Skip to main content

Running with wolves

When I started trying to reverse my post-baby weight gain, I spent several months, probably a year or so really floundering.

I was exercising, hard. I didn't feel like I was overeating, but I wasn't losing weight. In fact sometimes I was gaining more and I couldn't figure out why.

Often I get personal training clients coming to me with the same problem. They eat wholesome foods with few treats, they exercise hard several times a week, but there's no weight loss.

The answer to this problem is a staple for a PT or nutrition coach. It's about activity levels. If I sit on the sofa all day, I burn through just under 2000 calories. If I do a 30 minute HIIT workout, I burn about 200 more. But if I spend my day doing housework, walking to town to do errands and generally being on my feet, I burn 3000 calories or more. It's not the workouts, it's the activity or NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis if you feel fancy).

So how do you keep up your NEAT or low level exercise, day in day out? The Free Living Fitness answer is simple: You do what you love.

When I was faced with this issue, I got myself a Fitbit. I felt that the accountability would help, and it did a bit, but it still didn't make it any more fun.

Then this little beast came into my life, and that is what this is all about.


I'd been trying to get more walks in, because I like walking, but it's hard to prioritise when walking is just for my own benefit, even when it's an important part of my physical therapy for EDS, I've got a load of other responsibilities going.

But when you have a dog, especially a large, bouncy, perpetually growing puppy, that's different. I wasn't walking for my own indulgence, I was taking care of her. 

When we started walking together it was winter, and a particularly stormy one at that. She loves being wet though and we spent a lot of time traversing mud in horizontal rain, me using hiking canes to keep myself upright. Weather is no excuse, not feeling like it is no excuse, she needs to be out and so do I.


Finding a place in nature

I've been reading Go Wild recently. It's a really interesting book that makes the case for exercising in nature.It undoubtedly echoes my experience. 

When I walk with the dog, I like to spend at least an hour in places where we encounter as little civilisation as possible. I don't look at my phone. I don't listen to podcasts or music as I do when driving or walking alone in town. I allow myself to connect with my surroundings. A moving meditation of picking sure footholds, spotting wildlife in the bushes.

It's easy to become lost in the experience and completely forget whatever hassles and trials might be waiting back at home - it has become not only therapy for my body, but also a haven for my mind.

In Go Wild, the author talks about how humans became top predators, not because we are fierce or fast or particularly dangerous, but because we are tenacious and cunning. Our ancestors learned to read the patterns and behaviour of the wild herds and to pursue their quarry relentlessly, not to outrun, but to outlast.

When I walk, or run, in the wild, I feel echoes of that history, a rightness in traversing distances smoothly and steadily with my canine companion at my side. The strength and efficiency of gait that my training has afforded me helps me stalk smoothly and effortlessly over rough terrain. Nothing is better than a free day to set out with no plan other than to see where my feet take me.

I started running one day as a little experiment. Up until then I hadn't managed to run more than a few strides since my teens - my knees weren't really up to it, but after several months of steady walking, climbing steep hills, keeping a relentless pace for an hour or 2 at a time, it felt worth a try. I ran about 100 yards in my walking boots. Then I went home and watched videos on running form, hoping to find a way to make my gait less stressful on my joints.

The fitness that walking had given me meant that I could run 2-3 km at a steady pace straight away and that gave me confidence to keep going.

I still don't run an enormous amount. I prefer to walk and drink in my surroundings, but there is a lot to be said for running with a dog. I don't think I would go running without her. I'm clearly not the only one either as Canicross (running with dogs) is becoming increasingly popular for pleasure and competition.

A post shared by Claire Salem (@firelotusfitness) on


Finding your Free Living Fitness


I'm not sure if there is a "secret" to finding out how fitness can work its way into your life. The best I can say is that you should try everything that seems remotely interesting. You don't know where your passion might surface. Is it dance, martial arts, trampolining, rock climbing, larping, juggling? What is going to inspire you to get up off the sofa this weekend? 

When you find it, please let me know. I love to hear about how people are doing, you can use #freelivingfitness on social media, or comment here.


Comments

  1. Circus! I can't circus every day because if the specialist equipment it requires (though when we have a house I'll be looking at getting a rig), but I want to improve so I think about it every day, about my core and limb placement. My day to day strength and proprioception have both improved hugely - vital for EDS management!

    The rheumatologist also wanted me to walk more, but it's boring to do by yourself. Then Pokémon Go came out and it's exactly the kind of game that hooks my otherhalf, so now he walks with me and we're doing loads more of it - even in places with no internet 😀

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Managing Fibromyalgia flares

I've written before about living with EDS and Fibromyalgia ,  much of my personal fitness and health practices are geared around managing those conditions and keeping me as well as I can be. When managing a chronic health condition, particularly one that involves fatigue and potential flare ups, pacing, good nutrition, good sleep and generally taking care of yourself is always the first priority. Ideally we want to have as few flares as possible. But sometimes they still happen, and when they do, it's good to have a strategy in place. And I'm going to be talking in fairly general terms, because while EDS and Fibro are my personal experience, there is so little understanding of the mechanisms behind these conditions, that most strategies are going to be applicable to a number of conditions where crashes of exhaustion and pain are a feature. So what is a flare? A flare is a period where someone with chronic illness suffers increased symptoms for a short while. The

My top apps for supporting a healthy lifestyle.

The hardest part of making healthy choices and lifestyle changes is making it a habit. It's easy to make a decision to "eat better", "exercise more" or whatever your current plan is. It's a lot harder to stick to it on the rough days, for long enough that it becomes a habit and part of your life that you can't imagine being without. I love a bit of tech. I am a super geeky science nerd and finding ways to use technology to support my health and fitness makes me very happy. So with this in mind I thought I'd give a quick run down of my favourite smartphone apps for developing and maintaining healthy habits. Habitica I'm starting with this one because it's mad and I love it. Habitica is basically a to-do list app, but it's specially for the gamers among us. If you are familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, and all the games that grew out of that system and fantasy world, you will recognise Habitica. The app allows you to create 3 t

Is being polite sabotaging your weight loss?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the barriers that make it hard for people to stick to healthy habits, or even take them up in the first place. My personal training clients are a lovely bunch, and one thing I can certainly say is that none of them have come to me completely uninformed about healthy eating. Most people have done some homework before they get to the point of hiring me, and while I always go over the basics (never assume anything) I know that when I tell them stuff like this, it's not new information to them: Eat less to lose weight Eat protein with every meal Eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day Consume high sugar and fat treats rarely and in moderate portions Drink water with every meal or snack Exercise regularly That's not rocket science, so why are so many people still struggling with it? Is it because "the rules" are more complicated? Are they missing the "weird trick" (spoiler alert, there are no weird tricks

Step away from the scale. Why weigh ins and weight loss don't match.

I have a persistant bugbear when it comes to health coaching, and it's this issue of "weight". People are often talking about "losing weight", the number on the scale becomes a focus. "If only I could just get under 65kg" they say. Or worse I see advertised "buy this supplement and you can lose 20kg in a fortnight". I've found myself frequently sitting with a weight-focussed client and asking "if you were 2 dress sizes smaller, fit and toned, but you weighed the same as you do now, could you be happy with that?" You might be surprised how challenging a question that can be. For many people, particularly those who have struggled with weight loss, that number is the absolute key. They can wake up, feeling energised and full of life, slip into those jeans that used to live hopefully in the bottom of the drawer, check themselves in the mirror and love what they see... then they step on the scales, see the number is half a kilo

What's the deal with yoga and hypermobility?

I wanted to address a question today that keeps coming up on various hypermobility and EDS forums that I frequent. It comes up so often in fact that I feel like I have to write this all up in one place, to save me 1000s of key strokes of individual responses and distil some of my opinions and thought processes on the matter. It always goes like this. Someone asks a question like "I've just been diagnosed with hypermobility, I've been told I can't do yoga anymore..." The responses are always a mixture of "yes, my doctor/physio told me yoga was the worst thing I could do for my hypermobility" and "I do yoga and it's been the best thing for my hypermobility". So what gives? Well, I'm firmly in the "yoga is useful" camp, and I have to disclose that. I'm a yoga practitioner of around 20 years and a perinatal yoga teacher , as well as a personal trainer and bendy person. While I have the deepest respect for the medic