Feeling The Burn.....

Having grown up with a figure that Posh Spice and Skeletor would kill for; I have never felt the need to jump on the fad diet bandwagon (although I did have to be rather careful during severe gusts of wind and whilst walking over cattle grids)! Those were the days, thinking I could stuff myself until the ends of time with Sara Lee frozen chocolate gateaux and RingPops. But our crazy youthful decisions always come back to haunt us and as time has crept steadily onwards, I’ve been growing steadily outwards.

Summer and Streisand once said, "Enough is Enough", and taking their harmonius advice, a friend and I ceremoniously dumped our Sara Lees, spent a fortune in Lillywhites and joined the local gym. Now this all seemed great at first, a real honeymoon period for us all but after a few bad episodes involving a yoga teacher who was clearly basing her classes on Victoria Wood basing a sketch on a Hippy Commune pretending to be trees - we, like 80% of people who join Gyms, stopped attending. We didn’t call, we didn’t write and we certainly did not "Poke" the gym. Our beautiful relationship was over. It was dead to us... (Well I should say dead to me really, my friend did allegedly continue in the mornings but since I wouldn’t get out of bed before 8.30, I really have no proof).

During my period of relative inactivity, (unless you count paying for the gym as similar to going to the gym...) my neighbour invited me to try her PowerPlate. Now these machines are essentially a vibrating platform, originally designed to stop astronaut’s muscle mass wasting away whilst in space. However, after three organ-dislodging, eye shaking and headache inducing minutes I confirm I shall not be exploring space or indeed the PowerPlate section of the gym any time soon. This is something I will not be attempting again until there is a Sancerre holder attached to avoid accidental spillage and or electrocution. Meanwhile my neighbour is happily bouncing pennies of her stomach and is discovering that her old clothes fit better than ever.

Like the rest of the nation, January saw the return of us, to the gym and although we are only 2 months in to the New Year, I am loving it!! The great news is in just 2 months’ time a brand new exercise plan will be sweeping the county, hot from the US. "Booooorrrring" I hear you say, but no. You have never been so wrong (I have but that another story and I'm conscious that I’ve taken a lot of your time already..!)

http://www.willpowermethod.com/

For the past 11 Years Willpower and Grace Training has been taking the USA by storm and is a fantastic fusion of postures (a la Yoga and mat work Pilates) with a barefoot cardio workout. Speaking of barefoot last week I had quite an embarrassing gym kit incident (don’t worry this isn’t a "do it in your vest and pants" story.....) So I'm all changed for Pilates and having a good root* around in my bag for my second trainer.
* For the benefit of my Australian readers please replace the word "Root" with "Look" as I promise I was most certainly "looking" in my bag and not doing anything potentially illegal in a public place).
Unfortunately, it appears that my Nemesis has been hard at work once more. Taking time out from her "sinister plan to foil Gotham City" Twiglet seems to have rooted (yes she may have, either way...) through my bag and ran off with my shoe (possibly using it for her Body Pump/Body Attack Class with Charlie).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvEOjDeLWkA

So I'm left like an Edwardian prize fighter to walk from the changing room to the studio in my Italian Leather work shoes. Now not having a camera at that exact moment was a real shame, as my friend will testify. However as she enjoyed it so much I have re-created my gym look for that day with the help of a passing chicken.

Ok? Finished sniggering? Back to Wp&G then, so what’s the best part? Well our American cousins have dubbed this Will & Grace Training so COUNT ME IN!! As this is not set to hit our studio until April 2011, I have taken the liberty of preparing a mock-up of how the class will no doubt look....

So, if like me, you have had too many cakes, or been a little bit overindulgent licking the bowl (you know who you are...) then you are quite welcome to join me - just make sure you have appropriate footwear!

And now it’s onto the next...........I’m afraid my dears there can be no rest for the decadently wicked x

Tranquility

This week I have decided to join the many thousands of people in the UK, indeed the world, in seeing just how much stress I can put myself under before exploding or having some form of (icing) meltdown.
So far so good but its only Wednesday and I'm feeling distinctly jittery about how much Ive taken on prior to a much needed holiday. Actually the holiday itself is stressing me out - with all the recent GP Kitchen related experiments I'm convinced I have put on er one or two pounds which have conveniently grouped themselves around my midriff - therefore no Speedos on the beach for me....(the Italians breathe "un sospiro di sollievo...."

So whilst I pile on the work (and pounds) in the office and in the kitchen I'm trying to stay calm and serene by thinking of the times when my friend and I build up the courage to attend our "weekly" yoga class. Since joining last August the classes have become more and more obscure culminating in having to "sway in the wind like a beautiful tree" at the last session! Whilst yoga would appear to be a stress relieving way to tone and strengthen the body we have come to view our classes as stress relieving due to the amount of childish giggling we find unable to hold back. No matter how dreadful we look in a "downward facing dog" or "backwards looking headstanding warrior" there will always be someone else to pass wind or generally make the whole thing more comical and therefore enjoyable - for example nothing will ever beat the day we witnessed Billy Elliot's older sister through the window, twirling and leaping about in the studio prior to our class.

Anyway, I'm talking about my friend and our more erm... occasional, than regular trips to yoga as this week is her birthday (not all week, obviously...) Now, she had decided to order cupcakes and cookies from the Guilty Pleasures Kitchens to help her work colleagues celebrate the day but this was never going to be enough to send me into a stress spiral - oh no sir, so I decided I would also treat her to a decadent birthday surprise.
I really wanted this cake to evoke feelings of calm and relaxation, something to be savoured and enjoyed, hence its name, "Tranquility". I would desperately liked to have eaten the entire thing myself and even today the thought of the moist lemon sponge surrounded with cherry scented buttercream is easing those feelings of sheer panic and horror now that I am facing down even more extravagant cakes, a mountain of packing and some truly hideous spreadsheets....
I could maybe sneak a small taste, surely that couldn't hurt..after all I have paid for this weeks yoga already so I'm bound to attend....right?

And now it’s onto the next.....I’m afraid my dears there can be no rest for the decadently wicked x