We’ve made it through another week. It’s not been too bad to be fair, or at least not until today. I don’t want to end the blog on a low, so let’s start with the crappy bits of my week first…
Allergies… Good god have they been bad the last couple of days! I have had allergies since I was a wee thing. I remember having the skin prick tests at hospital, not nice! Some years are worse than others. 1993/94 was particularly crappy. I remember going to the docs and demanding ALL the drugs, or I’d never been able to sit my exams at uni.
This year is the same, except there are no exams!
I am literally waking up each morning breathless, snotty and with goopy eyes. Not good when you’re in the middle of respiratory-related pandemic! Couple that with a permanently chesty cough and it’s a certain recipe for panic. I am back taking all the allergy stuff I can either swallow or shove up my nose, attractive I know.
The other low point was this morning. So I’d talked myself out of having Covid, then I decided to get up and at it, despite the wheezing and coughing. I plan to decimate a Laurel hedge at the bottom of my garden. Out came my favourite gardening dungarees… Except they went straight back. My arse would not get in them!
My dad gave me them in 2016 when I’d already lost a fair bit of weight. I loved them. You can tell, can’t you?
They had pockets for my secateurs and all the other crap I needed (mostly tissues for the above allergies!) I lived in them. I lost some more weight later on, and they were a bit too big, but I still loved them.
I am not going to lie, I knew I’d put weight on, even before the life of sitting on your arse all day. But I’d been in denial quite a bit. Well, the dungarees have certainly given me a metaphorical slap round the chops!
I am sat here now wondering how I am going to address this.
The easy thing would be to stop eating so much and exercise more. But therein lies the issue. I am not sure if I have spoken about my back before. It’s a bit buggered. I have some joint damage and a prolapsed disc. Funnily enough, it all started around the same time as the bad allergies! If I sit and think about it, I am in a low level of pain most days. I don’t tend to think about it.
But this is part of the catch-22 I am currently in.
When I lost weight and exercised more, it got a lot better. But then a couple of years ago it had a monumental strop and I had changes in sensation in my legs. It was terrifying. If I tried to walk, I felt like my legs would give way. The doctor muttered something about MS, so I stopped exercising. I went from boxing, kettlebell flinging and running to literally nothing. Nada.
Slowly but surely my arse has got bigger and my clothes have got smaller!
I spoke a little about my relationship with food here and here. I can’t say it’s a good relationship, it’s not even the food. I love food, but I also know I don’t really love myself enough to be mindful about what I am eating in relation to my current lack of movement. I need to work on that – both the moving and the eating!
So speaking of love, we’re so not ending this on a downer! Wednesday was earth day and I got some teabags. On the face of it, this has nothing to do with teabags, but hear me out…I love Pukka Liquorice and Mint teabags! But my local supermarket had run out. I decided to go have a look on the interwebs and see what I could find. I stumbled across Naturisimo. They had my teabags, but they also had a wee box on offer for earth day. I bought it! You can see it here
Being a bit of a skincare junky (we need to talk about my lockdown skin – remind me!) I thought it was pretty good for £18. The box came this morning. So far I’ve tried the Pai Rosehip oil and the Alima Mascara. I love the oil. I have such dry skin that it makes me laugh when they say to use three drops. I could use a bucketload daily and still have a dry face!
So there you go, a whistlestop tour of my week. I certainly need to exercise more, but I also need to not be stressing about it right now. Life is just too bloody short.
Not Middle Aged 