The Year of Getting Unexpected Things Done… As I Graduate from Beginner to Intermediate Athlete…

So I began this year as the year of Getting Things Done. I had a great series going… in January I posted computer related projects and then in February I moved into the Kitchen and tackled a heap of projects… and then in March the series fizzled. In retrospect it didn’t fizzle at all, I was merely getting myself in order. I know I planned to get the house in order, and when I started the series I was thinking about getting projects that had lain dormant for ever, actually done… what I wasn’t thinking about were those projects that are hard to see and the biggest project that I needed to confront was not so much closets and bookshelves… the biggest project that I needed to tackle, that I hadn’t even glanced at since having my first child nearly twenty years ago… was me.

And this is where blogging becomes a very good thing. When a friend called me and asked if I wanted to blog for the Sport Science Institute of South Africa, I was all “for sure.” I was ready for change, dying for it for the longest time in fact… for years now I have progressed from totally stagnant, to daily ambles, to hiking… but I was never actually fit… and I really wanted to feel fit again. So I leapt at the opportunity!!! It turns out fitness is just a small fraction of what needed to change about me. And for March and April I have slowly and steadily worked my way through the Healthy Weight Programme… I was definitely getting something done.

My biggest initial worry was how I would get up and out of the house frightfully early in the morning, this was quickly replaced by the fear that I wouldn’t be able to cope with the classes. It is one thing to worry about getting to class and quite another to worry about surviving the class. Turns out in my year of Getting Things Done… I would have to start with my health. This is not just about fitness at all: I had get my body used to exercising all the time – gone are the weekly hikes, with a week of recovery in-between, now it is a weekly hike with a whole lot of gym in-between; I had to get real about what I actually eat – nothing like a food diary for a bit of a reality check; I had to get my head straight, no more excuses and no more pondering about what I can’t do and a whole lot of focusing on just trying things I had thought were impossible; And the biggest thing… I had to sleep properly. Oh my word, my world not to mention the blog have literally ground to a halt, while I have re-learnt to sleep properly. After years and years of interrupted sleep I had learnt to survive on minimal sleep… this folks is not ever a good plan. I am learning all about sleep and advocating sleep where ever I go… If you don’t sleep right, you won’t eat right, and you will not be able to exercise at all… Start with sleep and the rest will follow.

I must say that for years I had “tried” to go to bed earlier, but the truth was there was always a blog post that needed finishing or photographs that needed editing, a kitchen to tidy, not to mention kids to talk to. Always some excuse to stay up just a little bit later. Turns out I was so lucky that I started with exercise… I had to get to class, I just could not miss it. And I needed to sleep in order to get to class on time and that was the beginning of the end of my appalling sleep habits. I had simply run out of excuses and had to sleep right. I started by just sleeping well the nights before gym class… but I very soon felt so much better on the days that I slept well that I couldn’t help myself and went to bed earlier on other nights too. It was too good to be true and when a couple of deadlines loomed I quickly slipped back into my old ways… only to feel so dreadful that just one late night was enough to send me earlier to bed. I am cured of late nights. I like the feeling of being well slept so much that I am not prepared to go to bed late anymore… I won’t read late, I won’t work late, I won’t blog late… that’s it.

I did of course have to rearrange things somewhat and figure out when and how to blog… because a blogger must blog!!! And I am getting it right… I have found a snippet of time in my day and I am getting a work flow in play. It wasn’t instantaneous… for a while there I just stared at my computer and left it at that. I had to find time… so I went looking for it. First place to find time was the hours and hours I spent in the kitchen. I haven’t cleaned up from a single meal even once since I began going to gym. If my kids want a healthy mother, and of course they do, then that is the price they have to pay. It’s good for them and it is good for me… win, win. I use that time to batch work and in the evening when I would normally be cleaning the kitchen I now read, a large part of having a blog that reviews books requires reading, you have to be awake to read. In the morning when I get back from gym and the kids are stirring, I am at my most wide awake and ready for anything… that is blog time – not email time, not getting back to folk time… just writing… I have little chinks in the day for fitting all those bits of work in that blogs revolve around… I am finding them and figuring things out… it is a bit of a journey, but one that I have to take.

So in my year of Getting Things Done, I have learnt to sleep and finished the Healthy Weight Programme eight weeks of solid crack of dawn exercise… I have done it, even though it was never ever on my list of things to do… and not only that I have learnt to sleep again. I didn’t lose masses of weight… that was never my goal, that would have been a plus, but I did lose masses of cm, really when you add up 2 cm here and 3 cm there and 13 cm somewhere else, it very quickly adds up to a lot of cm. So nothing actually fits… I am trying to see this as a good thing… though you all know how I hate shopping. Do I feel fitter, not really, that’s because every gym class leaves me tired in the best kind of way, always working harder, learning more and pushing to get through it. The classes are challenging… but I love a challenge and I love gym. The thing is I might not feel fitter, but I no longer notice the hill as I walk up from the beach, and I can pick up and move things around like nobody else in the house… I am fitter, I am definitely a whole lot stronger. Not only that, I might have finished the Beginner course last Thursday, but I immediately started the Intermediate course on Tuesday… the show must go on… I haven’t stopped because the course ended. I am carrying on, somewhat terrified, because Intermediate sounds a whole lot harder than Beginner, the classes look harder, I have a better idea of what I am in for(!) and it feels a bit like starting over. So early days as an Intermediate athlete… and who knows where this will lead.

• 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…
• Se7en’s Blog: There is no Assessment Like Your Own Assessment
• Se7en’s Blog: 8 Things I Loved About the Healthy Weight Programme for Beginners.

• 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…
• Let’s Talk About Gym and Getting Things Done…

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.

Meanwhile, we haven’t quit my Getting Things Done Series… we have been getting a whole lot of things done around the house… finished in the kitchen for now, cleaned out the garage and about to do a bookshelf swoop… so lots to blog about. Watch for that series, it’s going to be back on track soonest…

January: Computer and Social Media

• Week 1: Decluttering your Computer
• Week 2: Updating your Blog
• Week 3: Finding your Work Flow
• Week 4: Streamlining Your Social Media

February: The Kitchen

• Week 5: Getting Food Onto the Table
• Week 6: Spring Cleaning the Kitchen
• Week 7: Getting the Recipes Under Control
• Week 8: Making Full Use of the WonderBag