Me, Myself, I

My pursuit of my love of horses is all the sweeter for the wait.  It is itself a whole wonderful experience but also is an analogy for how I try to live my “retired” life, after moving to the “country”.

The choices I made in the past were good bad and indifferent, but they are done now in the past. There isn’t a fat lot I can do about it now. There is however some constants, which still invade my daily life, like bad smells.

This is my before picture, no need for a bikini to see the problem!

There are about seven things, (more later) which I think are probably common to all of us the first one that springs to mind is, my weight. It may not really be at the top of the list priority wise, but sadly it’s the first that pops up.

I am not alone in my passion/obsession/ love of horses what psychologists make of this phenomenon, I don’t know but I think I am going to research it. Loving horses like I do, has made me think of the poor horse when I get on it. Now if you have been reading? You will know I worried about this from the start. (September 2011).

 I thought upping my activity (riding) and”watching” what I ate would do the trick, great, sorted! Love the riding and it is great exercise and love watching my food, yum yum, but I can tell you it’s had no affect on my weight. In fact I put nine pounds on. Can you believe it?

So now I have faced up to it, got on the Wii and did a body test. Uh, oh, first time since last summer. Its pathetic really isn’t it. If its important and I care about the horses back why didn’t I do something immediately instead of living on the banks of De Nile?

I am determined now to do something and writing this and posting it on the internet is a clear way of demonstrating my commitment. The key motivating factor is riding, I want to be a good rider so much, be as kind as possible to the horse I ride and enjoy riding as much as possible. To do this I need to loose, wait for it, three stones, according to the graph at the doctors, but I will settle for 2 ½  stones, but no less.

Its OK  Flaire, soon I will be a lot easier on your back

I want to big up, Meg the head groom at Redbrook, she is my inspiration, not only has she done it herself very successfully. But she had the tact and diplomacy to broach the subject with me in a very compassionate constructive way, hence jumping on the Wii. Thank you Meg you are a star. What a team Hayley the Instructor from heaven , patients of a saint. and Meg a friend/coach at the yard

So I have started, with Slimfast in the first instance for about a month I think to get going and then I will segue into a longer term healthy eating plan. Wish me luck.

My question is though if I can do this, finally, for the horses I love, why couldn’t I do it for me?

Alison x