The heart matters

So, as you know, my husband has to have open heart surgery next year. He had another consultation with the specialist today and brought home a pile of leaflets. I felt nauseous reading them.

Ever the optimist I consider the silver linings.

1) We have great life insurance. 

2) Our trauma insurance will pay out.

Are you wondering if I’m too focused on the financial benefit of my husband’s major surgery? 

Indeed I was, until surgery became the catalyst for giving up the booze. Now I’m focussed on our health and the positive lifestyle changes which are coming with it. 

We have never embarked on a long dry period together before. We seem to be closer because of it.

It’s made me ponder that the heart, both literally and figuratively, matters. 

Namaste

Secret Sober Yogi xx

Namaste

Every Monday night I spend 90 minutes in skimpy clothing contorting my body into 26 yoga poses while sweating profusely in front of a floor to ceiling mirror in a room heated to 40 degrees C. 

Each week I show up on the mat reluctantly because I know the class is going to be hell and each week I leave the practice feeling amazing. I sleep deeply and the next morning I feel on top of the world. 

Bikram Yoga is addictive. But it’s also incredibly confronting. The practice exposes every weakness, every vulnerability, every insecurity you have both mentally and physically. 

One pose, Camel Pose or Utrasana is supposed to open the heart. If you’re feeling at all emotional Camel Pose can literally make you cry. 

To get the best out of a Bikram class you should be well hydrated, well rested and have had nothing to eat in the two hours before class. During those 90 minutes you will get to know your body and mind deeply and intensely. 

Bikram and alcohol do not mix. Alcohol is a diuretic. It causes your body to remove fluids from your blood. I have endeavoured to do many a class on a day after drinking. 

After nearly six weeks alcohol free the difference in my practice is unbelievable. My balance has never been so good. I can much more easily bat away thoughts that would normally distract me until at least a third of the way through the class when my mind finally quietens, my body feels like it’s been lubricated with oil and my poses are deeper. 

If you’ve never practiced Bikram Yoga and have no idea what I’m talking about check out this video of the world champion Kasper Van Den Wijngaard - it’s quite something what the body can do when it’s at its peak physique. 

Namaste

https://youtu.be/PLBOsOt3qtc

Couch to 5k

I've never been a runner. All that puffing and panting, sweat and effort. Shin splints, knee injuries, chafing. What could possibly be the attraction?

Last year I started a new job and one of our sponsorships was a breast cancer fundraiser run so I thought it would be cool to be able to run it.

I had visions of surprising colleagues and friends, 'I never knew you could run!'. 'Yeah, just knocked out an easy 6kms' I would say.

I wasn't sure how to get started and I didn't want to ask my runner friends.  

At the time one friend was posting Facebook posts of her regular 10km runs.

A former colleague was posting Facebook posts of her regular 20km trail runs.

I had a long way to go. Baby runner. Just born. Red, wrinkly and crying. 

God love the NHS. They have a free Couch to 5k app with the lovely Laura. I got started by driving to a housing estate with little roads where I didn't know anyone who lived there.  

I remember those first few times I could manage to run from one end of the little cul-de-sacs to the other. 

It took me four months of running three times a week to run 5kms. I was so proud of my achievement.

Running is amazing. I feel fantastic afterwards. There’s a reason they call it the runner’s high.

The first 15 minutes is the hardest, then my body seems to accept I'm running and I get a second wind. If my legs are feeling strong, my breath allows the run to be relatively easy.

I’ve been running more since I stopped drinking. My breath is coming more easily and I’m picking up the pace.

Last week I watched the movie Brittany Runs a Marathon. She quit drinking and partying, started training and ran the New York Marathon.

If she can do it...

Day Dot

My husband has to have open heart surgery in March next year.

It’s not a shock, we knew this operation was coming but looking it square in the face makes it very real and rather frightening for both of us. 

On the plus side:

It’s not unexpected - we can plan and prepare

Our insurance policy will pay us a chunk of money

And best of all the cardiologist tells my husband he needs to lose weight before surgery.

I think about Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, whose poem about death and dying began with the line “Do not go gentle in that good night”.  My husband is not going into the biggest operation of his life with any risks around his health so we take this advice seriously. 

I'm pretty active but in the 14 years since I had my daughter I've put on 14 kilos. It seems like a good time to join my husband in losing weight. I would love to feel healthier and lose weight.

I have so many wonderful clothes that don’t fit me and I don’t love what I see when I look in the mirror.

We’ve talked about losing weight for years but our lifestyle hasn’t enabled it to happen. We’re big drinkers, love eating and are generally very social people. 

We discuss our strategy. It needs to be simple, easy to follow and above all, something we can stick to.

I’m not prepared to bamboozled by diet fads, pay for food to be delivered or go on any form of crash liquid diet. 

Calories in - calories out should be a simple formula. We’re both fairly analytical people and it makes sense to just cut out the things that are high in calories and low in nutrition. 

Oh dear, those two things happen to be cheese and wine. And one goes with the other. Sigh.

We decide not to set weight loss goal, we decide to do this by timeframe.  The first priority is health, weight loss will surely follow. That way we also don’t need to be weighing ourselves each day and stressing out about the number of kilos on the screen.

There are 635 calories in a bottle of wine. A female’s daily intake for the whole day should be 2000 and 1500 if you’re trying to lose weight. This means drinking a bottle of wine is nearly half of these calories. And what’s worse is that those calories are empty calories. They have zero nutritional value. ZERO.

This makes me feel better. I’ll be cutting out something that does absolutely nothing for my body. 

In addition, alcohol lowers our inhibitions and stimulates the appetite, a lethal combination which lowers willpower and leads to packing on the calories from snacks like crisps (also a weakness). 100 grams of crisps = 536 calories.

Alcohol can also lower blood sugar which causes cravings for sugar and carbs. 

We’re convinced. 

It’s Day Dot of six months alcohol free. We’ve never gone more than a month without alcohol. Can we do it? 

Let the journey begin...