The Moiderer

Marathon memories–London 2012

I have a scrolling screen saver that goes through my photos and shows them.

The other day my marathon photos came up and it made me smile with pride.

It’s now only 4 weeks until this years London Marathon so join me on memory lane

 

The Gallery–Walks

Some of the fondest childhood memories I have are of long walks with my granny.

We would have a lovely breakfast and I think we would maybe head out after that.

She had a German Pointer (that farted a lot) and we used to take him for walks.

Whatever the weather we would head out for a 6-8 mile walk and since then I’ve always loved walking. Unfortunately the little one isn’t quite old enough but since the weather has been bad I have started going for the occasional walk instead of the run I’m missing.

Here are some of the images from that walk

Narnia…

Was glad I wasn’t taller.

This was all put together for this weeks gallery over at sticky fingers where the subject is "Walks"

Longest run of snow ever

Every day I wake up and open the curtains to find fresh snow has fallen.

Every morning, as I sip my coffee I watch the snow fall.

Most mornings I clear the driveway.

In the afternoon, even if it snows, the snow begins to thaw and the roads clear off.

And I start all over the next day.

For nearly 2 weeks this has been my groundhog day

Snow angels

The school run

My snow angel (got told off for not doing the legs!)

5:2, Slimpods and Mutu

I have now been doing the 5:2 system for 4 weeks.

I must say I totally love it. I really enjoy the freedom of the Fast day and find it remarkably easy.

The difficult thing to remember is to have breakfast. This is not a starvation diet. Starvation slows down your metabolism and sends your body into shut down and protection. Fasting is about not giving your body enough food to build up fat reserves but giving it enough food to keep processing your existing fat reserves (if that makes sense)

The none fast days should not be binge days. Because of my slimpod my eating is as regulated as it’s ever been so my non-fast days are very regulated.

I have also now done the 8 week Mutu programme for 4 weeks. Every 2 weeks I start a new phase and discover new muscles which is good!

What effect has it had?

Well I haven’t shifted any size for around a year.

In the last 4 weeks 2 pairs of size 14 jeans that were too tight now fit comfortably. In fact, one of them I have moved on the belt from not being able to fasten it to fastening it 2 notches in.

This is a wonderful feeling and is making me feel better about my body than I have in a long time. My husband has commented that he can see the weight going from my face and my legs.

As you can see, I still have very much got a spare tyre round my middle and I’m really hoping the MUTU system will start getting rid of that soon. I am sticking to my exercises religiously.

So for the first time in a long I can see some glimmer of hope that I’ll get to a size 10/12 eventually. Apart from anything else I really, really want to wear these jeans. They are a size 14 but really seem to be more a 12. They barely go over my thighs right now.

I am definitely a convert to the 5:2 Fast diet and it goes very well with Thinking Slimmer to create a balanced week.

Over it

Apparently this time last year it was scorching.

What a difference a year makes.

Yesterday : cleared approx 10 cm of snow off the driveway

Today: cleared approx 3 cm of snow off the driveway. Note my car on the left was clear of snow at 8pm last night!

Weekend Snapshots

No clients this weekend and no trips now which would give us the chance of doing loads except the weather sucked!

We went to the cinema to see The Croods and we both agreed it was a brilliant film. Definitely recommend it.

We picked up a friend in town after the cinema. We couldn’t get in to Starbucks cos it was too busy which was a bit pants. This is the play area in the shopping centre so we waited there.

On Sunday we went to McDonalds for brekkie as usual. They have these screens there now so the little one was playing Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. The princesses came everywhere with us this weekend

A go on the rid outside of Tesco’s

This is the box from her digger that I bought her from Costco. I got some tissue paper and we decorated it

As you can see I also cut her hair – badly! It’s a good job it grows. It’s also a good job she’s young enough for me to tell her it’s lovely and for her to believe me!

The Future

I must admit that I’ve been feeling a little lost lately.

I completed my Cognitive Hypnotherapy training and did a couple of extra courses to qualify as a Master Practitioner.

What this means is that I have no more training to look forward to. I love learning stuff – and learning stuff I can use totally fires me up. Cognitive Hypnotherapy has been brilliant for that. I need to be learning all the time and getting new stuff to try.

I am now continuing to develop my business with a view to being able to go full time by the end of 2014.

I have been totally loving seeing clients in my therapy room which is just the most lovely space I could have hoped for. I also love that I am able to reach out to people all over the world using my Therapy Beyond Geography model. As I gain more experience I am expanding that model to cover more and more issues and it’s giving me the opportunity to reach more people which I love.

The problem is, this stuff is working a little too well. Unlike many therapies I don’t see clients for months and months. A few sessions is usually enough to set them on their way to be everything they can be.

And that’s brilliant. But it’s also a very challenging business model! How do I continue to drive in enough business to support my family? It’s possible – it’s just not easy. And whilst doing a full time job is great to allow me the freedom to build my business, it also doesn’t allow me to fully dedicate myself to building my business. So I don’t have a pipeline of clients waiting to see me and I need that to have any hope of switching to this as a full time career.

My book needs some serious PR. If I get 1 download/sale per week right now it’s a good week! I published the article in the local paper and plan to do even more to get the message out there that “Nothing Needs to be the Way it’s Always Been” There are 21 amazingly positive reviews on Amazon of my book and I know from feedback it really helps people to know what is possible. But I am nobody and there is no reason for people to read my book which is a shame because I am really passionate about reaching as many people as possible. I want everyone to know that happiness is possible.

And so as I find my day job giving me less and less of what I need, and my future plans seem awfully far away due to the challenges of getting the business model to work, I find myself floating in a big empty space feeling like progress is at a halt.

On bad days all I can see is a dark narrowing tunnel ahead of me with no hope.

On good days my world is full of possibilities.

I am very excited about my latest idea to keep me moving forward. I plan on doing a Phd! It’s something I have always wanted to do and I hope to be able to pick a topic around my Cognitive Hypnotherapy work to do it on. I have made contact with a Psychology lecturer at Dundee University and will be having a coffee with him next week. I’m hoping to open up all sorts of avenues from that conversation.

I still have many things to develop including turning my latest training on life/business coaching into a model that fits nicely into my business. The nice thing about life coaching is that it’s easy to do it online. I have a few volunteers who I will be developing and finalising my approach on over the next couple of months.

Basically what I need to do is win enough on the lottery to quit the day job and focus solely on my therapy business! What do you reckon the chances of that happening are?

Fasting and Fat

Well I’ve done the Fast Diet and the Mutu system for 3 weeks now.

I have done the Mutu every day without fail – I even did it in the carriage of my sleeper train. I am now half way through phase 2.

This week I tried fasting for 3 days because I’m finding it so easy. I love the freedom of food not needing to be a part of my day.

With hindsight 3 days in a row may not have been the best choice – although I do dinnertime through to dinnertime so it’s not that big a deal.

The reason I said 3 days in a row might not have been a good choice is based on the fact that I got home late last night and was feeling very shaky, weak and light headed. I’ve not had that before so it may have been that I pushed it too far.

Today I am on a non-fast day but am still finding I have no appetite for crap food. I got loads of fruit, salad and vegetables from Costco last night so am happily eating my way through them! I normally buy cakes and, since Thinking Slimmer only eat half of one cake, but I couldn’t face even buying them this time.

It remains a challenge to me to drink enough. I am more thirsty since starting on the Fast Diet and struggling to quench my thirst. It’s something I need to continue to pay attention to.

So how is this all contributing to my “Beat the Body” campaign?

Well I suppose I should have measured. The scales continue to be unreliable. You could say I have lost 4lbs and about 2.5% of body fat because those are the best numbers I’ve seen. But I could easily stand on the scales and those numbers would be back at the start so they are pretty meaningless.

I feel like I’ve lost some size particularly around my middle. Clothes are a little bit more comfortable and I feel my tops are hanging a bit better (I never wear clingy anyway)

When I look in the mirror I still see a beached whale. I see the rolls of fat hanging over the edge of my jeans. I see a person that is a million miles away from the size 10/12 jeans that I so want to get to. It’s frustrating. The body is still the one in charge round here and that really has to change.

The Mutu system programme that I bought is an 8 week programme. It is my plan to work with the fasting for those 8 weeks at least. I will probably do it longer term even if it’s one day a week for the health benefits. I think for the remaining 5 weeks I will probably do Monday, Wednesday and Friday as fast days. It’s very easy for me to do and I genuinely enjoy it and feel good. I know it is good for my body too so that helps.

What I want from Costco

Yesterday I had a meeting in Newcastle.

On the way back I saw a sign for Dunbar and remembered my friend and fellow Cognitive Hypnotherapist Melanie lived there.

I decided to give her a buzz and see if she was free for a coffee. Luckily she had just finished with a client and was happy for me to pop in.

It was lovely to drop by a friends house for a coffee and just shoot the breeze. In many ways I am so isolated up here. And my best friend who is local has had an illness which has affected her vision and means she can’t drive so we don’t get to connect anywhere near as much these days.

Anyway, chat over I continued my trip home via Costco so I thought I’d share with you the things I wanted from there on this visit!

A lovely little fireplace?

Somewhere to sit while you enjoy it? (£2000 by the way)

Wind down at the end of the day?

And then what I had to buy for the little one

A different Mother’s Day

It has always been tinged with anger and bitterness this day.

A day to remind me of what I didn’t have. Of a childhood better forgotten than of photo albums to look back on with a smile. A day where old feelings of resentment, guilt and being different where constantly rubbed in my face.

It wasn’t about Adam’s absence. He is a shadow that is there every day and Mother’s day doesn’t make it better or worse.

These feelings around this day started well before we lost him.

This was all about me.

And I would take it out on the hubby. For him events aren’t important – he loves me equally every day of the year and so each year when he failed to do anything for Mother’s Day I took my anger out on him – like it was his fault I felt like that.

It wasn’t of course.

This year is different.

A couple of weeks ago I resolved that this would be my day.

After all, it’s Mother’s Day and I am a mother. Nobody and nothing changes that.

So my plan was set – it was going to be my day and I would spend it with the little one doing what I wanted to do and enjoying every moment with her.

For the first time ever there were no bad feelings or pangs of pain for me going into the day, seeing the adverts, listening to stories. I looked forward to my day.

Mid morning, as I sat with the little one in the Marks and Spencer's cafe I realised that something was missing.

Bitterness

Anger

Resentment

A sense of life being unfair.

All missing.

In their place a feeling of contentment and peace.

No-one and nothing has the power to define how I feel about myself any more.

Only I can do that and I am choosing to feel good.

And isn’t it amazing how when we take control of our own destiny, suddenly we start to notice things that in the past may have been drowned out by the negatives.

Firstly the little one did a jigsaw for me at school

And then the hubby helped her make this amazing book-card

I didn’t wait for anyone to do me breakfast, lunch or dinner. Instead I chose what I wanted to do. I took the little one to McDonalds for breakfast. It was lovely and then we went to Marks and Spencer's for some bits of food for the week and had coffee and hot chocolate.

It snowed so we built a snow man

I also put some washing away and loaded the dishwasher.

Tonight, if the snow lets me, I’ll fetch a Chinese takeaway because I was too tired last night.

So today has been all about me.

The power sat with me to make it whatever I wanted it to be.

And because of that it has been the best mothers day ever.

And that was my choice.

I am a mother and it was my day.