They're well made, quality pieces of workmanship. Those seams are tough as old boots.

The funny thing is that after a moment of going bright red I got over it, grabbed my hoody and tied it around my waist so as to hide my bum shame, and got on with it for the rest of the night. I think I earned myself some brownie points of respect that evening. I'm probably more embarrased now than I was then. Kinda wish I still had the same motivation I had then, the same determination. I probably do have somewhere, I just need to find something that inspires it as much as that did back then.

And finally, the positive picutre of the week. You know me, I'm not one for taking my camera around with me so it's another filched photo. Everything in the news this week has been doom and gloom with senseless riots having taken place up and down the country, ridiculous criminality, little scally idiots trying to cash in on a free pair of trainers or, infamously, a bag of tesco value basmati rice. It actually really suprised me that they hit us here in Liverpool. Outsiders (hahaha, yeah, 'outsiders') may not have been suprised, and seven years ago I might not have been suprised, as Liverpool still has a notorious reputation to said 'outsiders'. However, having lived here for five or six years now, just about every native of the city always seems so proud to be a part of it and very family or community oriented. Yeah you do get some bad stuff that goes on, people fight and steal cars and crash them into school walls and nick your post...but those are individual crimes by individual low lives that you could find anywhere in the world. To have so many people from the place group together to trash it up and make the place look a burnt out dump really did suprise me. But anyhow, enough of their idiocy, they have had too much coverage, so my positive picture is this;

This of course is not Liverpool, but London where it all kicked off. However, it would seem that these so called "Riot Wombles" popped up wherever the rioters did to clean up the mess they left in their wake, wherever that was in the country. Not paid, not pressured, just united in their common cause to put wrongs to somewhat right again. If politicians wanted to talk about communities fractured and broken by the actions of their opposing parties being the cause of these riots, I believe pictures like this show that they're wrong.

God Bless the Riot Wombles!