feel good & function

I guess here is as good a place as any. The world has changed a little since my last post. We’re currently in week 10 of ‘Lockdown’ in the UK. I’ve been very aware I haven’t posted for some time, prioritising where I needed to direct my energy. I have continued at work, but adjusted my days to fit around my primary aged children, homeschooling and my husband’s work commitments. My story is much the same as everyone else’s. We’re all in a strange limbo trying to muddle on through in the best way we can.

Weeks one, and two I felt very unsettled. I stopped running, I ate all the wrong food, I binged on news articles and stayed up too late only to be exhausted the next day and in my weariness make all the wrong decisions for my well being. My eldest son, a year 6, for all we knew had just finished primary school, rather abruptly, without any of the celebrations usually afforded to primary school leavers. He has missed his friends deeply. He was emotionally a bit wobbly, to say the least. I recognised that I needed to lead by example and help ourselves out of the gloom and desperation that was being flung at us from every media channel we were exposed to. I looked back to what I’ve learnt about well being and realised, through sheer anxiety, I was getting a lot wrong. Thankfully, I knew what I needed to do to correct the imbalance and function well again.

So, what could we change within the rules of the government’s restrictions? Firstly, we turned off the news. Which really should just be named ‘Bad News’. I cleared anything unhelpful from my Instagram feed. If it didn’t serve the purpose of making me happy or improving my life in some way, it went.

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We made sure to make use of the once daily exercise permitted. We walked, cycled and ran in pairs, solo or as a family each day. When we walked, we talked, held hands, giggled and took notice of the world around us. Our garden, a mess of various piles of rubble, soil, wood and building leftovers from our extension build last year, has been transformed into a beautiful little space by my hardworking husband. I am lucky to have someone willing and able to create my imaginings. I can now enjoy the sunshine from my patio, lawn or perched on a new newly constructed and filled raised bed!

Our tribe of local friends started a weekly quiz via Zoom, 12 families taking turns to host each week. Cubs and Scouts turned to Zoom meets, chess tournaments online with friends, weekly family video chats to keep in touch with grandparents, aunts and uncles, the Sunflower Growers Club is now a thing! School went online. Teachers stayed in touch via email and YouTube Assemblies. I ran with my bestie on the phone while she ran in another village. I actually turned to look at her forgetting she was only in my ear and not right next to me as she normally would be. At the weekly Clap for Carers, we’ve met neighbours we hadn’t known before, in seven years of living in this house! As a family, friendship group, training buddies and a community, we instinctively felt the need to communicate and found innovative ways to connect.

In normal times, I volunteer my time, once a week, to coach a beginner running group. Our current group of Couch to 5k-ers started in January and were nearing their big climax, a 5km run. We’d planned to run at a local park run at the end of March. But Lockdown measures put a hold on park run, training as a group and therefore the big celebrations that the beginner runners so deserved. Understandably, many of the group lost enthusiasm and motivation and, of course, were dealing with their own personal circumstances. Determined not to forget about them, my fellow coaches and I set about planning some sessions they could do alone. It took weeks of trying different tactics and training sessions. In the end, all they needed was some accountability and connection. We paired them up with a runner from the intermediate group so they had one-to-one support from someone who’d recently been though the C25K programme and stuck at it. They supported each other via WhatsApp to start and more recently in socially distanced buddy-runs as lockdown measures have eased. I’m so proud to have kept the majority of them going and know they’ve benefited greatly from both the exercise and new friendships. In turn, I too have been gifted with the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you give your time to others without expectations of anything in return.

My goals, as set out in my previous post, are on their way to fruition. Financially, I’m currently unable to start the Health Coach course I’ve set my heart on. Undeterred, and keen to keep learning while I save, I have found a Life Coach course online, which, although not quite as in depth as the course I’d really like to complete, will give me enough of an understanding and a qualification to make a start in the area I plan to head. I feel comfortable with this interim option and know it will give me a well rounded perspective on many areas of Life Coaching which can only enhance my skills in the long term. I’m now 40% of the way through this course.

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And so, 10 weeks in, here we are. I certainly can’t claim that we’ve got this all right. At the beginning we definitely weren’t. We have been given the opportunity to employ patience and understanding, listen and respond where needed and offer reassurances that normality will resume eventually. We’re now all able to turn a fraction into it’s decimal equivalent. We’ve experienced our beautiful village, normally so full of tourists, at it’s most stunning with no-one else around. How lucky we are to live in such a stunning part of the world! I have sat for hours patiently waiting for blue-tits to pay a visit to our bird feeder. We have figured out what we value the most is our space, freedom and human connections. In doing this we have a vague outline of a plan for how we change the way we live going forward, how we ‘declutter’ a busy family schedule to focus on the most important bits with more energy and enthusiasm. Besides the need to protect lives and the NHS, I wouldn’t have chosen Lockdown, but I’m not sorry it’s been inflicted on us. Our family has been one of the lucky ones, I recognise it isn’t the same for everyone. But on the whole, I hope the majority of families, like us, come out the other side all the better for it.

I’m a Healthcare Assistant in NHS primary care. Part of my job is monitoring patients’ long term health conditions and advising them on where they can make lifestyle changes to stay as well as possible, for as long as possible.

I often see the same patients year after year and can find they’ve started and stopped, or never even started to make the changes they so enthusiastically agreed they’d try last time I saw them.

I’ve realised that to make big lifestyle changes, rather than telling my patients how to get fitter/lose weight/quit smoking, I need to help to empower them to decide what and how they’re going to help themselves.

My role needs to be less teacher, more guide and supporter. I need to build a relationship with my patient. Facilitate a conversation based on their concerns or raise their awareness of detrimental health choices for them to discover their own path forwards. Help them identify and break down the barriers that have stopped them in the past. Support them by encouraging them to set goals and clarify how they can reach them.

I have recently enrolled on several courses through my job including Making Every Contact Count (using every opportunity to start a conversation encouraging better lifestyle choices), Group Consultations (setting up and running group appointments. Facilitating conversations between patients with the same conditions so they can support each other with motivation and advice in a safe environment with clinicians on hand to answer medical queries) and Motivational Interviewing (guiding patients to use their own strengths and set goals, encouraging them to be the decision makers and discover their own motivations for change).

But, before I can help others, I need to work out what motivates me. My first steps. Where do I see myself in a years time? What do I need to do to get there? Is my goal realistic and achievable?

Big questions with some but not all of the answers. My brain has been on overdrive recently with excitement and, I’ll admit, some fear of the unknown and potentially upsetting my happy life. But unless I try, I’ll wonder and if all I achieve is the knowledge that actually life as it is is just fine, thanks… well that’s still a positive, right?

My motivations are to offer consistent, ongoing support to people ready to make a lifestyle change and be more in control of how I do that.

In one year I see myself well on the way to being a Health Coach. I see the Group Consultations at work being successful and both patients and staff benefiting from them. I will work with my colleagues to promote healthy lifestyle choices for our patients and each other.

I will to enroll onto a Health Coaching Diploma Course. A distance learning course will make it realistic and achievable.

I need to communicate with my colleagues my personal plans and request the support of my manager and employers.

Step one. A plan.

Well, not so much light bulb. It was far more gradual than that in reality. After several years of consciously trying to learn about myself, making changes, tweaking them, scrapping them and starting again, I finally feel like I’m on track. And the biggest lesson I’ve learnt is that my health is not a destination. My health, your health, is a journey. And everybody’s journey is different.

The light bulb came when I realised that what I’ve learnt could help other people to achieve the balance they’re seeking, too.

So what does it take to feel good and function well? The answer is simple. Balance.

Achieving this balance is possible for everyone by making small, consistent changes. I can pinpoint the moment I made the first good decision to help myself. I decided, on the spur of the moment, to join a local running group. A Couch to 5k lead by a local PE teacher for his wife and a few of her friends. One of them put the meeting point on a public Facebook page and the poor chap ended up with about 30 of us on the first cold January evening. To his credit, he coached us up to running for 30 minutes non-stop and stuck with us, every Monday evening, for a whole year. By this point I was hooked.

At the time, I was a mum of two preschool boys. I’d recently moved to a new area. My husband had a job that meant he worked late evenings and weekends. I worked on the bank at a local hospital, I enjoyed my job, but really it was just something I could do and it fitted around the rest of life, it didn’t challenge me. I was making poor dietary choices. Other than a walk to the park with buggies and scooters and the dog, I wasn’t exercising. I stayed up too late in the evenings and struggled to wake up the next morning. I had mid afternoon energy slumps and craved sugar. My skin was awful, I was overweight, I was unhappy. I can’t even add a photo of me then, I made sure none existed.

Running gave me so much more than I expected. I knew I needed to get fit and had run a bit as a teenager so it wasn’t too far from my comfort zones. Although it was a shock to realise how unfit I’d become. Getting physically fitter was something I expected.

What I didn’t realise was that this new physical fitness would spur me on to make better dietary choices, sleep better, have more energy, make friends, boost my confidence, create learning opportunities and a chance for me to give back and pass on these benefits to other people who are currently where I was.

Fast forward 5 years. I’m a Mum of two primary (almost secondary) age boys. They’re active, healthy kids who eat healthily and are physically and mentally fit. This is because I realised how important it was to set them a good example. I now work in a job I love with the hours that fit perfectly around my family. My husband’s work-life balance is vastly improved. We eat good, homemade food most of the time (we’re human, sweet things are far from banned, but are now in moderation). I exercise in various forms almost every day. I set goals and plans to be able to meet them and recognise the small achievements of every day and the big achievements borne out of these smaller ones. I have a supportive and fabulous friendship group. They really are incredible and we inspire each other. I learn; self improvement, work courses, I gained a run leader qualification. I give my time voluntarily to our local triathlon club as a run leader and secretary. I helped set up the junior section of the club and the beginner group. I barely recognise the me of five years ago to the person I am today.

None of this happens at the touch of a button though. And actually, would I feel as good if it did? Probably not. Part of what makes this feel like such a huge achievement is that it was a gradual process. Small habits created, some old ones now null and void. Tweaks here and there, mistakes recognised and reevaluated. Nothing huge, nothing momentous. Just a recognition that I needed to change and the willingness to give something a go. My start was running. Yours could be sleep, sugar, catching up with a friend. But do start, you really can’t imagine how far it could take you.