Thoughts - AnnaTheApple

January 14, 2016

Fear of being an adult

This is a random post but something that struck me the other day.

When I was at school I was confident and self-assured. I knew what I was good at and I focused on those areas (who needs science anyway, right…?). I loved English Literature and English Language, I loved drama (I even did a Speech and Drama course outside of school which involved competitions and exams in reading prose, poetry and general acting) and loads of sports. I won’t lie, I was a proper boffin and proud of it.

Wow, found this photo of me probably aged 15

I didn’t care if I wasn’t in the ‘popular’ groups or if the cool guys didn’t fancy me. I was never more happy than getting good marks which I worked hard for. It didn’t come naturally but I enjoyed putting the work in to get the good stuff out.

I got good grades through school, applied for a good university and then, BAM, hit an ocean full of similar hard-working high achievers. All my self-confidence disappeared as I was no longer the top in anything anymore. In fact, I was pretty average at best. Despite that, I did achieve a good degree and applied left, right and centre for all the graduate jobs. Then when I had no luck there, all other good but non-graduate jobs. Then ANYTHING. 2009 was a rubbish time to come out of university with a Psychology degree that didn’t really qualify you for anything specific. My confidence was royally destroyed.

My first job was in a call centre for an insurance company reading a script about 150 times a day. I lasted two months before getting the hell out of there and into a basic admin job. To save you the boring details, a year and half later I finally hit gold with the job I’m in at the moment. I enjoy it and it pays well. OK it has nothing to do with my degree and it wasn’t what I always dreamed of doing when I was younger, but it’s a career I’m happy to continue with and progress.

But something happened to me after finishing school. I lost all my self-confidence in my intelligence and my abilities. I literally spend every single day convinced that someone will turn around and say to me, “Err, Anna, why are you here?”. I’m convinced they’ll realise I’m no good and fire me. I’m not saying I don’t do a good job or that I shirk work… It’s just I don’t have the same confidence I had when I was at school when I knew exactly where I was in the world.

I see everybody else around me as more competent and more worthy to be where they are. I think they look at me and wonder how I’m still here. I work hard, don’t get me wrong, but I sometimes feel out of my depth and lost. I’m often asking lots of questions and feeling stupid.

And it’s not just work. Despite being a fairly experienced runner, being generally quite fit and healthy and knowing pretty much what I’m doing, I still think that everyone else at the gym or at races are far more experienced than me. At the gym I think people look at me doing my squats and judge me on my form, my depth and the weight I’m using. Or they look at me in the race line-up and wonder why I’m not further back. I’m pretty sure no one cares but the irrational part of my brain truly believes that everyone thinks I’m clueless. This is despite the fact that I’ve been going to that gym and running for over three years now.

To be honest, it’s a general feeling of “am I really an adult?”. Leaving the bubble of academia and entering the Big Wide World is scary. Dealing with bills, moving house, thinking about divorce… it feels like I shouldn’t be dealing with this. I thought at some point a switch would be flicked on and I’d be an Adult. I’m still 15 in my head, wishing for someone else to show me what to do.

Will I ever feel like I’ve “got this” and I’m in the driver’s seat knowing exactly where I’m going and what I’ll find along the way? I don’t know. Maybe everyone feels this way but we’re all so good at faking it and acting confident when really we’re just all 15 year olds playing at life…

Do you feel like you’re an adult?

What’s the most scary ‘adult-like’ thing you’ve had to do?

Do you feel confident in the different areas of your life?

November 26, 2015January 3, 2020

Why I don’t regret getting injured

Firstly thank you for the lovely messages, comments and kind words after my last post. It really meant the world to me. I know I’m young and my life is ahead of me, I just needed that cathartic vent…

Anyway, onto the subject of this post. Since being injured and being unable to run I’ve been focusing a lot of my energies on going to the gym and really working hard at overall strength. Previously I had been following the New Rules of Lifting for Women which was really good but I was losing a bit of motivation for it. Doing the same two sets of workouts for weeks on end was getting boring. Don’t get me wrong, I still fully recommend that book and it’s highly likely I’ll get back into it (and it’s a great point of reference for different exercises). But after getting injured I needed a complete shake up of what I was doing and a new drive.

I actually found a great website called MuscleForLife that spoke a lot of sense to me by a guy called Mike Matthews. His website has loads of great resources and he talks a lot of sense in terms of workout splits, reps and different exercises (from what my albeit fairly limited knowledge and experience can tell anyway!).

I started breaking my workouts into body parts (sounds painful) and balancing ‘push/pull’ exercises. So for example, Monday is arms day and I’ll try and balance some bicep curls (a push exercise) with tricep pull downs (a pull exercise), amongst other things. And I’ve really been loving it.

What I’ve really come to learn is that you don’t need to go to the gym and come out sweating and gasping for air to know you’ve worked hard. Your heart rate doesn’t need to sky rocket to get a good workout in.In fact, I’ve never seen my body change as quickly as it has done with these kind of workouts than all the time I’ve ever been running. And I haven’t touched a cardio machine other than a three minute warm-up for each session. OK, OK I’ve only been doing this for a few weeks and I’m not saying I have muscles of steel or popping abs, but I can see the changes – they are tiny changes but they’re perceptible to me.

And more importantly, I can feel the changes. When I was down in the dumps about not running and I needed to find a new focus I decided to give myself the goal of strengthening my upper body (as well as continuing to strengthen the rest of me). One of my goals was to eventually achieve a full pull-up. I haven’t achieved that yet, but what I did achieve at the gym yesterday was almost there. Technically I achieved a neutral grip pull-up… or chin-up. To be honest I’m not entirely sure which it is, but there was definitely an ‘up’ in there 😉

It’s not a full pull-up because as my grip needs to be wider, which is ultimately so much harder because you’re using your back muscles to do most of the work, whereas what I achieved was kind of a combination of back muscles and biceps (a full chin-up uses solely biceps I believe).

I was so pleased you wouldn’t believe. I felt bad ass and like a warrior. If I fell off a cliff I can smile smugly knowing I can pull myself back up it 😉 and then run away from the zombies chasing me in this crazy scenario.

The point is, I don’t regret getting injured. It taught me a lot. Firstly it taught me not to be such an idiot about marathons and running. Three marathons in under six months is stupid for me. I’m an injury-prone runner and looking back I can see the times I was pushing myself when I should have been taking time off. Never ever underestimate the marathon distance. Even if you think “oh I’ll just pootle around really slowly and enjoy it” it’s still 26.2 bloody miles. There ain’t no pootle in that.

It also showed me that the gym isn’t just to keep me running and it isn’t necessarily a chore. It’s somewhere else I can push myself and feel like I’m achieving something amazing (for me anyway). I don’t always need PBs, a runner’s high or the fresh air to get that ‘punch in the air’ killer workout.

It’s another quiver in my bow of mistakes I’m learning from. Plus I got a huge medal soo… totally worth it 😉

Do you have any mistakes you don’t regret?

What is your favourite exercise?

What achievement are you most proud of?

November 25, 2015

Moving on

This is a bit of a random post. I just felt the urge to get some words down in a cathartic kind of brain fart, mainly triggered by the fact that I will finally be moving soon.

It’s been over eight months since Ben, my husband, told me he no longer wanted to be with me. Not a day goes past that I don’t think about it. Whether it’s wondering where the cracks began, why I didn’t see them or what my life is going to be like going forward. It’s not something I feel depressed about or cry about anymore. I don’t want sympathy or pity. That isn’t what this post is about. I actually don’t know what this post is about. It’s just a mental dump, forgive me.

I’ve been given a completion date for the flat I’ve bought (finally) so should be moving Friday 4th December. Ben lives in Switzerland and is enjoying his new life out there, with a new job and ambitions. I’m happy for him. We still keep in touch and this makes me both happy and sad. We’re still friends but it’ll never be the same.

I’m happy in myself and enjoying life. I will never regret the time Ben and me had together because we had so many good times and we grew together as people. But I do worry about the future. I have a ticking clock in the back of my mind which I’ve never had before.

I don’t want to get all Bridget Jones and Sex and the City on you, but I do worry that I’ll be that girl. I’m not outgoing and don’t thrive hugely well in social situations… I won’t ‘put myself out there’. Insecurities have cropped up that I never had before… What was wrong with me? Will anyone want someone as running obsessed as me? Am I boring? Nothing makes you face your flaws like the thought of dating. I was with Ben from when I was just 18 and was still ‘finding myself’ and growing as a person. Well, I’ve found myself and there’s not much I can do about changing now. This is me.

Thankfully I’m not really ready to look for anyone else. I feel exhausted and terrified by the whole idea. I’m happy on my own and enjoying the truly selfish aspects that that entails. No one to dress up for, no one to look good for, no one to try and make a good impression for. Just me, sat at home in my pyjamas, my hair a mess, eating too many apples.

I just worry that’ll I’ll get used that lifestyle. It’s so easy to just get stuck into my routines, my habits and introversion. I know what I’m like. I can become very routine-fixed and like things ‘just so’ and without anyone else there to mess up those routines they only become a bit more ingrained. But, like I said, I like my life at the moment and I like those routines. On to the next chapter!

But, still, that damn ticking clock…

If you’re with someone, how did you find your partner?

If you’re single, are you happy being single?

Do you worry about the future? I never used to. I thought I had my whole life planned out.

September 2, 2015September 2, 2015

Rants and Raves #18

Is it too early to think about Christmas? Yes, yes it is. I do love autumn but I’d still like one last summer hurrah before the coldness does finally set in…we’ll see I guess.

Rave: I am now the proud owner of a standing desk at work now. I’m so pleased as I really pushed for this. To be fair, my company were very accommodating but it did require me to do the leg work (no pun intended) to champion it and find a decent one that didn’t cost the world.

It’s good timing as my original Amazon box was starting to sag…This bad boy is fantastic though as it even has someone to perch your mouse (before I had to put my mouse on my laptop and swerve the keyboard). It was only around £50 as well, and fully adjustable! (It’s THIS one if you’re interested – no affiliation).

Rant: Dark mornings. How easy it was to get up at 5.30am when the sun was already shining outside…now it’s like the dead of night. At least it’s light when I come out of the gym I suppose.

Dark but beautiful I suppose.

Rave: Getting back into playing the Xbox again. I’m a geek at heart and have played console games and PC games since I could hold a controller. My dad’s to blame as he’d always buy the latest consoles and get me to play with him.

Sometimes it’s nice to chill out and shoot a few zombies, crash a few cars and ‘level up’. I can’t believe how much of a geek I used to be back in the day; I played so many games growing up (The Sims, Tomb Raider, Halo, online gaming…). These days I can get bored quite easily, but once in a while it’s nice to waste some time when the weather’s rubbish.

Rant: I seem to have a soap opera life with the cats on my street. The ginger one below has been using this little spot on my front garden (hardly a garden, more a patch of untamed grass…) to chill.

So much so there is now an indentation in the grass where it’s been curled up for hours at end. I’m at peace with it chilling there though as Alfie doesn’t notice it. Bless, Alfie, he’s not the sharpest or most observant dog…

Speaking of cats, there’s one that looks so grumpy it’s almost unreal. I’ve been trying to take a photo of it for ages…I even stroked it and played with it (it seemed really friendly surprisingly) but I could only manage this one:

Someone really annoyed this cat at some point in its life. It’s holding a powerful grudge.

Rave: I’ve got a collection of old designer handbags that I’m aiming to get sell (not really high end brands, but DKNY, Guess and Radley). I put one of the Radley handbags on eBay to sell and didn’t really care how much I’d get and in the end got £28. I charged £5ish for P&P and went to he post office to sell it.

I haven’t sold anything before on eBay nor have I ever sent a handbag in the post. It was all very stressful and complicated and would have cost more than £5. The lady behind the till was aghast though and said she’d give me£50 there and then to buy it from me. I was stunned. I had a little think and decided to hell with it. I said I’d be happy to sell it to her for £40 (£50 felt too much). She gave me cash! Amazing. I did feel terrible having to go back to the eBay buyer and say it was no longer available and they were fully refunded. Sometimes though you just have to go for it!

Rant: This is a depressing and slightly morbid rant, sorry. I don’t talk too much about this on the blog as it’s highly personal and doesn’t just involve me, but I still find being separated from Ben tough. I’m learning how to redefine myself and live my life now as a unit, which is hard. It still affects me every day. I had a moment the other day when I thought (now this really is morbid I’m sorry) what if I have an accident or I’m attacked one evening? Who will know I’m missing? My parents will eventually, but not right away. I don’t speak to them every day. Yes I work with my dad but some days/weeks he’s not in the office and somewhere else in the country (or world) on business. I obviously have friends but it’s not the same is it as a significant other? I mentioned this to my mum and she said she had thought about that too (her spinster daughter all on her own…) and suggested we “check in” with each other each night. Either a text or a phone call just before I go to bed to say “hey, I’m alive”. Jesus, this is how much I’ve regressed 😉 Though we failed the first evening as I forgot and then she text too late as I was already asleep. Whoops.

And just because we’re on that delightful topping of being newly single… I saw a work colleague the other day that I hadn’t seen for like three years. She asked how married life was as the last time she spoke to me was just before the wedding. Ah there’s a great conversation “yeah…not so good actually.” Or even better still, someone who had no idea you’d gotten married in the first place asks what’s new in your life. I mean seriously, what do you say!? You have to laugh at these things really…!

Rave: To end on something lighter… This is Alfie’s meditation face.

I’m pretty sure if I could read his thoughts he was visualising how he was going to overcome the many cats that hound him around my road 😉 “I am strong, I won’t let them bother me”…either that or “I hope when I open my eyes she’s put her camera away”.

On the subject of Alfie, I find it both adorable and annoying that he leaves little bits of food all over the house. I’m pretty sure this is because he thinks someone might steal the food in his food bowl (he’s a grazer rather than an outright meal eater) so he distributes little bits everywhere…just in case.

Resourceful I must admit.

If you have pets, do they do things that are cute but annoying?

What time do you get up in the morning usually?

Do you use eBay a lot? Have you ever sold old things?

August 26, 2015August 26, 2015

Who I am today (part 2)

OK so part 1 was a tough post for me. Having a blog is tricky as there are some things that you don’t feel comfortable talking to the whole world about, but at the same time it’s sometimes important to discuss certain issues however uncomfortable and embarrassing, rather than create a taboo. Part 2 is equally tough but in a different way.

During university I became healthy again both in my body and with my relationship with food. Being relaxed around food makes social occasions and enjoying life in general so much easier, as you can imagine. My relationship with food hasn’t changed. I haven’t regressed to worrying about calories, weight or loss of control. Food is still my friend. Since writing my blog this has been the case. Rest assure that when I show photos of cake, meals and snacks that I’m eating those things and enjoying them.

However I have a keen interest in keeping fit and being healthy. I obviously don’t eat cake every night with abandon. I genuinely enjoy healthy food like salads, vegetables and regularly make ‘sensible’ choices on a daily basis. I choose a handful of nuts as a snack (pistachios being my favourite) rather than a bag of crisps. This is mainly because I know the nuts will be more satisfying and nutritionally sound. When I go to a restaurant and choose a salad from the menu it isn’t because it looks like it’s the lowest calorie option available, it’s because I love salads. And, if you’ve read my blog for a long time, you know I’m likely to order chips on the side or have a Caesar salad which is hardly low calories with that creamy thick dressing!A few years ago I fell in love with running, which wasn’t an issue until I started running a lot more (probably two years ago). I ate well and my weight didn’t change. I’m probably slightly more heavy than I was when I left university at my healthy weight.

But after a while my period stopped again. At this point I was still with Ben. I checked I wasn’t pregnant and was hugely confused. My weight hadn’t dropped – I’m healthy! What’s going on? I went to the doctor (a different one) and explained my issue. They said that as my weight seemed fine (my BMI is in the healthy range) I should go on the pill and it would regulate things back to normal. No problemo.

Long story short, it sort of did, sort of didn’t. I’m ashamed to admit I just ignored the situation. We didn’t want children anytime soon and I knew I was eating properly. I started taking a calcium/vitamin D/magnesium supplement every day just in case and just carried on my merry little way assuming things would eventually become OK.

Ben and me separated and I stopped taking the pill and, well, nothing has changed. It’s funny (well, no it’s not obviously) but when a couple of my favourite bloggers openly discussed their previous problems with this area I didn’t apply it to myself at all. My head was firmly in the sand.

As a runner, injuries are the bane of my training. I’ve somehow mastered to get over half a year with no injuries and I’m over the moon. But in the back of my mind I know I’m walking a tightrope as by not having the proper hormones going on I’m in big danger of stress fractures as my bones might be too weak. Every time someone even mentions stress fractures, or I read about them in magazines or on blogs, I feel sick. It scares the hell out of me.

Taking my head out of the sand, I know this IS NOT NORMAL. I’m pretty sure it’s because I run too much for the weight I’m at. My body was fine at this weight for living life but adding in 30 miles of running a week (and my gym visits) has clearly stressed it out. It’s too busy keeping me running than worrying about ‘pesky’ hormones.

But I can’t give up running. Not yet. It’s a lifeline for me right now. Instead, I’m going to try and put on more weight. More calories = more weight which means (hopefully) kicking my body into gear with more hormones = healthy bones. I won’t lie, it sucks. I like the way I look and no girl really wants to be told she needs to put on weight. But I love running more and knowing how good running feels without being injured only heightens my resolve.

It’s going to be tough. I already eat a lot through the day – it’s not like I miss out meals or go to bed hungry. I’m a three meals plus regular snacks kinda girl! It’s frustrating because I do feel like I eat enough and I don’t count calories or actively maintain a certain weight. That said, I do know where my problem areas are though. I struggle with eating enough on long run days, often only having two meals as I just don’t fancy more and I don’t really eat more on days I exercise compared to days I don’t. Perhaps I think I’m eating lots but in reality for the exercise I do, I’m not. But I have strategies to master this! I know I can add more calories into my diet without necessarily stuffing myself silly every day. My plan:

(I will just add that I know I could eat cake every day – and God knows I really want to – but I need to do this in a fairly healthy way that will also be beneficial to sustaining good running).

Switch almond milk to semi-skimmed milk (more protein, more fat)
Switch my daily low-fat Greek yogurt to full-fat
Eat more nuts
Eat more avocados
Eat more oily fish
Use more coconut oil
Face plant a cake every night

I’ve heard that increasing your fat intake helps regulate hormones which is why there’s a lot more fat there and when I looked at what I normally eat I saw, apart from meat (which I don’t eat all the time), I don’t really eat that much fat at all.

I’m not going to go crazy and I want to do this fairly slowly (otherwise I’ll probably freak out – what girl wouldn’t?). I’ll aim for 5-7 pounds at first and see where that gets me. When I told my mum she said (amongst many other helpful and supportive things), “yep, you definitely need more meat on you”. Point taken, mums know best.

So there we go. However embarrassing these two post have been, I wanted to be honest and wanted to make myself accountable. Though I’m in a great place with food, I’m not perfect and I’m certainly not immune to feeling fat and thinking I look fat at times. This is obviously only going to increase. But it’s got to be done if I want to run healthy and for years to come.

I’m by no means an expert in this area nor do I know lots about food and nutrition so this is very much my own deductions and judgements. Any advice is always welcome.

Do you struggle to refuel properly after long runs?

Have you had any experience in this area?