I'm Not Anti Exercise, I'm Just Anti Doing Stuff I Don't Like!

There’s a line in “Sex and the City”, where Carrie says that shopping is her cardio. There’s a lot of things I like about Carrie Bradshaw, her fabulous shoes, her ability to wear clothes that would quite frankly make me look like a crazy bag lady and the fact that despite spending most of her evenings drinking Cosmopolitan’s in a fancy New York bar, she really doesn’t have a weight problem! (Weight Watchers fans, a Cosmo is 6 pro-points!)

  Alright, I’m sure there’s a wealth of personal trainers who would argue that shopping isn’t cardio, but they would be wrong. I can only assume they’ve never spent a proper day shopping, walking in and out of shops, up and down stairs, spending hours and hours traipsing around the streets of your favourite city, looking for that one bargain! Plus, sitting to enjoy a coffee / glass of wine on your trip is not only a chance to rehydrate, but is also sort of like doing squats….. I went too far didn’t I?

  I think the point Carrie is trying to make, is that whatever it is that gets your heart pumping and the blood racing around your body, should be something you like doing. P.E lessons for me as a child, were not fun, running around a school field in P.E knickers in the freezing cold, getting bashed with a hockey stick and trying to make head or tale of what the bloody hell lacrosse was. None of these things made me happy or indeed want to continue them in later life. In fact having an amenable music teacher meant that he was quite happy to schedule my flute lessons for then!

  As part of my “Happy Katie” plan, and knowing that eating less and moving more helps with the slinky mission, I have decided to only do things at the gym that I really like. The classes where I don’t notice the ticking of the clock and spend it wishing the teacher would get a phone call telling her that a heard of goats had attacked her car.

  So the last few weeks, I’ve been trampolining. Planet Bounce has opened in Nottingham and if you haven’t been, then I’d really recommend it. I went with my friends and godchildren and bouncing is for EVERYONE! Turns out an hour of bouncing is quite a lot, but it’s one of the most fun things I’ve done all year!

Bounce selfie!

Shooting hoops is far easier with the help of a trampoline!

  I’ve carried on with Burlesque dancing, because lets face it, if more exercise classes involved top hats and feather boas, gyms would be happier, feather-covered places.  I’m doing Just Jhoom (Bollywood inspired) and today I booked myself into a Zumba class that I had never done.

  Turns out I didn’t read the small print with the Zumba class because it was the hardest class I have ever done! I’m not really sure why.  I’ve done Zumba a lot in the past, but for some reason my feet and arms had declared war on each other and were refusing to work in perfect harmony. There was one routine that involved so much spinning around, that I think even Kylie would have refused to continue! Still my new 71 year old BZF (best Zumba friend) kept checking I was OK and we had a lovely discussion about “Strictly Come Dancing”, she’s rooting for Jay & Aliona, she doesn’t like Peter Andre and she thinks Jeremy Vine is very brave to take part, because he’s all arms and legs.

  By the end of the class, I was slightly dizzy, very sweaty and a crazy red face!

  However I loved it and I’ll be going again next week, although maybe, just MAYBE I’ll get my limbs to work together.

Turns out I’m not anti-exercise, I’m just anti doing stuff I don’t like!

"She's Got a Right Bob on Her Sen" (Nottinghamshire speak for "Doesn't she think she's amazing?")

I got asked yesterday if I was a life coach, because every day I start the day by posting something positive on Facebook. In fact this isn’t the first time I’ve been asked that question and my reason for doing it is simple. Reading a book called “The Secret” really helped me reassess how I was living and whilst some people might think its claptrap, I can guarantee that these are the people that post Facebook statuses such as

You know the sort of statuses that elicit the responses

“The Secret” says what you think about you bring about, so if you think positively, positive stuff will happen because that’s the frame of mind you’re in. Think rubbish horrible thoughts and rubbish horrible things will happen. Read Rhonda Byrne’s book, she puts it far better than me!

  My secret is, that I work at being positive, having suffered from depression and tried to solve that problem by eating, which just made me fat, looking on the bright side doesn’t come easily, but I make it a priority. 

   Just recently, life has been tough, I’ve had a lot of things to deal with and last Thursday I could have cheerfully drowned myself in a vat of Maltesers, but I didn’t. Mainly because my sister Lucy talked me of the Cadbury’s ledge and she was right, I felt so much better for NOT eating the chocolate.

  I’ve struggled to get myself out of bed and paint a smile on the last week or so, but I have. Yesterday, the last thing I felt like doing was picking up my sparkly top hat, cane, fan and feather boa and heading to my Burlesque exercise class, but I did and I’m so glad I did. After an hour of gyrating my hips to such classics as “So Macho” and “Walk this Way” (don’t knock burlesque to an Aerosmith classic till you’ve tried it) I felt better than I had done in days.

  Now love a cheesy tune and a hip wiggle as much as the next woman, but the thing I really love about the class, is that it’s all about feeling good. There are ladies there of all ages and all sizes, but as Beyoncé belted out

 I looked at the faces of the women in the room and I knew that just as I was strutting round my red velour chair flicking my hair about pretending I was Beyoncé, I noticed every other woman in the room was feeling the same. Throughout that one song we all felt good about ourselves, our inner Beyoncé’s had found a voice and were singing loudly.

  You ask most women what she likes about herself and she’ll umm and ahhh. Ask her what she doesn’t like and you’ll be there for hours. Anyone that does say they quite like something about themselves is deemed to be “up their own arse” or if you’re from Nottinghamshire “got a right bob on her sen” and then society attempts to tear down that self confidence until she (or indeed he) feels as rubbish about themselves as the rest of them.

  So I decided to do myself a favour (and maybe you feel like doing the same) but for next week’s blog I’m going to make a list of all the things I actually like about myself and also keep a note of any compliments I receive. If you want to join in then simply comment below or like my Facebook page and send me a message!

And finally, another pound off this week! Slowly, but surely!

Free the Cheesecake One!

When I say this, it really isn’t an excuse, but the last few weeks have been really busy with work. We have a massive project on at the moment and I’ve spent a lot of time in meetings. Fortunately I've managed to stick to my diet and in meetings I’ve avoided biscuits, even the nice chocolate ones you normally only get at Christmas. I’ve made sensible choices if I’ve eaten out and any downtime that I have had, I’ve filled with exercise, so even though I didn’t make my meeting last week, on average I’ve been earning 41 bonus points. 

  This has been through a mixture of burlesque dancing, going to the gym and walking. I can now walk up the 199 steps in Whitby without thinking my heart is going to burst out of my chest! As a result this week a pound has magically disappeared. Well maybe not magically because I worked bloody hard for that!

The 199 Steps in Whitby

I’ve also been reinforcing my DNA Fit way of eating. A few months ago I was genetically tested to see what foods my body best responds to. Yes this is a thing and you can read about it in this blog. For me (and please keep in mind that this is exclusive to my DNA, yours will be different, even if we are related!) I need lots of protein and very little carbs. So despite my love of carbs, I now only eat them once a day.

  I also don’t eat chocolate, cakes, deserts or sweet things in general, because I've been hypnotised not to! Don’t I sound a hoot to be around! Sometimes I feel I’m morphing into Gwyneth Paltrow and before I know it, I’ll be on a macrobiotic diet, banning Cyril (my dog) from eating meat and saying things like “I don’t put anything that hasn’t been through an ancient refining process in my body” and spending 3 hours a day in a downward dog pose making humming noises. 

  As I had a little bit of time at home last night, I thought I’d experiment in the kitchen. If you read my Slinky blog regularly, you’ll know that the outcome of this is bound to be as happy as someone in a horror film going into a dark building, where the lights don’t work and there’s a serial killer on the lose.

  I love Pinterest and on there I’d found a recipe for a sugar free, carb free cheesecake, mmmmm sounds delicious (*may or may not be true) In my days as a sugar-aholic, the one thing I could make with serious aplomb was a cheesecake, my peanut butter creation had my neighbours begging me for the recipe and actually asking me to make it for EVERY gathering!

My Raspberry & peanut butter cheesecakes

  The sugar free / carb free recipe called for 4 ingredients

1. Cream cheese
2. Eggs
3. Bananas
4. Peanut butter (I used an organic almond one, my inner Gwyneth was proud)

The recipe said bung it in a bowl, mix it up, shove it in the oven….or words to that effect. I can’t help, but feel there’s a cooking programme lurking deep within my soul.

Looks promising at this stage, very American cheesecake!

  After an hour, I figured it was time to take it out of the oven, well the smoke alarm was going off and that’s a sign in the Trinder household that dinner is ready.

A bit burnt, but I can live with burnt if it tastes nice!

  Now granted it was a bit burnt, but I wasn’t going to let that put me off. I waited patiently for it to cool and down and waited to taste the creation that would make me a changed sugar free / carb-free loving person. As I cut myself a sensible slice and prepared to have my taste buds tickled, I realised that there’s a reason I had loved cheesecake so much and that was the carbs and sugar that was in it.

Sadly my cheesecake was not a pleasant experience, it just tasted like eggy cream cheese mixed with a bit of banana and peanut butter and then burnt in the oven! It just made me miss proper cheesecake!

  If you have any sugar free recipes that you’ve tried and actually tasted nice, then I’d love to hear about them!

"The Minute You Walked in the Joint"

After my foray into pole dancing last year, which left me with a sprained armpit (or Pectoralis Tendonitis, as my friend Michelle said it was really called and she should know, because she’s a doctor) I decided I should maybe try something that doesn’t involve trying to hoist myself up onto a metal pole! I managed to convince my sister and friend Paula that we should try Burlesque; shockingly they thought it would be a good idea too! Well they did after a few glasses of wine and being forced to listen to lady Marmalade on repeat.

  So last Thursday we headed to a dance school to have a go at “titty dancing” as we’ve affectionately nicknamed it! I’m always a little bit wary of dance school.  I was never a child who wanted to do ballet when they were little. I attended about 3 disco dancing classes when I was 5 (yes I did say disco dancing, for in the 80’s that was what they were called) but it wasn’t for me and in fairness, I think my Mum was pleased, she wasn’t one for sewing sequins onto as leotard. Our fancy dress options as children were a ghost (white bed sheet on your head) or a witch (black bag as a dress) I think Mum breathed a sigh of relief when we opted for playing musical instruments!

  I liked this dance school as soon as I walked in because they had a café and members of staff who said hello! When we were told to grab a top hat, cane, feather boa, chair and fan, I was pretty sure I’d found my spiritual home. Lucy pointed out that she pretty much owned all these items anyway (don’t ask)

   The teacher, Hannah was really friendly, the other ladies in the class were nice too and just as glamorous as we were. I was a little bit worried that we would be the odd ones out and everyone else would be a size 8 with fake boobs wearing corsets and bright red lipstick and just did the can-can for fun. That wasn’t the case, we were not so much Dita Von Tesse, more Dita “could I have a minute before I Tesse”

  There was one move that reminded me of the “bend and snap” from “Legally Blonde”, a Beyoncé style booty shake and a slightly awkward situation where I nearly choked on a pink feather.

  Still by the end of it, I wasn’t sure whether I’d burnt more calories from laughing or dancing, but by the time I’d got home, my fitbit was showing 12,636 steps!

  It also meant that this week at Weight Watchers I had lost a pound. Slow and steady, but it’s coming off and if next week I lose another pound, I’ll be through the next stone barrier which will be a real psychological boost for me!

  There’ll be more Burlesque this week, because lets face it, they pretty much had me at “Shirley Bassey”