Brand New Heavies

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The title is related to a photo challenge for this week – “a photo that portrays the name of a band”.

I came up with a list of band names that I could make into photos one way or another, but I settled on the Brand New Heavies because it jived with something I’ve been working on since mid-March….namely getting back into some semblance of shape.

The pandemic and the resulting stay-at-home orders have wreaked havoc on most of us in some way or other. For those of us working from home…sitting has become a way of life and, for me, aches and pains started to flare up in ways and places that I’d never experienced before.

To be fair, I’m also getting older and that brings life changes that bring other joys, but my hips have never been an issue….and my feet….OW, definitely not! Not wearing shoes all the time…particularly not wearing the heels I am accustomed to… brought on plantar fasciitis and walking became extremely painful last winter. And, like oh so many people….a few pounds crept on too. I knew I’d gained weight since starting the job ten years ago, working largely from an office took away a lot of my normal activity. Pants became a bit tighter, a little less comfortable, and that muffin top was growing even before the pandemic pushed us all indoors.

A friend told me she’d heard an amusing…sort of…comment that everyone was going to come out of COVID either a hunk, a chunk, or a drunk. I think some of us have probably passed through all three at some point.

I usually do a closet cull every few months, and I did a purge after Christmas.

Did I still love it? No? Out it goes.

Does it feel comfortable? No? Out it goes.

Does it fit well? No? Out it goes.

Nothing out of the ordinary. I try to buy clothes that last and are ethically made so that I don’t waste; I’m not a fast fashion supporter and I try to buy smart, and I try to buy for my own style, not that of some magazine.

With the increasing awareness that I needed to start moving more, on March 15th I decided to try running again. I used to run when I was younger; I’d tried it again about five years ago and bailed when my knees started to bother me and I felt like I wasn’t keeping up to the running group.

It was time to try again.

I downloaded a few apps and played with them, finally settling on an interval timer and the “None to Run” 12 week program. I popped earbuds in, and off I went on my first solo interval running adventure. 30 seconds running, 2 minutes walking, repeated 8 times, three times a week. And I was puffing like some old Magic Dragon…. It wasn’t a pretty first week or two.

Honestly, it’s still not pretty.

Two weeks after I started all of this I bought a scale. I stepped on that scale for the first time on March 30th.

And I was a bit horrified by what that scale told me.

I knew I needed to drop a bit; I had a weight in my head that I thought I was.

I was off by a bit.

I was ten pounds heavier than I thought I was and that was a bit shocking. I hadn’t stepped on a scale in a couple of decades, and I know it wasn’t all from this past year…just creeping weight gain over ten years of office work.

Office work has not been kind to me…it was time to make a change.

But the running.

Each week the run time has increased a bit, and the walk time has either stayed the same as the previous week, or decreased a bit. As the runs became longer the number of intervals decreased. The first few weeks I thought I was going to die…I was pretty certain that I will never run 20 minutes straight let alone 30 minutes. I added interval weeks and made the 12 week program into a 17 week one… and last week, after 12 weeks of puffing and tender knees, I managed to do a week of 12 minutes running, followed by a two minute walk, followed by another 8 minutes of running. (It was supposed to be a 10 minute run repeated twice, but the first 10 minute run seemed easy (??) so I upped it to 12 minutes, but kept the total time at 20 minutes overall.)

And I did it!

This week I upped it to 15 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, 10 minutes running.

And again….I did it!

Next week I’ll start shifting the front run time up until I am doing 30 minutes overall, and then start shifting the back time to the front until I am doing 30 minutes nonstop.

That still seems miles away, but things have been progressing, not the least of which is that my knees are giving me less grief. They still hurt, but it’s not as bad and the recovery is faster. I am not puffing like a maniac anymore, my heart rate during the running has dropped, and my heart rate recovery is far more rapid.

But, with the daily accountability that the scale brings, and with the running three days a week, and with the canyon hikes or Apple Fitness workouts the other four days a week, I have now removed that extra ten pounds, as well as an additional ten pounds, and am back in the normal range of weight for my gender, age, and height.

But there have been some things that I didn’t think about.

Kirk said he could see a change in my body, that I was slimming down. I didn’t really see it and waved it off. And then we went for a motorcycle ride a few weeks ago. The leather riding pants that have been a struggle for years….basically it’s a case of pull them up, suck everything in until the zipper, button, and velcro are secured…and then breathe.

They fit.

They fit well…like well enough that there was no sucking in to do, and the velcro closure wasn’t a necessity to keep the button secured. In fact, I’d say that they fit better than when I first bought them seven or eight years ago.

So that made me wonder what else would fit better.

The weather was nice last week…I pulled on a pair of shorts…they practically fell off. Same for a few pairs of dress pants. In other words…I probably shouldn’t have ditched some of the clothes that I did back around the New Year.

Oh well, I’ve never been on to hold onto things “hoping” that I’ll fit into them again one day, with one or two exceptions. But it’s certainly nice to slip into things that were maybe a bit too snug. Like a pretty little dress I bought in France back in 2012. I pulled it off the hanger and didn’t have high hopes…it fits perfectly!

The other morning I spent a bit of time putting some elastic cord inside several pairs of lightweight cargo-pant style capris. I like them and I’m not a big summer clothes buyer, but they aren’t really worth paying for alterations. I also don’t want to invest any money into pants if I am still dropping a few more pounds. It’s a good problem to have, but it wasn’t one I really thought through, having bought a few nice wardrobe items recently, several of which alrteady need alterations.

As the pounds melt away, I’ve started thinking down the road a bit. How far can I get and when will it become harder? I certainly am not aiming for my weight when I was in my 20’s, to be honest I was underweight back then. Living with high stress, being on my feet most of the day, and subsisting on about 14 cups of coffee a day really was a recipe for being underweight.

This week I arrived at my first target goal. Twenty pounds shed. A really fabulous number to see on the scale. It was a “must” hit target.

What next? Another ten would be perfect, that’s a would “like to hit” target…and possibly five after that…that would be a “might be nice to reach” target.

The Apple watch and the Fitness app have been motivators, as have being linked to two other people through the app. It was an accident; when I first set it up I must have inadvertently sent an invitation to others, I still don’t actually know how I did that, because it’s definitely not something I would have done intentionally. But it’s been a bit of an accountability trigger. Every day I see what they have done and it keeps me motivated to do the best I can and keep going.

Initially I was at the automatically set move, exercise, and stand goals, but when I was connected to the others….I upped my goals and discovered how much work it is to meet those goals on a daily basis. Exercising the equivalent of 800 calories over and above your basal metabolic level takes a bit of effort. But it also got me thinking…when I finally hit the weight I want…what then? If I keep going at the same rate without eating more then I will continue to burn. Of course it will slow down and the weight won’t keep coming off at the same rate, but at some point I have to dial the calorie goal back and fit a bit more strength training into the week. 😉

It’s either that or eat a lot of doughnuts 😉

I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it; it’s a few months off yet I’d say.

So these two pairs of shoes and the scale…they have been my friends and all three have helped me leave twenty pounds of weight behind on the trails; the shoes have also been quiet psychologists as they have helped me sift through a lot of thoughts on the trails along the way.

I’ll never run a marathon, but I may yet get myself to a place where I go for a 30 minute run every day, and it’s nice to know that when we come out the other side of this pandemic and I get back to field work, that I’ll still be able to walk a river, pull a net, and won’t be the ballast in the raft.

And there has been another positive aspect to all of this.

Community.

I live in a tourism hotspot. Grouse mountain is a couple of minutes up the road, and the Capilano Suspension Bridge is a few short minutes walk from my home. Capilano River Salmon Hatchery is a few minutes walk around the corner. In the summer it’s a hub of parking chaos and we’ve had to tell people that “No, it’s not OK for you to leave half your car across our driveway while you visit the Bridge….”

The peace that COVID has brought to our normally chaotic neighbourhood means that almost every person I meet on the trails, every dog that lopes past me…is local. And we see each other regularly, and we start to recognize each other. Today a woman jogged past me as I was walking down to my office at the hatchery. It was the third day in a row that we’d passed each other and she slowed to chat for a moment.

The smiles have been less restrained, the short conversations over this dog, or that trail, or the weather today, or the difficulty of running up that hill…they have given me a greater sense of appreciation for the people that live nearby and the trails that we all share.

These past couple of months have allowed me a greater appreciation for the changing seasons too. I’ve walked/hiked/run the same trails for 13 weeks now, and I’ve seen the bare branches turn to leaves, the mud turn to soil, the rocks grow moss, the migrating birds return, and the width of my trails shrink. And when I’ve run the neighbourhood streets, I’ve watched people undertake landscaping projects, build new decks and fences, and renovate their houses and these have given me new ideas for our own home and yard.

These trails have also provided me the space and the isolation to think about the present, to think about my work environment, to think about the people I enjoy working with….and those I don’t. I’ve had time and space to think about whether or not I am doing what I should be doing, and if I am doing it where I should be doing it.

The world (and I) may have shrunk over the past year and a half….but it’s also expanded exponentially, as have my appreciation and gratitude for many things, and for many people.

It’s been an interesting period of time.

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The Brand New Heavies are an acid jazz and funk group formed in 1985 in Ealing in west London. Centered around songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Simon Bartholomew and Andrew Levy, the core members of the group since its founding, Brand New Heavies are best known for a string of successful singles in the early 1990s featuring N’Dea Davenport as lead vocalist. ~ Wikipedia