Living the lifestyle long term

Today it's been exactly four months since I started my KSFL journey and I am still living the lifestyle. It's been modified, and my success varies week to week depending on what else is going on, but when I fall off for a while it doesn't take much to get back on track and I've learned that even the effects of a week off-plan can be reversed by a week back on detox.

I don't have quite the slim, toned body I used to have in my youth, but then I'm in my mid-thirties now and have had two children. I could still do with losing another stone and hopefully I will eventually, even if it takes a while but even if I don't I feel comfortable in my skin as I walk down the street right now. I can wear leggings and not feel as though I'm making people feel ill and pick up clothes off the rail that fit.

Take a peek:

I've made a few new observations and realisations recently. Rachel Stevenson, my KSFL trainer and mentor suggested back in February that we set ourselves a goal for Easter and that if we stuck to the plan we treat ourselves. My treat was meant to be a holiday but it got postponed at the last minute so instead I treated myself to some new training clothes. I got new workout trainers, new socks, new workout leggings and then I scored a fab cycling top in a charity shop that I now use for classes. These purchases revolutionised things for me. Seeing my reflection in them I looked like someone worthy of wearing them. I looked good! Not perfect by any means - I still have bulges and I'm broader than many of the other women in class, but I look toned and comfortable and OK. I have since taken to sometimes wearing trainers, and cut offs and sporty tops out in public too. I would never have dreamed of doing that before because people who wore those clothes were a world apart from me. They were fit people. They were people for whom exercise and fitness were so much a part of who they were that they didn't think twice about displaying it publicly, and they wore that identity with pride. That wasn't me.

Why I didn't believe it was me, I have no idea. In my mid teens my average week involved three hours of ju-jitsu training, two of stage dance classes, one of badminton and walking a minimum of fifteen miles plus whatever we did in PE at school. Once I got to my late teens the dancing and PE finished but I started getting into weights, and the odd bit of running, but for some reason being fit never really meant anything. That was just what I did for fun. And then I got into my twenties, got stuck into a career that involved sitting at a desk for hours on end and got into a comfortable relationship that although it started off with us both being fit (we got to know each other as we spotted for each other whilst weight training) soon evolved into lots of cosy nights in on the sofa. And then the kids came. So I was unfit for a decade but before that I was consistently exercising regularly and I am again now. I don't intend to stop. I'm even starting martial arts classes again next week!

So now I am reclaiming an identity that was always there for the taking but that I didn't value myself and my investment in my own health and wellbeing enough to claim.

Hello world. I am Gina. I am fit. I am healthy. I am happy. I am going to work as hard as I have to to stay that way and if I wear trainers in public it's my way of shouting out to the world that I am proud of the way I am looking after myself now.

Thank you KSFL and Rachel for giving me the tools I needed to get here.