Thursday 25 July 2013

Hula Hooping to Glory


                                              Me and my friends.  No, really...

I am now one week away from my bridesmaid dress fitting.  3 weeks away from my sister's wedding.  And starting to feel the burn on the body front.  Since reaching my original target weight, things have reached a plateau, which is perfectly fine and at least better than piling it on, but as the wedding date looms, I do feel as though I want to be at my best.  Of course, this renewed vigour has coincided with the start of the school holidays, thus rendering the Wii-Fit the only realistic option in terms of daily exercise.  Fitting meaningful exercise around children during the holidays is surely impossible.  A dear friend with a toddler and 3 month old told me yesterday that her doctor had suggested spending some time each morning "before everyone wakes up" to do her stomach exercises.  I think we can all agree that in a household with small children, there is no such time.  How we giggled at the doctor's advice.  As my friend put it, "It'll be hilarious until my stomach drops out of my a*se in a few years".  A sobering thought indeed, and I'm sure we'd have stopped giggling right there, had it not been for the fact that she had said it loudly in M&S and was now being stared at by startled bystanders.

Another friend happened across a quick half hour aerobics class in her local newspaper, and - buoyed by its brevity and accompanying lower price - immediately set off to make it her regular fix.  Except it transpired that it was only half an hour because it was high intensity.  7 minutes in, she was fairly sure she was going to be sick, and that was the point at which she was asked to get into a crab position, scuttle to one side of the church hall, drop a dozen press ups, and then scuttle back.  She made like a crustacean until she reached the door, and promptly escaped.

And so it is that each morning, my children have the dubious pleasure of watching their mother huff and puff as she Hula Hoops and Virtual-Step Classes her way to glory.  <Pauses to giggle at the notion of this waistline being anything like glorious>.  As I puffed on this morning (curtains firmly closed as I was still in pyjamas to add to the indignity), I thought about how delighted everyone was that La-Middleton didn't try to hide her baby bump, 24 hours after giving birth, and the outrage stirred up by a magazine publishing "insights" into her post-baby weightloss plans.  I was reminded of something I read that described post-baby stretch marks as hard earned tiger stripes. I quite like that as an image.  Now I just need to craft something similarly poetic about bingo wings...

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