Don't Cha!

If I'm REALLY honest, food wise this week hasn't been great, exercise wise I have been an angel Lots and lots of walking and I've even got round to one of my New Year's resolution. Somehow this has all collided to mean I've lost a pound, so I'm happy with that. This week I intend to be good both food and exercise wise!

There are two outstanding memories I have from my clubbing days, one is the image of the women of Mansfield attempting to woo the men of North Nottinghamshire with by recreating the Eric Prydz video to “Call Me” and the other is, girls "slut dropping" and  pretending they were Nicole Scherzinger. 

  Now don’t get me wrong, I love to dance and harbour secret hopes of being asked to be a contestant on “Strictly Come Dancing”, paired with Artem Chigvintsev. This would subsequently lead to a long term love affair and possibly marriage. I am the girl who throws herself around the dance floor in a comedy way, I am not the girl who struts and thrusts in a sexy way, because lets face it I’m not sexy and I have never felt sexy regardless of what weight I've been.

  One of my new year’s resolutions was to do something to make myself try and feel a bit sexier. Even though I am losing weight and my body is changing it’s a slow process and I don’t feel sexy, I still feel big. So I decided I would do something where the whole premise was to love your body and show it off! So with the aid of a Living Social deal and two of my bessies I managed to convince them we should try pole dancing! Shoulder injuries better (Paula) and boxing match fought and won (Laura) it was time to do it.

Pole dancing like the pros...

   I booked us into the class and the lady e-mailed to say we needed to bring loose trousers, shorts, trainers and heels. I refuse point blank to get my legs out for anyone so I ignored that bit and took everything else. When we arrived, it became quite apparent that me, Laura and Paula were the oldest  ladies in the class, and in my case, the largest. It felt a little bit like we’d walked into a university party, everyone else in the room  seemed to be 19, in micro hotpants, vest tops with neon bras peeking out from underneath and banging bodies! As we waited for the class to start we noticed that the girls seemed to be greasing their thighs with baby lotion. Not only had I not bought shorts, I'd completely forgotten the baby lotion, it's all I can do to remember my keys when I go out!

  Please don’t think that we’d walked into a room with lots of mean girls who stared and pointed at us, because we really hadn’t. These were pretty sexy girls who smiled at us; the women who were quite clearly heading for an age where dislocating a hip could be a real possibility. The teacher was an Amazonian goddess and as she talked us through the “fireman spin” and the “ankle twirl” (I might have made up the name of that last one) she made it look REALLY easy! When she said who wants a go I found myself stepping confidently towards the pole, grabbing it with both hands and then executing what can only be described as the “fireman falling on his ass spin” 

action shot! Yes I really am spinning that quickly!

  Undeterred I tried again, Laura commented I was less pole dancer and more a skipping Mary Poppins! Julie Andrews is sexy right?

 As we took turns to twiddle around the pole, occasionally stopping to wipe it with a flannel (cue lots of greasing the pole type jokes) I watched the other girls, the longer the class went on, the more items of clothing were removed; tracksuit bottoms became hot pants, vest tops became crop tops and I think one girl even put on a corset.

  These girls were amazing, they were far more advanced than our fireman spins, they were hanging upside down, holding on by a thigh, spinning left, then right. It's hard to believe that I will ever be able to do anymore than spin around with one foot clearly routed on the ground, although the Amazonian goddess instructor seemed to think that we would be able to! I promise if we reach this stage, I'll video it for you! There is something about dancing around a pole that makes you feel sexy! Even me in my tracky bottoms, man's t-shirt and socks with a hole in, for the first time possibly ever I felt a teeny tiny bit sexy and led to a moment where I felt the need to do a Miley Cyrus type twerk!

  Apart from the fact that today I can barely move my arms and I have some interesting bruises on my shins, I loved every second of pole dancing. Sexy is more about a state of mind and attitude than what you look like, it's about pushing your shoulders back, holding your head high and feeling good in whatever you're wearing. 

  Just recently I've found myself so focused on the end result of losing weight, I've forgotten to enjoy what I'm doing and not be afraid to do different things. So whilst I won't be hanging upside down on a pole anytime soon, when I do and I fall off I will do it with a Slinky smile!