Wednesday, 19 September 2012

Day 2 (Tuesday)

I should have posted this last night actually ON Day 2 but got stuck into watching Downton Abbey and "For the love of Dog!" which we'd recorded on planner and then, exhausted (maybe the emotional tribulations of Downton were too much for me??) staggered up to bed before 10 - unheard of for me.  So, only a few hours late:
 
 
I'm settling into the Fulton Plan and, I must say, I'm happy to be back on a waggon whatever waggon it might happen to be.


[Grammar/Spelling aside - as I wrote that last sentence I was struck by the spelling of waggon - "is it waggon or wagon?" I wondered. So, being a conscientious blogger, I looked it up and discovered that both are correct but that waggon is becoming archaic and has fallen out of usage in American English. Of course, I immediately plumped for my original choice, waggon!! "Stick with the old ways!" I croak. Nah, not really, I just think waggon looks better. Of course they both look ridiculous now that I have written them several times.....]


Yesterday, I managed to stick to the structure of the plan and did 3 loads of POMs. The structure is, as I've mentioned, somewhat fiddley as it affects the timings of meals and exercise (sorry "movement") but I think I can work within his recommendations. The main idea is to do some movement before you eat; in the morning, 3 hours before you eat but for your other 2 meals a gap of only 15 or 30 minutes is fine. When I'm working from home this is easy as I'm in control of my time but in the office it may be slightly harder.


Yesterday I didn't really manage to follow the low-carb element of the plan as I was eating up stuff from the fridge and hadn't got the right stuff in. But I'm not going to sweat it, I didn't eat badly, just too much carbohydrate. It will be gradually reduced to an acceptable level.


One good thing I did manage to achieve though was to dig some ancient green tea out of my cupboard and get back into drinking that. The plan advocates a black coffee first thing to stimulate ones metabolism and fat-burning but does not recommend drinking too much caffeine for obvious reasons. I can only really manage one black coffee anyway or I get the shakes. And normal tea with milk no good as milk stops you fat-burning. Sweeteners are not good either as the sweetness (calorie free or not) make the body anticipate food and stop fat-burning (he did explain the chemical stuff but I haven't got it down pat yet). So, green tea is what he recommends and I understand that, chemically speaking, it actively encourages fat-burning too so a double benefit. Once I started it was very palatable although I haven't completely kicked the sweetened tea and will proabbly still have the odd with with meals.


I managed the 3 lots of exercise (sorry, again, "movement") via a dog walk first thing, personal training at lunchtime and dancing in the evening. Other days it might be only 3 walks but I intend to fit in at least 2 sessions of aerobic or weight-based movement every week.


As another aside, dancing is coming along really well. After 2 solid years with only a few Mondays missed, we are finally beginning to look like dancers. We've had a summer of practising our dances rather than learning new steps as people are away for longer periods so it wouldn't be fair to forge ahead and leave them behind. This was initially a bit dull but, now that we've really got the tricky numbers sorted, we are beginning to enjoy them properly. The waltz, tango, cha cha, jive, rumba and samba are all pretty good but we're lagging behind on the quickstep and foxtrot. I'm loving the waltz and tango! Last night the waltz in particular really clicked. We are managing not only to go round the room (including those pesky corners) but also to negotiate Other People on the floor (they are soooo inconvenient at times what with the dancing really slowly and the randomly stopping front of us etc etc). And, having managed that, we are also beginning to think what we look like too. Lifting our chins and elbows up, rising and falling (a bit), not looking at our feet in the tricky bits and even smiling at one another occasionally. It's almost as though we can dance.....


I love the look on Rich's face when he sucessfully leads me through a spin turn sequence in the waltz and we end up dancing off in the right direction or when we've managed the twist turn in the tango (which we both hate) leaving us doing the flick section faultlessly (it's weird, everyone else has no problem with the twist turn but struggles with the flicks whereas we have always been the other way round). It's lovely and just goes to show that good things DO come to those who wait.




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