This year marks ten years since I had a hysterectomy – getting a little personal with this one.

I won’t go into details but after having our son quite young and then years of pretty horrific gynae experiences it was decided this was the best course of action. And yes all other options had been exhausted (you’d be amazed at the amount of comments I get around this as if it was a throw away decision)!

It took me a long time to really get to grips with this – for my husband and I to go from years of trying to get pregnant including fertility treatment to need this was a massive blow. However, it was the sensible option.

Once I turned 30 I was booked in and one month later it was a done deed. I had what is called a total hysterectomy, which is removal of the uterus, including the cervix.  It’s a major operation and whilst I still have my tubes and ovaries recovery was nonetheless a long and depressing road. There was lots of tears, I can only describe it to feeling grief. Having very little mobility as I recovered meant I piled on a lot of weight.  I felt sluggish, tired and out of breath all the time but as I was still coming to terms with the op I’d had done I just wallowed in a lot of self pity, which ultimately made it worse, simply compounding the issue.

Earlier this year, in March, I went to a talk at Look Mum No Hands with Jasmijn Muller called Train Like A Woman, which was focused around how to train and work with your hormones in mind.  May seem a little odd for someone who has had a hysterectomy to attend but as I still have my tubes and ovaries they continue to make hormones, so whilst I do not have periods I still feel the symptoms and on top of that over the past year I sometimes get hot flashes, and was told by my GP that this is because the surgery may have blocked blood flow to the ovaries, which can also prevent the ovaries from releasing estrogen.  The joy of being a woman!

There is a high chance I will experience menopause earlier than the usual average age of early 50s and recently I was talking to a couple of ladies I know who are experiencing perimenopausal or linked symptoms.  Perimenopause usually starts in the 40s but can begin earlier for some.  It is when the ovaries stop making eggs and a transitional period before menopause but it can last for up to 10 years.  One friend made a great point that people have an instinctive reaction to compare themselves to others but that we are all at different stages in our lives and going through different experiences and challenges.  Energy levels can reduce but you could be working just as hard, if not harder, to maintain the minimum output.

Lets also not forget hormonal anxiety, which can be debilitating for ladies who were otherwise confident.  It can be a huge problem for some people (although not all), as what you used to do instinctively ie group rides with people, can then mean you second guess yourself and your ability to do things, which then affects your cycling and your morale.  This was a great point from a friend of mine that I can totally relate to.

Another friend of mine noted that she had been on the pill with artificial hormones for so long that when she came off it at the age of 40 it was a massive shock for her to deal with the peaks and troughs of hormones through the month and heavier periods.  Ironically she feels like she knows and understands her body better as a result and wished she had known how to do that 25 years ago!

Another friend I know who  has also had a hysterectomy has experienced hot sweats that just came on like a wave and went just as quickly.  She also notices lack of energy some days and feels she is definitely more angry on occasion.  Weight is another area she has noticed is easy to put on and increasingly harder to keep off.

The symptoms of menopause, and perimenopause, can be reduced through regular exercise and many find exercise to improve quality of life (though of course exercise will not stop these symptoms).

I have personally found over the last year I can cycle one day and feel amazing and super strong and then an easy recovery ride another day can seem like the hardest thing in the world.  Something I am sure many people can relate to.

There was an article on BBC News featuring a lady called Emily Barclay called ‘Perimenopause: I went from triathlon training to needing naps’ that can be read from here.

I realise a subject like this is not often talked about but why not?  A lot of us don’t identify these symptoms with certain stages of female development and talking about it more will raise awareness, share experiences and advice.

Any questions please feel free to ask as I am more than happy to break down the barriers and talk around this.

 

Six weeks ago I wrote a post about how I was changing up my training and was intentionally trying to lose weight whilst doing so.  This was not because I believed losing weight would solve my problems or make me happier as I am more than aware that is not a healthy way to make life changes but because I was uncomfortable, had put on weight and wanted to make positive changes.

I have said before but I am lucky that my husband is a qualified cycle coach so he writes my bike training plan and my best friend is a qualified personal trainer and nutritionist and she writes my strength and conditioning plan.

The new plan was for a six week period and on day 1 I received a message from Emma, which included the following:

‘This is a kickstart not a diet!!  I’m looking to change your way of thinking when it comes to exercise and good decisions.’

Before we began we had a consultation and completed starting measurements, weight and dress size and Emma also completed a fitness challenge that saw how many reps of squats, press ups and sit ups I could complete in one minute and how long I could hold the plank position for.

The six week period is not just about weight but about fitness, mental health and healthy eating.  Each week included 2 personal training sessions and 3 home workouts/classes.

For the 3 home workouts Emma would send me the complete workout so I knew exactly what to do, for what time, with what rest in between and no two workouts were the same so always something new to keep it interesting.

Emma gave me a booklet to complete which included a lot of information, pages to complete and also a food diary, mood checker, taking note of things during your week and noting them down, a wellness checking with the focus on being more mindful, self love and gratitude.

Fight Klub was a new addition to the schedule on a Tuesday night and so much fun!  Great music, cardio for an hour working with others.  I have terrible coordination when it comes to classes like this but I got it in the end and it was a great release too!

Emma and I used to train together all the time and I had missed that so was great to get back to training with her.

Every week I would complete a food diary and send to Emma for feedback so I could amend as needed.  It was interesting writing a food diary as I soon noticed my meals were often quite repetitive and often not enough especially on training days.

• Week 1 and 2 – went great!
• Week 3 – was my first week of working from home due to COVID-19 and that was when I was extremely busy with getting things organised as my company prepared to work from home for the foreseeable.  Whilst training sessions continued from home (I am lucky to have a home gym), I reviewed my food diary at the end of the week and found I had skipped meals all over the place and I’d had way less water than I should!
• Week 4 – I was making a conscious effort to pre plan and have a huge bottle of water with me at all times and that worked so much better.
• Week 5 – I was in the swing of things and even not having the face to face sessions and different structure meant things were kept on track and kept interesting.  Emma continued with clients via video for PT and spent a lot of time recording workouts that clients had access to – this meant I started some different workouts than I had done before including Power Wave and Boxercise.
• Week 6 – in all honesty I hadn’t even noticed I was six weeks in.  On some plans I have reviewed before I have been on count down until the finish but with every workout until the end being different this was definitely not the case here.

Working in a gym meant Emma had her workplace shut down due to COVID-19 but was on the end of the phone at all times to assist and send me over workouts to complete, review the food diary and check up on how I was doing.

In addition to the above I also continued with cycling and saw myself complete a 30 day streak on Zwift since working from home.

At the end of the six weeks I completed the following again to see if I had made any improvements:

• my fitness test – improvements in reps for all exercises and time to hold a plank
• measurements – overall loss of 11 inches
• weight – overall loss of 8lbs

It was just the kickstart I needed and definitely kept me on track and helped with focus during the lockdown and now I move on to start my new cycling plan and will ensure strength and conditioning continues to go alongside this.

On my journey I am the first to admit that I became obsessed with losing weight and lost the fun out of being active.  When I shifted my focus to concentrating on being healthier and happier I became just that.

However, why is it so taboo now to want to lose weight?  I won’t go back to being obsessive about it, but if it is done in a healthy way why is that wrong?  I debated writing this for a while as I knew I would probably get some push back but this is my journey and as per my strapline ‘be fearlessly unapologetically you’ I am doing just that.

I will use myself as an example.  I want to lose weight.  I am not currently comfortable in my own skin, in fact far from it. There I said it and I will not apologise for it either.

I want to be stronger on the bike and make sure when I complete my endurance events I feel confident in my training and myself too.

I know from previous experience what works to get the results I want to see on the bike and one area to use an example is to be better on the hills.  Less weight helps with this and the biggest weight on the bike?  Me!

Now don’t get me wrong I have a blog called Fat Girl Fit and I do not fit into the norm for what sporty people look like and honestly I don’t care!  I embrace what my body has achieved and will continue to achieve.  I love people I have met through social media on my journey and those I love engaging with the most are those who are real, honest, true and relatable.  Perfect hair, make up, tiny waist, fuelling on low calorie foods for sporting events, never breaking a sweat or embracing that sweaty selfie?  Influencers that have a huge following but clearly don’t know anything about the sport or kit their promoting but fit the mould so brands use them to promote their products and it sticks out like a sore thumb? Yeah I am not following you, you are not for me and I am probably not for you either and that is fine with me!

I’ve seen the benefits of strength and conditioning training in my cycling and will be ensuring I regularly incorporate this into my training schedule again, initially with weight loss in mind also.  I am lucky that one of my best friends is also a fab personal trainer and is helping me with this, as she previously did.  I can’t recommend this enough and know many people who have worked with her and seen the benefits.

In short my opinion is that if you want to lose weight and are doing it in a healthy balanced way that is fine.  An important point in that sentence is in a healthy way, how you choose to do this really tells if it is the right thing to do and coming from the right place and don’t forget appearance doesn’t equal health.  I do not want to lose weight to look a certain way or because I loathe myself.  I know why I want to lose weight and it doesn’t change any feelings I have about my own self worth.  I have a healthy relationship with fitness. And I am good with all that.

I started a new six week training plan as of today so will update in due course!