"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”

Pectoralis Tendonitis

Over the years I have had many an injury. It’s a cross you bear when you’re as clumsy as me, some of them I think would be pretty hard to replicate! I broke my ankle when a boy racer reversed into me, he also broke my little toe, which I have to say at the time was far more painful than the ankle.

  This scar is the result of opening a microwave! Seriously, I opened the door and somehow got my wrist caught on it.

Microwave wrist scar!

  So it was really only a matter of time before pole dancing left me with a comedy injury. This week, we had a different instructor, who was less Amazonian goddess and more pocket rocket! This woman was 5ft 2 and at one point I felt the need to wave my arms around her because I thought she was on wires like Peter Pan in pantomime! As I tried (and failed) to replicate the teddy bear spin, (hold onto the pole and spin round with your legs wide open) a spin where you bring your knees into chest and a crucifix (climb the pole, grip it with your knees and hold both arms out to the side) I could feel bits of me start to bruise, pull and generally ache. A quite enthusiastic attempt at a teddy bear spin and I pulled something I have never pulled in my life, something I didn’t even know you could pull, my armpit! Before you scoff at the fact this isn’t possible, it is and it bloody hurts! My friend Michelle, who’s a doctor, said the technical term is pectoralis tendonitis and I needed to ice it. I went to bed with a bag of frozen peas under my arm….clearly pole dancing is making me sexier!

    Also this week, in a bid to boost my weight loss and earn lots of bonus points, I played squash for the very first time. I normally play badminton with my friend Debbie, upsetting the over 50’s as we kick them off the court we have booked so they can’t play for free (how unreasonable!) Anyway this week they’d apparently booked all the courts, for every time available for every day!

  Debs suggested we tried squash because she’s played before. I agreed! The man on reception told us to head down the corridor and knock on the white door.

This is the "white" door apparently

  Didn’t bode well did it? The court itself could have done with a 60 minute makeover and this handprint on the wall, chillingly reminded me of Yvonne Atkins from “Bad Girls” trying to escape the execution cell after Fenner locked her in. That episode gave me nightmares for weeks!

Scary Yvonne Atkins style handprint

  Once I’d put that out of mind, Debbie set about trying to teach me the rules, I kind of got it so we attempted a game.

  I can honestly say that squash is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had a go at, the sweat was pouring off of me by the end (what a lovely sexy image for you) and my sprained pectoralis tendonitis throbbed a bit! Still when I typed it into my weight watchers tracker, the fact I’d earned 15 bonus points doing it made me smile!

Me & Debs with a post squash rosy glow!

The general result was last night when I stepped on the scales I'd lost 3 pounds and I genuinely couldn't have been happier! It also meant that I got 6 pebbles, one for each 1/2 pound I'd lost and Lucy got 2 as she'd lost a pound. I think my new Weight watchers leader, Heather is clever, because as she hands you your pebbles and you put them in the basket, you feel 10 feet tall! (actually if I was 1 feet tall, I'd be seriously underweight!)

weightloss pebbles

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!

Fat Girls Don't Don't Dance....But Slinky Ones Do!

When I started writing this blog, I promised myself I would be honest. So rather than pretend my first weigh in for 3 weeks "wasn't that bad" I've put on 6 whole pounds! Ouch! Although I’ve been a Slinky Angel this last week, so I can only imagine what the actual damage REALLY was, so I'm assuming I've actually lost weight since I got back from holiday! What? I’m a journalist, we like to manipulate facts!

  Anyway that aside it’s a new year and unlike everyone else in the world, I decided to leave my return to the gym until a week after everyone else and here's why. The first week of a new year, gyms are full of people in new trainers doing lunges, I figure tomorrow we’ll be a week into the new year and some of those people will have decided to retire with an early groin strain.

  2014 is also the year I’m going to be more confident about my body, even though I’m losing weight (this week aside!) I know that most mornings if I'm misfortunate enough to catch a naked glimpse of myself in the mirror, I pick a dozen things I don’t like. So I've decided that now when I step out the shower I MAKE myself look at me naked and pick something that I do like about me. Most mornings it’s my eyes and hair, but hey they’re good eyes and hair, and focusing on what’s right with me is far better than letting my thunder thighs ruin my day!

  I was watching “Splash” on Saturday night (feel free to judge, even I’m appalled at myself) and it bugged the living daylights out of me how they treated Gemma Collins (blonde girl from “TOWIE”) they did anything and everything to avoid mentioning her weight. They spoke about how scared she was of heights, her bruises, and then patronisingly praised her. It’s the same on shows like “Strictly Come Dancing” and “Dancing on Ice” no one expects the fattie to do well. Look at the criticism Lisa Riley received before she’d even zipped on a sequin frock and yet she was brilliant.

  It set me thinking, when you’re fat, the majority of the time you feel a bit crap about yourself, despite the myth of the "jolly fat person" That's really just Santa and I bet even he has days where he thinks "oh go away, with your bowl full of jelly nonsense". People who've never had a weight problem and I'm led to believe these mythical creatures do exist, say stuff like "well you’ve only got yourself to blame you shovelled the food down your neck" and to a point they’re right. Except they’re not! For me, my eating problems started because I was looking for some way to make myself feel better from all the bad stuff that was happening in my life. I didn’t do it because I was in training for the Biscuit Boost eating Olympics, I did it because I was miserable! So as funny as those people thought it was to refer to me as “Fat Katie” or offer everyone else in the office a cake, but me (this was the favourite trick of a “lady” I like to call Vile Scabby Fanny) all it did was make me feel even worse and go home and eat even more, so how did that help?

  In 2014, I am going to learn to love every single inch of me. From my ridiculously large boobs (which I actually quite like) to my squidgy belly,  to my too much junk in my trunk ass; I’m going to adore them! As a result my New Years resolution is to try something that’s going to make people either laugh at me behind my back and say things like “hilarious, she actually thinks she can do that, she's far too fat!” to “Are you sure?” I’ve signed up for pole dancing lessons. I am fortunate enough to have friends who when I messaged them and said there’s 6 pole dancing lessons on Group on for a tenner fancy it? They said yes!

By the end of 6 weeks I will be able to do this & look like this •disclaimer* maybe / sort of / isn

 I know it will be hard, I know I will have aches in places I didn’t know I had places, but I’m going to give it a go. When I’ve done that I’m signing myself up for Burlesque lessons! Why? Because I think not only will it be a laugh, but also both things are about feeling sexy and confident and that’s what Slinky is all about. No matter what your size you should be able to feel sexy and confident and happy with who you are!

PS - If anyone is aware of any Nottinghamshire Burlesque classes please let me know, I'm ready to unleash my inner Dita Von Tease!