Wibbly, Wobbly Weightloss – losing weight the wibbly, wobbly way: Week 11

Hello and welcome to week 11 of Wibbly Wobbly Weightloss.  As expected it really has been a wibbly wobbly, up and down kind of journey.  This week has been a vast improvement on last week.  I haven’t been asked if I’m pregnant for starters!

Something I didn’t share last week because quite frankly I was a bit incredulous at the sheer amount, was that I seemed to have put on six pounds!  Six pounds!  That’s like, almost 1/2 a stone.  I knew I hadn’t been great but I surely hadn’t been six pounds worth of naughty!  This week I have lost six pounds which makes me think it must have been water retention.  Or something.  Anyhow, all’s normal now in my world of scale readings.

This week has been a personal best for me.  I have only snacked once in the evening, and that was only on 140 calories worth of popcorn.  However, the area I have really excelled in is exercise.  I have walked for 50 minutes or so most days, played badminton for almost an hour on Wednesday, gone to the gym twice and played golf once.

Those of you who know me in real life might right now be a little surprised.  ‘Golf?’ I hear you say, ‘But you hate golf!’  Yes, there is that.  Actually I don’t hate it, as such, more despise how bad I am at it.  I mean it is a game played with a thin stick which has a (tiny) swelling at the bottom.  And somehow, with this end you are meant to hit an equally tiny ball and hit it so hard it travels not yards, not tens of yards but hundreds of yards.  I mean, the odds aren’t good, are they?  Anyway, thinking it might be a good wifely thing to do, I surprised Gary by asking him if he’d like to go to the driving range with me on our Monday date night.  His little face was worth the anticipated frustration of an hour of humiliation.

I’m really not skilled at golf.  At all.  In fact my last foray into the wonderful world of tiny sticks and balls was over ten years ago.  Back then, only very rarely did my stick make contact with the ball, and on the odd occasion they did happen to meet the ball more often than not traversed to some place behind me.  I remember one particular shot with crystal, clear clarity based on the embarrassment it caused.  Gary had taught me all about placement, about the whole wiggling of the bum, the seriousness of approaching the ball, caressing the ball.  With a not very straight face I truly did try to do everything he had shown me to do.  And thwack.  For once the stick met the ball with such power and finesse, I even surprised myself.  That was until said ball, instead of travelling in front of me several hundred yards, as I had seen Gary do every time he hit the ball, it went up.  Up!  I mean, how?  Not only did it go up, it went up vertically and hit the roof of the driving range and made such an enormous noise I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.  I hid those feelings, of course, by nonchalantly crossing my ankles, looking around innocently whilst whistling in the most relaxed way I knew how.

So, on Monday, I clutched hold of Gary’s hand in fear for both his life and mine.  Would we make it out of the driving range in one piece?  Would we make it out alive, even?  I needn’t have worried.  I was surprising good.  Now, I should give you my own definition of the word good.  Good is when Claire brings the stick in contact with the ball.  And the ball then travels forward.  It can go just two inches if it wants.  It still meets my definition of good.  So long as the ball does not go behind me, hit the roof or end up in someone else’s driving range lane (yes really), it’s all good.

I think I must have matured somewhat in the intervening years because I really enjoyed it.  I was still laughingly bad at it, but I was much better than I remembered being 10 years previously.  I enjoyed the banter, the inevitable play on words and the innuendos with cheesy grins (I obviously haven’t matured that much!).  But the best thing of all was when I asked Gary if he was having a good time and he smiled.  It was a huge smile and his eyes were full of love and appreciation.  He replied that he loved being here with me.  That smile, that love, made me ask myself why I had waited ten years before braving the horrors of the stick and the ball.  Every Monday we have made plans to go to the driving range, followed by the gym.  And maybe, just maybe, one day I will be good enough to be let out safely onto a golf course to play a whole round.  Regardless, I can see us enjoying many years together, wandering over golf courses, chatting, being with each other  and enjoying each other.

Lorna and I also had a rematch, in which I soundly defeated her.  I’d had a rotten day with my two youngest crying at any opportunity.  I wasn’t sure I even wanted to play, let alone lose as I had the week before.  Lorna was late and came in doing some exaggerated version of warm up exercises.  I giggled.  We played.  I giggled.  I won more points than lost.  I giggled.  Sometimes in life, everyone needs a Lorna.  A friend who is able to lift you out of the stress and see that life isn’t as serious as it seems in that moment.  By the end I was ready for the next round of crying children.  Thank you Lorna, I appreciate your friendship more than you know.

And then there was the gym.  To be honest, saying I went to the gym twice would be like saying I am well on my way to being skinny.  An exaggeration of the highest order.  Gary and I went on Monday after golf.  My primary goal was to learn how one machine worked.  So we went in, I jumped on the cross trainer and learnt how to use it.  I then set myself a ten minute cross train on the easiest setting.  By eight minutes I was inwardly urging the clock forward.  Surely it was broken or something.  If it didn’t reach the ten minute mark soon the gym people were going to have a dead Claire on their hands.  At last it got to ten minutes and I prepared myself to disembark, so relieved it was over.  You can imagine my dismay when it flashed up with a two-minute cool down.  I’m guessing for anyone else the cool down period would be carried out at the lowest level to, y’know, make it easier and cool them down.  Thing was I had already done ten minutes on the lowest level and I was almost unconscious.  I wasn’t sure I could make the cooling off period.  In fact cooling off was a misnomer for me as I became even more out of breath during it.  At last I could get off, go home, bath and become a couch potato again for an hour or so.  But I had successfully reached my goal.  I knew how to operate one machine.

The next time I went to the gym I lithely jumped on the cross trainer.  Ha!  I had a plan.  I set the timer for eight minutes this time, which with the two-minute cool down would give this incredibly unfit girl a full ten minute work out.  I started strong, ever so slightly pleased with myself for bettering the machine.  I’d played it at its own game and won.  Except the eight minute workout was harder than the ten minute workout had been the day before.  By the end I left the gym gasping for breath, metaphoric tail between legs.  The machine had once again prevailed.

Over to you.   How has everyone else done this week?