Corona lockdown week 20: Lose 5lb to save the NHS! My lockdown fitness (or lack of)

Read the rest of my Corona Lockdown diaries here. This is a collaborative post. See my disclaimers for more information.

Apologies; I’ve missed a week or so of my thrilling lockdown diaries.

Last week was my tenth wedding anniversary, and gloriously sunny to boot, so rather than sitting at my computer discussing what an idiot Donald Trump is and the latest catchy government slogan I spent it in the pub, enjoying some childfree time with my husband.

It was the closest thing I’ve had to proper time off in almost five years and it was lovely.

One thing that really wound me up, and I wanted to write about, was the government’s announcement that they were launching a war on obesity.

If somehow you managed to miss this, we all need to lose 5lb to help save the NHS.

(Yes, that is the same NHS that the Tories voted against protecting).

The fact is that overweight people are more likely to die of coronavirus, and so in a bid to press pause on our country’s terrible mortality statistics, they are demanding a ban on junk food advertising and BOGOF deals on unhealthy processed foods.

We are being encouraged to eat fewer calories and make better, healthier food choices – and this was all announced one week before the hilariously named Eat Out to Help Out scheme encouraged us all to pop into town and buy half price Wetherspoons for breakfast, Maccie Ds for lunch and KFC Chicken for dinner in the name of saving the economy.

Confusing and conflicting?! What on earth were we expecting, I suppose.

I won’t shy away from it though; weight is a huge issue.

Like millions of women, I have struggled with my weight for more or less my entire adult life. Particularly after body-ruining pregnancies and dealing with the sleep deprivation that followed, it was extremely hard to gather up the motivation to do anything other than drown my sorrows in cake and wine.

The very idea that new mums should be restricting their foods so as look better in clothes when they’re managing on 4 hours of broken sleep a night seems just monstrous to me really. And so I largely didn’t bother.

As for exercise; until the children started school, I didn’t have the time to get out to exercise regularly.

With my husband working long hours in London it would have been a case of going out in the evening, and therefore missing out on the only adult conversation I’d had all day. If I’d have been able to summon the energy to go in the first place.

I know that some super-fit mums are motivated to jog with the buggy and wake up for 5 for a bootcamp class, but those are not my people.

However last year, when the kids were both out of the house, I re-joined the gym for the first time since just after I got married. I returned to find the very same pilates teacher taking the class, who commented on my absence and asked what I’d been up to. NINE YEARS, it’s been NINE YEARS! I thought. I mean, that would probably take up most of the class, so I shrugged and said ‘getting unfit’.

Fortunately thanks to my new-found free time (a gift which not many have) I got back into it fairly quickly. By the time lockdown started I was doing a pilates class, sometimes followed by a session in the gym, and/or going swimming four to five times a week.

I’d never have described myself as fit but I was enjoying it.

Although exercise alone doesn’t necessarily help with weight loss, it definitely made me feel healthier, stronger and I had a new way to spend the evenings rather than sitting on the sofa stuffing my face with crisps and wine. I was a healthy weight and felt good for it.

And then lockdown happened.

We tried Joe Wicks but the kids lost interest after a few weeks. I did a few online pilates classes, and downloaded a few apps, but quickly realised I didn’t have the resolve nor the personal space to continue with it. I needed the gym setting, with someone telling me what to do and without my children and my husband wandering in and asking what I was up to every 4 minutes. And obviously swimming was out entirely; my favourite way to relax and unwind and turn my mind off completely was just ripped away from me.

Instead we – like every other family in the country – were only allowed out of the house to walk for an hour at a time.

We took hold of this opportunity, but you can’t amass many steps in an hour when you have two kids trailing behind.

Add to that the monotonous lockdown routine and the ‘every day is a weekend’ feeling of uselessness, and it’s hardly a surprise that I, alongside a million others, lost the will to care and put on a few pounds.

Unfortunately along with my lost motivation, my husband lost his job – and the gym membership had to go.

They’ve opened back up now with social distancing and pre-booking in place, but my dreams of finding a personal trainer and entering my 40s as a svelte gym-bunny (or being able to walk up a hill without almost dying) are definitely on the back burner.

I find it ridiculous that the government aren’t helping there. They have plunged millions into this obesity awareness scheme and yet there is no help for people wanting to have access to gyms and swimming pools and get fitter.

In turn these gyms and pools are facing tough times ahead and potential closures, as millions of families just like us are unable to make their budgets stretch any longer.

Indeed, from what I’ve seen the government’s primary tactic seems to be shaming people into losing weight, as if that’s ever been shown to work (it hasn’t) and being referred to join fad diets (also shown not to work long-term). Oh, and vouchers to fix bikes. Which is fabulous if you don’t have one and have nowhere safe to ride one.

But anyway, this was meant to be about my fitness and not just a huge political rant.

Personally, I feel better when I’m fitter, and I want to lose the weight I’ve gained and get my BMI back down into the healthy section (for myself, not because I’ve been told to. I’m almost annoyed that they announced it tbh as my instinct is to shout NO, SHAN’T).

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A post shared by Fran @ Whinge Whinge Wine (@whingewine) on Jul 19, 2020 at 4:24am PDT

When the rules relaxed a bit, I started trying to get my 10k steps every day – which used to be easily achieved through school runs alone and now seems like an impossible task – and then eventually I started the Couch 2 5k programme.

I can’t tell you how difficult it was to do that first run.

Being totally crap at it, and obviously being in public felt humiliating; but once I had done it I was really proud that I’d finally got the motivation to do something.

And then, a few weeks in, my dog pulled me over going after a cat and I twisted my knee. A totally kick in the face, that, after building up the motivations to start it. I hope to resume in another week when it’s fully healed.

Fingers crossed the desolate job-landscape improves soon and I can go back to my happy place at the swimming pool and the gym once the kids are back at school.

But my overall confusion is this:

Given I have all that time available to me, money and my own personal transport to buy food, a decent kitchen to store and prepare it, and the skills and knowledge to cook it and I still need to lose a few pounds, how the hell do they expect people living in poverty – who have just been given the opportunity to get a full McDonald’s happy meal for their kid for ONE POUND FORTY NINE – to manage it?

Answers on a postcard, please.