As I mentioned in my ‘being grateful‘ post I enjoy camping as much as staying in a 4 or 5 star hotel. Sometimes the home comforts and luxuries you experience in a decent hotel are a lovely and welcome treat. However many hotels and especially branded hotels are all the same and… they are all a fairly bland square box of cream and beige! They don’t beat the real sense of adventure you experience in the great outdoors… sitting around the campfire with great friends, chatting, banter, wine and a BBQ…
Chris and I have just spent a brilliant weekend at the edge of the Brecon Beacons on a wild camping bushcraft weekend! Full details will be available on our travel blog in due course…
It is July already and with such a busy 2018 I don’t think I’m going to get to the west coast of Wales this year. I therefore changed this challenge from the Pembrokeshire coast path to the South West coast path.
OK, so I did only a tiny fraction a couple of months ago and had just a taster of this amazing 630 mile walk. I would love to do the entire South West coast path at some point and I’ll try and get to Pembrokeshire next year…
Details of my short experience of a section near Weymouth and Lulworth Cove of the South West coast path can be found on frombluetogreen.com
So… a shared celebration with my best friend! We’ve just returned from a wonderful and relaxing holiday in Cuba to celebrate that we are both 50 this year! My lovely friend Bridget and I have known each other since we met at school when we were about 13 and through the ups and downs of life we have remained good friends ever since!
A full update on our Cuba fun and frolics are available on my travel blog frombluetogreen.comĀ š
A delicious Cuban meal including spicy prawns, rice and beans and pumpkin
Having just returned from a week of all inclusive indulgence in Cuba I was a bit anxious about this month’s weigh-in… however… I have managed to maintain my weight of 8 st 3 lb!!! Yay!!! How did this happen???
I spent last week consuming numerous cocktails each day, lazing around reading books on a sunbed and doing virtually no exercise… on the basis that any excess calories over the 1650 necessary to keep my weight at 8 st 3 lb, and given I was probably averaging a calorie consumption of around 3000 a day, in theory I should have put on about 3-4 lb… but no! I didn’t put on a single lb!!! Hurrah!!!
I’m not sure if this is a delayed reaction and I’ll suddenly expand at some point this week so I’ve gone back to my usual routine of not over eating and doing lots of exercise… all is good so far… and this was my gym weight this morning i.e. on heavy duty ‘proper’ scales, after breakfast and with my clothes on…
Given that I’ve managed to stay at 8 st 3 lb I’ll soon amend this challenge with the aim of sticking to 8 st 3 lb throughout the rest of 2018. This is a weight I am comfortable with and while I either have to stick to 1650 calories each day or do a large amount of extra exercise to enable me to eat more, it is all manageable at the moment…
Nearly there… I did quite a bit of evening walking this week… the lovely warm summer evenings continue in the UK which makes it a real pleasure to spend them walking!
Jurassic Park scenery on Cuba hike
Week 27 walking progress:
Total miles walked in week 27 = 12
Average per day for this week (12 / 7) = 1.71
Running total = 1033 + 12 = 1045
Miles left to walk in 2018 (1050 ā 1045) = 5
So close to reaching my target but only around 12 miles walked for the duration of this week… I was on a relaxing holiday in Cuba! A couple of these miles were walked during a short guided hike from the hotel (above pic) and another couple were walked in the gorgeous Havana… I did a local walk on the Sunday evening when I returned but the rest of the time my walking consisted of to the pool; to the beach and to one of the numerous dotted bars around the hotel!
A short mid week update as today I passed the 1000th mile walked so far in 2018 š
The weather in the UK has been awesome this week… temperatures up to 30 degrees C and endless blue skies… perfect for clocking up several miles in these gorgeous evenings.
I walked a total 16 miles today:
Walking to the stations and back (5 miles)
Gym cross trainer and tread mill (5 miles)
Evening local walk (6 miles)
These miles don’t include miles when I am milling around the office or popping out to get some lunch or wandering around at home. They are miles walked over and above what is necessary to conduct my day to day life. I wasn’t originally going to include gym miles but as I work so hard to achieve them I felt they should be included. I estimate that around 25% (or 250 miles) would have been gym miles.
As of today I’ve walked a total of 1,007 miles so only 43 off my personal target of walking 1050Ā extraĀ miles this year and in only 6 months rather than 12!
I’m doing more and more miles each week and its getting easier and easier to walk around 15 miles some days… I haven’t been this fit in years, if not decades! Previously, after a 10 mile hike I would collapse on the sofa for the rest of the evening. Now, after 15 miles I feel I could keep going on and on and with no aching muscles in the mornings. (Although this would be a different story if my hikes included hills or mountains… the area in which I live is very flat…)
Under 100 miles to go! Yay! And I completed the most miles this week so far this year š
To achieve a total of 71 miles walked in one week:
Mon 18th June: walk to the local swimming pool and back at lunchtime and evening walk = 8 miles
Tue 19th: walk to and from stations to work and back; gym; lunchtime walk and evening walk = 17 miles
Wed 20th: walk to and from stations to work and back and gym = 9 miles
Thu 21st: walk to local retail park and back = 3.5 miles
Fri 22nd: work + gym + lunchtime = 11 miles
Sat 23rd: retail park = 4 miles
Sun 24th: local walk with my friend (9.23 miles) and an additional impromptu local walk later the same day (9.21 miles) = 18.5 miles
The weather has been cracking this week… beautiful and sunny and during this time of the year, it doesn’t get dark until around 10 pm. I’ve therefore been making the most of being outside and increasing my walking mileage! Today, I had made plans to continue decluttering and tidying up around my home this afternoon but instead decided to go for a second lengthy walk of over 9 miles in the sun! Decluttering can wait for a rainy day š
I’m very pleased with my walking progress and only have 140 miles left to walk in 2018 until I reach my target! Woohoo š
The weather in the UK has been really pleasant throughout the last couple of weeks and several of these miles were walked near to my home… making an extra effort to walk extra miles and make the most of the lovely weather. The wild flower photos below were all taken on recent local wanders…
Another challenge completed while on the recent Alaska cruise! The cruise offered a lot of opportunity to try new things and I actually participated in two dance classes…Ā I did a 70ās line dancing class and a salsa line dancing class. I thoroughly enjoyed both and Iām keen to try maybe local salsa classes nearer home.
I weighed myself the day after returning from my recent cruise and my weight is… 8 st 3 lb! Yay! This means I managed a 2 week holiday with a 9 day cruise in the middle and didn’t put on a single pound š
Achieving this did take quite a bit of determination and effort which might not appeal to everyone as most people take holidays as an opportunity to relax and enjoy a little overindulgence. However, after 6 months of hard work to reduce my weight by 2 stones (28 lbs) I was keen to find a good balance of enjoying the trip but not regaining any weight. This is how I did it:
Rough calculation each day of the estimated number of calories I was consuming and the estimated number I was burning off which helped me to keep track and stay focussed.
Daily gym sessions… it was easy to be in the ship’s gym at 06:00 each morning as with the -8/-9 hours time difference I was always awake at 5 am!
Paying $69 for a gym pass for the 9 day cruise duration which meant unlimited classes such as pilates and cycling and suspension training.
Booking active excursions; each of the 4 shore trips I did involved hiking.
Never taking the ship’s lift… as my cabin was on level 5 and many activities were on level 12 I did a great deal of walking up and down 7 flights of stairs!
Walking several miles around each of the ports while I wasn’t on any of the excursions.
Eating healthy breakfasts and lunches but allowing a few treats each evening.
Not snacking between meals.
Throughout the day I drank black coffee, herbal tea (mint, cinnamon & apple, orange etc) and water. I mostly had just one glass of wine which was enough for me.
At each meal I opted for the healthiest choice. A typical day would be:
Breakfast (600 calories):
Half a bran muffin (consumed early in the morning with a coffee before any gym classes)
Small bowl of bircher muesli
Melon, grapes, pineapple
Poached or scrambled egg
Lunch (400 calories)
Mostly salad; steamed vegetables; vegetable curry and fruit from the buffet
Dinner (1300 calories)
Bread roll and butter
Starter
Main
Dessert
Glass of wine
For a 50 year old 5’3″ woman to maintain a weight of 8 st 3 lb my ‘My Net Diary‘ app says I need to consume 1650 calories each day. For an average food consumption of 2,300 calories (as above) this meant burning off an extra 650 calories each day. This was achieved quite easily as with daily gym sessions, walking, trekking and climbing stairs several times a day I often burned off more than this. Extra time in the gym gave me more ‘calorie credits’ to enjoy delicious food each night, such as the delicious ‘warm chocolate lava cake’ as in the picture!
Fifty at Fifty 