RACE FOR LIFE: MAKING HOPE HAPPEN

Well, I did it. Today I did the Race for Life in Edinburgh. 10K round Holyrood Park with some of the finest women on the planet. What a morning. 


This year I ran to celebrate and to mourn, friends and family who have survived and those who didn't. But I also ran in hope. Hope for friends and family who are currently having treatment; hope that more people will not even get it in the first place. Hope for a time when cancer isn't scary any more. Dare I hope for a time when we just don't get cancer? Is that possible? I hope it is. I know that every woman and girl (and the black lab who joined us today!) who ran round Arthur's Seat today got up that hill because of hope and love.

I don't know what's scientifically possible, I'm just a punter. But I do know that Race for Life is about making hope happen. The money we raise helps find cures and treatments. By running we raise awareness and hopefully make people think about how they can reduce the risks of getting cancer. By running Race for Life, we might also be helping ourselves. Keeping fit and healthy, keeping active, keeping a reasonable weight all help reduce the chances that we will get cancer, particularly women of a certain age, like me.

So, here's to all the thousands and thousands of women who've run Race for Life this year.

Also raise a glass to the marshalls, volunteers, warm up acts, well wishers and the lovely lady near the finishing line who cheered me on when I was ready to walk and helped me sprint over the line. Here's hoping that the money and hope that we have raised will make a difference. Here's hoping for a day when we don't have to do Race for Life anymore, when cancer is history.

Love, Sue

I Hate Diets - They Don't Work!

I don't like diets. Diets mean doing without, eating abnormally. They are punishment for indulgence and lack of self control. I know that isn't really what the word means, but that's what it means to me and I'm not alone.  What's even crazier is diets don't usually work anyway. Only about 20% of dieters succeed in losing weight and keep it off for a reasonable amount of time. Diets don't work, so what do you do?

Diets fail because we don't stick to them when we're on them or  because we pile the weight on sooner or later when we stop 'dieting'.  Diets fail because they are miserable, unnatural and temporary fixes to a way of eating (and living) that has been going on for years. We all know yo-yo dieting is physically and mentally damaging and diet 'failure' can be a real knock to our emotional health and well being. Who in their right mind wants to stay on a diet, especially after you've lost the weight? All we want is to lose weight and get back to normal and get on with our (hopefully, slimmer) lives, and never have to diet again.

For me the mention of the word 'diet' sent me to the biscuit tin, so I needed a good story to tell myself. I worked hard to focus on eating to keep healthy and happy. I had to accept I was an unhealthy eater and got to be 4 stone overweight and morbidly obese because my normal eating habits were unhealthy.  I had to learn that healthy eating isn't just about what I eat, but how much; it's eating to keep my body within a healthy weight range/shape. I needed a new 'normal'.

Story 1 - I was getting back to normal weight by eating 500 calories per day less than I needed. Not dieting, just getting back to normal.  Story 2 - I had to learning how to eat healthily - for ever, not just until I'd lost the weight.

Over that year long weight loss programme, I put in place a new and healthy eating pattern that I have kept on even though now I don't need to lose weight anymore. What's different?  I was a classic - bacon roll, chocolate bar and milky builder's tea for breakfast; tuna mayo baguette and cake for lunch, big dinner - cheesy sauces and puds. Snacks during the day and a biscuit or two with Mum when I went to make her tea (Hands up carers if you believe that biscuits eaten during caring activity are calorie free!). 

Now  I have porridge, apple and yogurt for breakfast and soup, a roll and banana for lunch.  No cheesy sauces and we don't have puddings on a weekday.  Things are relaxed a bit at weekends and holidays, but we don't go mad - well not very often!  I love the way I eat now, I find my food delicious and satisfying.  My body feels better, I feel less sluggish and I enjoy treats when I have them.  I still enjoy my food and I still like a big full plate, but it's a healthy plate.  I am at peace with my eating!

There's a big hard sell on dieting and losing weight, but for most of us, it's about so much more than shifting the weight, it's about living healthily. Even the big diet companies are recognising that the real answer is not just to make easy money by getting us on the diet cycle, but about promoting healthy lifestyles for us and our families.

So, if like me your extra weight is down to a long standing pattern of unhealthy eating, just cutting down won't solve your problem in the long term. The real answer to losing weight is eating to be healthy, and that for many of us is about learning new ways of cooking, thinking, living.  So don't waste time dieting, get healthy.

Good luck!

Sue

ps My Race for Life is next Sunday, wish me luck!

Change your life? Yes You Can!!!

Do you ever have moments when a teeny tiny thought comes into your head, and you think to yourself, 'I could do that'?  It seems like a really little thought, but it changes your life?  You're not really sure that you can do it, but suddenly it's a maybe?  I suspect we all have them quite a bit and most of them we don't notice (thank goodnesss!), but some of them stick in your mind for some reason or another.

It won't surprise you that after my last blog, I started thinking about what made it the right time for me to diet. Okay, I'd been building up to it for a while, and I'd finally admitted I had a serious weight problem that I had to address. But what changed thoughts to action was the sudden realisation that my life didn't have to be like this, I could change it.  And it's all down to Helen Mirren in a bikini.

Somewhere in my messy cluttered thinking about life was the notion that getting older meant I had to look and act like an older woman, not wear a skirt above the knee never mind a bikini! I was not supposed to be the physically active and energetic woman I had  been for so much of my life, just the odd (very odd!) dance at parties.  Seeing Helen Mirren in that bikini opened my eyes and my mind. I realised that getting older did not have to mean I had to act old. All around me I saw women my age and quite a bit beyond doing amazing things that were about who they were and who they wanted to be, not the numbers on their birth certificates.

This was heady stuff, and I can still remember the moment that I saw that photo and realised that I had options and choices, that there were still many possibilities in my life. I did Pilates, maybe underneath several inches of tummy was toned muscle. Maybe underneath my poor heavy and weary body there was a youthful exuberant one waiting to get out...

And reader, there was!  As I lost weight, I found my youthful energy again and new possibilities emerged. One of the things I began to do was to jog, then run. When I was doing my success story for TescoDiets, I put down that I'd always secretly wanted to run a marathon but never believed I would, even when I was slim.  That thought had been buried deep and suddenly, I was thinking 'maybe I could do that' one day. I was pretty doubtful, but it wasn't in my impossible box any more!

After I did the Edinburgh Half Marathon in April, I began to think that with training and patience, I could do a marathon and I've registered for the Virgin London Marathon next year. Gulp! Yes, it's scary. yes I am going to have to work hard, but yes, I think I can probably do it, if I can keep injury free and if I get in. Now that I've got the running bug, I have lots of amazing women runners to inspire me.  The oldest woman in the London Marathoin this year was born in 1927 -  83 years old. And I'm going to run it for Parkinson's UK, for Dad, who would understand so well what it means to me and that inspires me.

Big life changing and wonderful things can start with a tiny but momentous moment when what was impossible becomes possible. It can be a tiny bit possible, and you can be hugely dubious, but in that moment life changes.  Those are the moments we can change our lives, we just have to open our minds to a new possibility and see what happens.

So, seize the moments and let your mind open even just a bit to the thought that things can be different.

Good luck!


Suex

There's a right time for everything, including diets

What is that makes a diet work? I've been thinking about why I didn't lose weight for the wedding, why did I start 9 months later? And why do people do diet after diet and it just doesn't work, then one day for no apparent reason - bam, they've started a diet, lost the weight and it stays off. What is it that makes that critical difference?

Some people lose weight ready for a big birthday; a wedding; a holiday, a new outfit, a race.  They have a goal, a very clear reason to lose weight and a timescale to lose it in and they go for it.  Some people lose weight as things happen to them - after a divorce, or a break up or a happy event.  Feeling that I should lose weight was enough to send me straight to the biscuit tin.  I sailed through big birthdays, our wedding and honeymoon like a magnificent galleon in full rigging. I hadn't meant to be a fat bride, but I obviously didn't want to be a slim one enough for it to get me on that diet.

Talking to people thinking about weight loss, it's clear diets can start in our heads way before we start losing it on the scales and this preparation time can make all the difference between success and failure.  Some diets start with us feeling unhappy about our weight, dress size or how we look. Some come when you can't run for that bus or climb those stairs. Some start with that dreaded family photo; beach or no beach, I was the family whale for a good few years.  Gradually a cluster of things that matter to us begin to prepare the ground and something unique to every one of us plants that seed of an idea - the thought that we want to change and we want to be different. For many of us, it takes  time to grow and take root before we begin to see any leafy shoots of change. Growth needs the right environment, things have to be right in the real world too, it's not just about heads.

Looking back, I began to get unhappy with my weight about 7 years ago when I got noticeably bigger than my gym buddies. I became the fat one. If you'd asked me, I would have said I was fine, but the thought had begun to settle. I started to think about healthy eating and even bought a GI cookbook. Over the next few years, I looked at weight loss websites - in passing of course! I didn't do anything about how I ate until 6 years later. Ali and I been out for a lovely walk on the beach. We'd treated ourselves to hot chocolate and a toasted tea cake at the Seabird Centre, watching the waves and looking forward to the return of the gannets.  As we headed home, we talked about our future and how we both  wanted to have many more days like this, and our worries that our growing waistlines were likely to cut our happy ever after short.

 When we got home I signed us both up to a weight loss programme. We started that evening and never looked back. It was the right time.   Losing Dad, getting married, holiday photos from Fat Hell were all part of my journey, they all took me a step or two closer to losing weight. That Sunday our time came and we went for it.

It's easy to feel a failure because you're not on a diet and not losing weight. But diets are hard work, they take time, energy and mean you have to change how you go about your every day life -  how you shop, cook and what you eat. You have to be prepared to take some time and energy out for you, and if you're focussed on caring for others that's not always workable.
Life is too short for guilt, if it's not a good time to diet then accept that, but you can begin to prepare -  mentally, physically and emotionally - for your diet.  If you're reading about healthy living, you're already on your weight loss journey, you're preparing and learning. If you've tried a diet and it doesn't work, then you are experimenting to find out what works for you.  You are not a failure. Feeling a failure is not good for anyone, and is totally counter productive, especially round weight where guilt and feeling bad about yourself are so much part of the problem.

For many years, I was fat I and I was very happy, especially on the day Ali and I got married.  Here's a photo taken on the beach at North Berwick on our wedding day, you don't get much happier.  We realised that caring for each other with rich food was going to steal precious years away from us. We decided to lose weight because we want to stay happy and healthy for a long time to come.  Our right time came that Sunday on the same beach. We went home and changed our lives, the next stage of our journey had begun.   The Bass Rock is behind us, and so are our fat days!

Take care

Running with gannets - and Jenni Murray!

I had such an amazing run yesterday. I was dithering about when to go and what to do first, but I made myself leave the house, leave the ironing and leave work NOW because it was sunny and the forecast was for rain later. I made myself go there and then and not put it off.  I am so glad I did what I told myself to do and got my priorities right.

I set off planning a long run, trying to keep up my distance so my rule is, just enjoy. I go where I want, as fast or slow as I want and that gets me in the right mind set. I then just see what happens and where my legs take me. The tide was out and the wind coming from the sea but I decided to head along the beach. The beach here is so lovely. Beaches are great places for almost anything and everything. I love watching dogs and some like to come and say hello, some want to play, some are clearly scared by me, but me and dogs, we run for the sheer joy of it and the joy of being alive.

And then as I looked out to sea I saw the gannets diving right next to the shore. It was magic, what a treat to see them so close. Ali and I  Love the Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick and have taken the boat out to the Bass Rock a couple of times to see the gannets close up. I can watch gannets diving all day, it is a most wonderful sight on many cliff and beach walks round here, but I have never seen them so close - feet away from me. They are beautiful birds with the most amazing lives. When they dive, they fold their wings like a missile and dive. It is some sight.  Gannets

(You won't have noticed but I have just spent 15 minutes looking at gannet pics to decide which to pick, I went for this even tho they're not flying.)

I had to watch them, this was too special a sight to just run past. I had to slow down, then I had to run sideways and I even tried to run backwards (very slowly!) so I could keep watching them. I ran up to the top car park which has an amazing view of the Bass Rock where the gannets live; every step of that hill was worth it. At the top I could see for miles along the Firth of Forth. Brilliant white gannets and their black tipped wings were clearly visible diving, flying low, circling round, going about their work. The Bass Rock goes white there are so many gannets on it and you can see thousands of them circling round it.

By the time I got back to the beach, the gannets had moved further out, avoiding the canoes I think. But today I was running with the gannets and so I headed off towards Tantallon Castle so I could keep the Bass Rock and gannets in view, I hardly noticed the running, I was up there with the gannets. How perfect does life get - gannets, warm East Lothian sun and fresh air and woman's hour on the ipod.  Does Jenni Murray know that she has run today!

But I couldn't run forever, and I had to head inland. As I turned off the road, in front of me was an enormous hare, looking at me. I could see it clocking me and deciding to shift sharpish, and I followed it up the track until it left me far behind.  Another treat.

I just ran until I stopped enjoying it and I'd done 14 miles, my longest run ever. I was tired but exhilarated and uplifted. The gannets and the hare were totally unexpected treats. I never thought that I'd see so much wildlife and such great views when I took up running. I am amazed how each time I run something unexpected happens. A problem is solved, a tension eased, a new sight, a new insight.  Yesterday was a very special run, one I will remember for ever, the day I ran with the gannets. And just think, I could have been ironing....

Take care

Sue

Thank You to urban fitness gb team for doing Arch2Arc for Alzheimer's!

This is a special blog from me and Mum to say a big thank you to Urban Fitness GB who are going a little bit out of their way for charity.  These guys are going to do an 87 mile run from London to Dover, swim the English Channel and finish off with a 181 bike ride to Paris and they're going to try and break the world record for doing it.  Awesome, as young folk say these days, totally awesome.  They are raising money for  Alzheimers UK and the The Firefighters Charity.
I want to say thank you because what they are doing makes a difference to people's lives and I want them and you to know why I personally want to support what they're doing and why it matters.  It's all about me and my Mum. There's Mum in the photo - we're feeding the hens at Knowes Farm Shop. Mum has Alzheimer's and is just amazing in how she copes with it. Visiting the chickens is a happy time for us, it takes Mum back to her childhood - remembers all you ever need to know about raising hens.

But Alzheimer's is much more than just a failing memory. It is a cruel and horrible disease and if I ever needed a reminder, I got one last night.  I went round to Mum's yesterday after work and found her in tears outside her house, wandering in different directions, totally distracted and very distressed. She was looking for Dad. Dad died just over two years ago and up until recently Mum knew that all the time, now she only knows it most of the time, yesterday she'd forgotten. When she forgets, Mum hears Dad's voice calling her, hears him in the house, sees him out of the corner of her eye. Mum searches, but she can't find him, so she searches inside, outside, in cupboards, under the bed, desperate to find him, unable to understand why he's not there. Dad was there for 52 years, she remembers that, for now.

I walked her gently inside and we sat down. I stroked Mum's hand and spoke very calmly and soothingly, touch and tone communicate so much. We talked through what happened and what she did and how the problem with her memory means that sometimes she forgets even very important things. Mum says it's because she's still in shock at him going, that if it wasn't for her family she couldn't go on, and we leave it at that. Just how much reality can one person take at once.

We start to talk about happy times, and Dad bless him comes to our aid. We laugh at stories about Dad and his DIY (dire!), his love of cricket, his sense of humour and those family camping holidays (never again). Gradually things get back to what counts for normal these days and Mum smiles again, enjoying being able to remember things for now. I head home in tears. Thankful that for now Mum is okay and just has normal grief to live with.

It breaks my heart that Mum has a disease that does this to her, that tortures her like this. Each time she goes through it it's like Dad dies again for her and she is bereft.  My dear Grandad had Alzheimer's too and the irony of ironies is that Grandad, like Mum, also forgot that his wife, my Granny had died and wept afresh when he was told. In the end his children had to say she was in hospital, no one could bear going through it any more, soon I will have to do that too. Dad went through all this himself with his own father, he'd be heart broken that his dear wife was going through it, but happy that I was there as he was for his Dad.  What makes me sadder and even madder is that Mum's not alone. What scares the life out of me is how many millions more like Mum and Grandad there will be in the future unless we stop this disease somehow. It is not a natural part of aging, it's not a bit of a memory problem, it is not normal, it is a horrible disease that destroys lives, removes dignity and is very, very cruel.

I want this awful disease stopped and I want everyone like Mum to be helped. I can't tell you how scary it is for her to go through all this and how brave she is every single moment of her waking hours. Alzheimer's Scotland and Alzheimer's UK have helped me and Mum cope in so many ways and fight for the rights and dignity of everyone with Alzheimer's, their families and friends. Mum and me can't do this alone and I am glad we've got them fighting for us.  We're going to need them more than ever in future.

So that's why I want to say thank you to these amazing guys and every one who does something special to raise money for Alzheimer's charities. Mum and millions like her are what it's all about, that's why what they are doing matters. Their amazing feat will make a difference to real people like Mum.  You can help too, please sponsor these guys  Urban Fitness GB Arch 2 Arc Challenge
Guys, when your legs ache and you hit the wall, I hope you'll think of Mum and all the millions of others with Alzheimers and know that they're worth it and that we thank you for what you're doing for us. Mum says that it helps to know that there are people out there who care enough to help. It's not just about the money, it's that you care. Thank you.


Take care

Sue and Sue's Mum

3 Things I Do to Stay Slim: What My Diet Taught Me

Why did I have such a struggle with my weight? Why is it so easy for some folk to stay slim? You think it's be a fairly straightforward thing to sort out and we all have our own ideas, but the answer is different for every one of us. There's lots of judgement and blame dumped on people who 'weigh too much': we're lazy, greedy, undisciplined and just eat. We have to defend ourselves of course: it's not our fault, we're fat because of things out of our control - our metabolism or our genes.  But of course the real answer is a bit of both - we're all fat or thin for a whole range of reasons, some things we can control, some we can't, and the mix is unique to us.  The main thing is to know the difference between what we can control and what we can't.

Having to face up to being fat meant I had to think long and hard about how I got to be 56lbs overweight. I'd always been a healthy weight, with a few 'fat' periods over the years, but I piled on the pounds as I reached that 'certain age' for women. For quite a while I just accepted that it was inevitable and I blamed my hormones, my age and being stressed for putting on weight. Even if I did accept that I could at least take a bit of control, I just didn't have the time or the energy. I was busy coping from moment to moment and sorting out my weight was really not top of the list. Like thousands of women in their middle years I was a human dynamo, working, caring, shopping, cooking, the works; keeping loads of plates spinning, not noticing that the one with 'Sue's Health' on it was about to crash. It was only when I realised my health was threatened by my weight and that I'd be the one being cared for that I was forced to look again  (see my blog below -  Facing up to being fat: time to take control).

When I reached my target weight, I couldn't diet any more, I had to make up my own rules and I didn't know what to do at first. I realised that over the year of my diet I had learnt to eat and cook in a new, healthy way and that in the process I had come to be much more aware of what made me fat in the first place. The big reason I had got so fat was that I refused to pay attention to what I ate or what I weighed. I stuck my head in the sand, steadfastly ignoring the fact that what I was eating was making me fatter and fatter. My diet had confronted me with the truth that I was not eating healthily, that my eating habits were making me fat and ill and that if I wanted to stay slim I had to pay attention to what I was doing to myself.

I identified 3 things I now do differently and which help keep me slim:

I have taken control of what I eat.  My worst bad habit was I never ever used to think about what I ate. I ate what I liked, when I liked and felt deprived if I couldn't.  I could have written a PhD on calories and fat and all that stuff, I'm not stupid, but I never once sat down and worked out how many calories a day I was eating. When I started using the food diary, I was horrified, in particular how much saturated fat I was eating. I was amazed I wasn't even fatter given what I was eating. I ate far too much of everything. What an eye opener. No wonder I couldn't exercise it off!

I know how much I weigh - Another bit of ostrich type behaviour  - I never weighed myself before I started the diet. I didn't believe in scales, not sure why. That first weigh in was quite a shock. Now I always know what I weigh and regard this as essential information to help me keep control of my health. I don't have a set weight but I have an upper limit and I know if I'm going up and up or staying more or less stable.

I control my weight by what I eat, not by exercise -The third insight I got into why I was fat was that I have a real tendency to rely on exercise to control my weight; rather than eating less to lose weight, I exercised more. I do love exercise so it's no hardship, but it's a bit unsustainable.  To have a fighting chance of maintaining a healthy weight I had to look at what I ate and learn to eat to exercise not exercise to eat. Taking up running has really helped, I have to eat well and be disciplined in the quality and quantity of food I take in and of course I have new  running targets now to replace the weight ones.

Three small but important bits of insight into how I got fat are now helping me stay slim. My relationship with food, like many other folk, goes back to what I learnt as a child, things I took for granted and never thought to change. For me, my weight was not a problem until I came up against some brick walls - hormones and age and not being able to exercise it all away. I was out of control until I had to look more deeply at why the weight piled on when it did. That helped me find things I could do to make a difference. It's not easy but it is helping me make it work.

I'd love to know if you got a better understanding about your weight from dieting or some other way. What have you learnt about your eating habits? Has it helped you take control? What have you done that's made the difference?
Take care

Sue