Health & Beauty July 2014

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Working Out On The Phone

She Stoops To Conquer

In the last issue I channelled a fifteenth century German philosopher in my examination of friendships; this time I have turned to a French military theorist, Ferdinand Foch, for my inspiration on succeeding.  This column is getting very high brow indeed – pun intended…  

By the way, health and beauty is not the vacuous self-centred high maintenance platform some think it is.  Having a beautiful mind and a healthy heart are the very pinnacle of the state of being we are trying to achieve.  The rest of it is just set dressing and we can pick and choose the bits we whole-heartedly sign up for or reject as nonsense.

Monsieur Foch’s bon mots are; ‘The will to conquer is the first condition of victory’.

If you really want to succeed you have to really want to.  I know that sounds like I am assuming you are not getting the concept but how many of us don’t achieve what we set out to?  There are no half measures on the road to success.    

How many times have you started a new regime and fallen at the first hurdle?  A new diet is scuppered by an invitation to supper where you eat and drink to be polite (!) and never quite make it back to the track.

On receiving an invitation to a fabulous social event in four months time, do you decide then and there to drop ten pounds in order to cause jaws to drop as you enter the room?  It’s a sad fact that even that carrot cannot be relied on to whip us into shape and we enter dressed in black, head to toe, trying to blend into the walls.  It’s even sadder if you base your happiness and social standing on what you weigh.  We all know its nonsense but fall prey to it anyway due to endless images of skinny celebrities.   Damn you ‘Hello’ magazine!

Other stumbling blocks can get in the way.  A vow to walk a mile a day before breakfast takes a back seat when you trip over the cat and hurt your toe.

Body brushing or regular exfoliation are abandoned after three days of vigorous over doing it and you ‘over peel’ to the point where it hurts!

It may seem you didn’t really want to make that change as you did not put in the hard work or have the steely determination that any significant change requires.  You have to want it and want it badly.  The times when that is easy and the times when that is hard have no truck with rhyme or reason.  Basically the ‘want it switch’ has to be flipped for any chance of victory.  Super human strength comes to Mothers as they lift the car that has pinned their child to the ground so use that as your touch stone in this exercise.

Regularity seems to be one of the keys to success.  Start out slowly and don’t make grandiose plans and pledges.  You have to win the individual battles to win the war.  Five minutes a day of anything is achievable.  Very soon the five minutes will seem easy and you can add another minute or two every week until you reach a point where you will see results whether its in weight loss (or gain!), clearer skin, better circulation and so on.

Choose things that fit in with your daily commitments.  Actually attending an exercise class of any kind requires not just the hour the class lasts, but the journey to and fro, the placement of the children/dogs during this time, the cost, the distance from your home and a positive plethora of other criteria which would bring a government ministry to his knees and not in a way that a Pilates instructor would applaud.

Supplement your sporadic attendance at classes by buying a few exercise bands, some light hand weights and an exercise DVD that you can pop on at a time that suits you.  Those that are based on ballet barre classes are great for strengthening and toning, which result in long lean muscles and do not need a large floor area or special equipment to get going.

Keeping exercise bits and bobs around the house works for me.  I have a stretchy band next to the kettle and do arm exercises while the kettle boils and my fondness for tea means I have no excuse not to repeat these at least twice a day.  In fact, some days I fail even to do that but keep that under your hat please…

Plies (knee bends to those civilians not talented enough to be in the corps de ballet), squats and leg lifts can be done while having a telephone conversation.  Keep these to a minimum if ‘skyping’ as you don’t want to frighten the horses.  Waiting for a bus or similar public annoyances is a time to do stealth exercises such as calf stretches, pelvic floor strengthening and reconnecting with your ‘core’.

Suck in your stomach while driving the car to work your abdominal muscles.  Imagine your stomach is being drawn towards your spine and you will be getting it right.  Hold this movement for as long as you can then repeat but remember to breathe!  In time you will be able to increase this significantly and it works!  Multi tasking never looked so good.  

Instead of panic beautifying, create a routine and stick with it.  Victory is yours if you set yourself daily goals and in the beginning even make a checklist and check it twice.

As with keeping exercise equipment around the house, keep lotions and potions in the same way.  Hand cream in the car is a no-brainer, obviously traffic lights were created for us to apply and massage in the appropriate cream at least once a day.   Apply the cream straight from the tube to the back of one hand and use the back of the other to massage it in – avoid the palms when driving, you don’t want your hands to slide off the wheel taking a tight bend.

Cuticle cream by the bed is the perfect placement – applied as you slither between the sheets means nothing will wick it away or suck it out as you are not going to be plunging your hands into water or gloves (both devils for desiccating those cuticles and nails) for at least eight hours.

When it comes to winning the ‘Battle of the Bulge’, as it is charmingly known, tactics that include filling the fridge with healthy snacks which you can grab, confident in the knowledge you are not adding to your waistline but filling the void, will help you stick to a reducing plan.  Better yet, try eating three meals a day with no snacking in between.  If you have a particular fondness for a food then it is almost certainly not your friend!  You won’t gain weight eating kilos of cabbage………   

If you plan your battles and come out shooting from the hip you will soon find that the victory you are longing for is easier to achieve.  It may even be true that you are your own worst enemy??

Happy Trails, Readers, Happy Trails.

First Published July 2014