Song of the day: This Is What It Feels Like - Banks.
Currently reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
It's taken me a long time to decide on the title of this blog post. So long, in fact, that whilst I'm writing this it currently does not exist. I have a vague idea of what I would like to write about, but whilst I normally come up with a title very easily my mind is pretty blank today.
I'm currently in my second week of my summer holiday, in Clairvaux Les Lacs, Jura, France. The weather outside right this moment is lovely and sunny but with just enough cloud to provide a little respite from the heat here and there. I myself have retreated indoors. Half an hour lying in the direct sunlight earlier today have been quite enough for now, and I need a bit more of a break.
My original plan for this holiday had three prongs. I wanted to sunbathe, as I'd been really enjoying the half an hour of sun I was able to soak up during lunch hours at work and wanted the chance to experience it more. I also wanted to read more, since I'm usually too tired after work to do so. And finally I wanted to swim a lot, eat healthily and maybe lose a bit of weight. Or at least get fitter.
The first day here was wonderful. It was lovely weather, I read a decent amount of A Feast for Crows and I went swimming. But then came the rain. And for an entire week, it poured without pause. And it was freezing.
In my very eloquent and descriptive words via snapchat to a friend...
So of course, sunbathing went out the window. Every day when I checked the weather forecast, I was slightly disheartened to know that had I stayed at home the weather would have been wonderful. But alas, there was I was, stuck in the rain but determined to make the most of it.
And for the most part, I did. Rain may not be very conducive to sunbathing or sight-seeing or lake-swimming - my mother's two preferred holiday pastimes, but it does give you a lot of time to read. So read I shall.
But it's the final thing I mainly wanted to talk about. Swimming, eating healthily and getting fitter.
I'll just say it right now. It's not gone according to plan. I haven't swam every day. Aside from the fact that on some days it's just been too wet and too cold to leave the caravan and treck down to the pool, it's also a very different campsite to the one we were on last year. Last summer I did go swimming everyday, even if the weather wasn't particularly nice. Despite it being the same time of year, the campsite itself had very few children and so my mother, Harriet and I had the pool to ourselves for the most part. It meant that I was happy to stay in there for a long time, gradually going from 30 lengths at the start of the holiday to between 75-100 lengths by the end.
This terrifies me.
This time though the pool is just far too busy. It takes much longer than it should to navigate from one side of the pool to the other, and the children here - or rather, the teenagers - are at that age that they don't pay attention to themselves in relation to their environment. I'm thinking here of the game where one person sits on another's shoulders and faces off against another team (or in this case, two), and tries to push the others off. I don't mind people playing that in the pool if it's not particularly busy, or if they stay to one end. But these kids were taking up the entire pool which was fairly packed (as it was raining so everyone had amassed upon the indoor pool) and did not care who got in their way. They weren't going to get out of yours. It's all very well that happening with people like my mother and I trying to swim, but there were babies close by to them learning to swim. And I do mean babies. Towards the end I could hardly watch, I was just terrified something dreadful was going to happen.
But yes. I've been swimming three times and we've been here a week and a half. For a lot of the week and a half I've been sat in one position on the couch all day. Definitely not as much exercise as I had planned. I would have done some in the caravan, but due to the rain all the family has been stuck in the same room, which means there hasn't been the space to do so.
However, as much as I'm making excuses about the exercise, a large part of it is my fault. There's no one else to blame. I could go down for a swim in the rain or the cold, I just chose not to. I could exercise whilst my family are around, I just chose not to. I could go for a rain or a run outside, I just chose not to.
I've yet to reach the "I enjoy consistent exercise" stage.
The one area it has been more difficult for me to control - and also the most important area - has been my diet. I really don't like the diet my family have. It just doesn't agree with me. It's not particularly unhealthy - they make everything from scratch and there's usually vegetables in there somewhere, but most meals revolve around pasta or rice or potatoes. To some extent I've got around this - we had wholewheat pasta one night (my body just does not like white pasta at all), and when we've had potatoes I've bought sweet potatoes to have instead. I also had a sweet potato last night instead of the pasta. But other than that, there's lots of tinned things and creamy/cheesy sauces. There's also lots and lots of bread. I mean, we're in France. But we get through at least a baguette per day.
I'm not one of those "all carbs are evil" people. I prefer not to overload on white empty carbs, but that's because they don't agree with me. I know this because I haven't lived with my parents full-time in over four years now, and I feel much better if I eat what I tend to cook rather than what they do. But whilst I get to make a couple of meals here and there - I'm making gnocchi (again, not my preferred base health-wise although very tasty) with a courgette/aubergine tomato sauce, so there'll be a lot of veg in there - my parents are footing the bill so what they want goes.
At least I haven't overindulged as much as I have in the past. I don't think I've lost any weight - in fact I may have gained a little - but nowhere near as bad as I have some years. My goal for this month, after losing practically no weight last month, was to lose 5 lbs and this holiday was going to be key for that. It both has and hasn't been. It's true, I haven't lost much - if any - weight or lived particularly healthily...
Some of those would have been tasty.
But I have realised that I'm not doing enough and it's my fault. I'm not picking the healthier options all the time (I'm all for treating yourself occasionally, but my occasionally at the moment is practically every other day), and I'm also finding plenty of excuses not to do any exercise.
One of my current -albeit fairly good - excuses is that my back is sore. I injured it at the gym over a month ago now, but whilst it felt like it had got better and the pain vanished after three weeks of annoyance, it's back with a vengeance. I first noticed the pain return the day after I'd helped my sister move our of her room at university (I probably didn't lift the heavy boxes properly), but it's been nearly three weeks since then now and it's still sore. Swimming exacerbates it and I can feel it even when just lying or sitting down. Standing seems to help, but it's just very frustrating. I'm going to try and go back to the physiotherapist as soon as I can, but if it is what he thinks there doesn't seem to be a cure. It's supposed to just heal itself. But at the same time, that doesn't seem to be happening! Arghh.
Anyway, what was intended to be a thoughtful reflection on the trials and tribulations of health and fitness and how, despite good intentions, one has to be wary of excuses and recognise when you're making them, seems to have turned into a bit of a dear diary/ rant about my holiday so far. Oh well, so be it. This is unlikely to be the last time health and fitness is mentioned.
Moral of the story.
It's very warm again now despite being indoors, so I may move outside again. Perhaps there'll be a little breeze in the shade.
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