Getting Strong

When someone close to you is diagnosed with a chronic illness, it really puts things in perspective.  You cannot take your health for granted.

These days I feel like I have to be the strong one.

And it's not because my partner is weak - he isn't.  It takes great strength to adapt to new ways of doing things.  To accept that at times your body does things beyond your control.  It takes strength to keep finding ways of being yourself within new limitations.  To not give up in spite of these.  I need to be strong to support my partner in staying strong.  To support our children in living a life which differs from their peers.  And I need to be able to meet these challenges, and all the usual ones that just come with life, without falling apart.

It's not like I'm not already strong.  In many ways I'm circus strong man strong.  I'm stubborn as hell.  I'm goal oriented.  I've lived a life full of unexpected hardships and have my own health challenges to manage.  I've learned to love problem solving.  I'm the perfect person to have with you in an emergency.  While I do suffer from mental illness, I am also mentally strong.  But at the moment the rest of me needs a little work.

That time I broke my ankle trampolining...

I am by no means a lazy person.  I've mostly worked in jobs that clock up the steps: hospitality and retail keep you literally on your toes.  I work in a job where one day I might move a fridge, put away a bunch of microwaves or carry a carseat to someone's car.  Where I regularly run between floors authorising transactions.  And in my spare time I like going for walks, exploring the beauty in nature around me.  I've just never really been into sports.  As a young person I was teased for doing sport, so doing this in a public, competitive forum triggers my anxiety.  It's not super surprising to me that even my short forays into fun sports have resulted in serious injuries.  It's hard to be co-ordinated when you're fighting a panic attack.

But my lifestyle isn't technically proper exercise.  It's not 20 minutes of something a day that lifts my heart rate.  While I'm reasonably fit for someone who doesn't play sports, there is a lot of room to improve.  And with my Dad's family's heart health history, if I want to still be here when our kids are in their 20's - and I do - I need to start making some serious changes now.

I did start this last year.  I worked on getting fit and eating better and I managed to lose 9kg!  But with lockdowns, Coronavirus and Murray's increasingly frequent seizures all that work fell by the wayside. I started comfort eating.  I have always had a love/hate relationship with food and when things get tough, this is where things fall apart.  The lockdowns made it hard for me to exercise in the way that suits me best, and the inconsistency meant the routines I'd set earlier in the year fell apart.  By Christmas, I'd gained most of it back.  So this time my approach to strength is a little different.

Just gotta lose 9 butters.  Already lost 4

There are plenty of studies that show losing just 5% of your bodyweight can have some significant health improvements.  For me, that number is around 4.5kg.  So that's my current goal.  So far this year, I've lost 2kgs through exercise alone, so I am feeling like I'm on track for that particular measure.  But weight is not necessarily a good measure of health or strength.

I'm focusing on my flexibility.  I'm interested in increasing my upper body and core strength.  Most importantly, I'm wanting to revise my relationship with food.  But I want to take this slowly.  My plan is to institute one big change at a time every two months.  Science says on average it takes 66 days to make a new habit automatic.  Last year, I went in all guns blazing.  Then when things got tough, everything fell apart.  This year, I'm taking my time.  And I'm starting with building a habit I know is achievable for me - increasing my exercise.

Starting with something that I enjoy is just smart.  It forms a positive connection to the work I'm doing so makes building that habit easier.  I really like swimming.  Even though I've gained back the weight, I have still been swimming sporadically.  In the last year I've increased my average swim from about 500 metres to over 1 kilometer, and moved from doing my comfortable stroke (backstroke) to swimming a mix of breaststroke, backstroke and freestyle.  If I have time, I can break my swim into chunks and swim more in a day than I thought I could - more than 2 kilometers.  During school holidays I set my goal at swimming 3 - 5km per week.  Since school went back, I've upped that to 4 - 8 kilometers.

Obviously, this is the ideal.  It won't happen every week.  Last week we had a 3 day lockdown which impacted my swimming schedule*.  But I swam when I could, as much as I feasibly could.  And I still managed to swim more than 4 kilometers  The week before I did 7 kilometers.  In my ideal week I'd swim 5 days a week and spend at least 2 short sessions in the gym (I still hate the gym so I'm not pushing it).  But I'm realistic that this won't happen all the time - this weeks goal has been impacted by poor health.  But I'm doing my best to get my body used to pushing its boundaries beyond what is comfortable.

Not skinny, but quite bendy

I also do a lot of stretching in the sauna.  I use this time to focus on my breathing and balance.  Through this, plus swimming I have increased my flexibility through my quads.  I've increased my upper body strength enough that picking up a bowling ball feels easy.  I'm starting to get some muscle tone in my stomach.  My balance has improved.  I may not have dropped a dress size but I'm starting to feel more comfortable with my body.

And this isn't just about physical strength - swimming has really aided me in being mentally tough.  For me, water has always felt therapeutic.  I grew up near the ocean and swam a lot as a kid.  When I was pregnant with Etta and had hip dysplasia**, I waterwalked so that I wouldn't have to spend more time in bed.  I laboured with both of our kids in water.  It just soothes me.  And, like many exercises designed to help you feel calm, swimming forces you to focus on your breathing.  I have to regulate my breathing to swim.  This physical calming transfers to slowing down my thoughts.  Swimming really helps with my anxiety.  It makes my life feel more manageable.

Me and Abby at baby swim lessons.  It's funny looking back as I was so uncomfortable with my body at this time.  Now I'm much bigger than I was then, but feeling better about myself.

I haven't got to the hard part yet - the food is the hard part.  And I'm trying not to get ahead of myself.  I'm in the sweet spot right now.  This is the reveling in my bodies ability to do more than I thought it could.  I'm slightly nervous about April -   when I start changing my diet.  But I'm just making one achievable change at a time.  I am trying to live in today.  Today I swam 2 kilometers.  Today, I am strong (and also, quite tired..).

* I'm currently a pool swimmer.  While ocean swimming would be ideal - and still possible at Level 3 - I'm just not quite that confident yet.

** Many folk with hip dysplasia end up either using walkers or having to rest toward the end of their pregnancies.  I really, really did not want that to happen, so I exercised a lot to increase my strength so I could stay mobile.