Let’s Talk About Gym and Getting Things Done…

So I haven’t blogged about gym for a while, but then again, I haven’t been blogging a lot at all… And it is quite simply because I am slowly and steadily rearranging my life. It’s fun in a totally new way and I am loving it. When I started the Healthy Weight Programme at the Sport Science Institute of South Africa I was really hoping to get moving and I didn’t want to aim too high… I wanted to get moving sure, like tie my shoelaces with ease, well I have to say that it is time to re-evaluate my lowly goals. Because let’s face it at my very first meet up for the fitness assessment, they said oh so casually, “We will get you moving…” And they were right, I had no idea just how much I would be moving… or how much everything would be changing around me. I had no idea that I would actually run again, and I had no idea that I would be able to consistently get up at 5:30 in the morning to get their on time.

Firstly, let’s just say after a 4 weeks of learning exactly how to do gym we finally made it into the real gym last week… and there I discovered the treadmill. My last experience on a treadmill was somewhat of a disaster… and now I kind of like it, not as much as the rowing machine, which I really love. I have to say that the workouts are fun, difficult because we are learning new things all the time, and fun for the same reason. It’s not so much about the gym though, which is fabulous because I feel fitter than I have felt in forever and I am astonished to discover that things I thought I would never do again I actually can do. It helps to have a biokineticist, and a handful of encouraging interns alongside me saying, “you can do it,” all the way… I kind of wish I could borrow them for a Park Run. Not to mention, these folk would make excellent midwives, they are full of encouragement even when you are quite literally convinced that you cannot do something, they somehow manage to encourage you to keep trying.

Anyway, it isn’t so much about the gym, and neither is it so much about eating better, though I am doing a whole lot of that. It is all about the sleep. I am sleeping folks, can I hear a hoorah. It has been years since I slept like a regular person. I am in bed before midnight, often before eleven every single night… and I spontaneously wake up at five. This was a goal, that I thought sounded to good to be true, that I would never ever achieve, because it is completely unrealistic for all the things I try and do in a day. But a couple of weeks of real sleep is absolutely life changing. Once or twice I thought, how bad could it be, and I stayed up later only to feel so horrifically dreadful the next day that I quickly chose to sleep properly again the following night. Honestly how on earth did I survive on so little sleep for so many years. This has created a new problem for me, I am not sure how to fit everything into my day anymore…

I always used to blog when my kids were sleeping, I love the peacefulness and working away when the house is quiet. The reality is with doing this programme I have discovered that I need to carve out my needs a lot more clearly. Before I might have said, I am so tired and then soldiered on. Well now I head for bed. So I am looking for extra time in my day – time for emailing folk, time for editing photographs, and also time for blogging. So this means that a lot of folk around here have had to up their game somewhat. I no longer clean up after meals at all… ever. And I use that time for all the behind the scenes blogging work and in the evening, about the only good thing I am for is editing pictures… My most productive time of day is in the late afternoon, I have always liked that time of day for working, but that is also really busy, with visitors stopping by and kids needing attention for this and that. So this past week I tried blogging in the mornings, during school time. I know it seems crazy, but it appears that the mornings might be a good time for me… the kids have their work and I have mine.

When I get home from gym the kids are just waking up and they can take forever to get into gear. I find myself waiting around for them to catch up with me and so I tried getting home from gym and working solidly on blogging, for an hour or two before checking on how their school day was going and it worked. It has to get better though. They all got the idea that they could actually get started with school while I was busy. All my kids have school ready to tackle on their own at the start of the day, even if it is just reading, nobody needs all my attention all the time. So I am upping their school game too. Let’s face it, my kids have a working mum and it has taken forever for me to figure out that it is okay to work while they are up and about and doing stuff. I have always thought that would be letting them down somewhat, but actually it is raising their game and the more independent work they do, the better. I am going to keep at it and see if the morning slot doesn’t work as a good time to get blogging more consistent again. Honestly something has to work out, because I never ever want to go back to not sleeping again. And now that I have discovered how much I enjoy gym I don’t want to lose that either. So time is of the essence, blogging will go on, just at a slightly slower pace, while I find the balance between life and sleep. In the meantime, I am going to encourage all the night owls I know to get more sleep, you will feel so much better for it.

• Se7en’s Journey at SSISA Begins With a Goal…
• Se7en Takes You Through the SSISA Healthy Weight Assessment…
• From Workouts to Workshops and Everything In-Between…
• Se7en Begins Week 3 of our Healthy Weight Program…
• It’s Time to Take Sleep Seriously…
• Meet the Healthy Weight Team…
• Se7en’s Blog: And Suddenly We Are In Week 6…

• When Little Changes Make the World of Difference…
• When You Get Back to Gym After an Endless Break…
• Se7en’s Week Back at the Gym…
• Let’s Talk About Gym, and Healthy Weight and Especially Sleep…

I would like to thank SSISA for the free training/mentoring I am getting in exchange for an honest blog post. This is not a sponsored post and opinions expressed are entirely my own.