Falling of the horse...

 ... and getting back on again. 

Since we arrived in Dubai I had the luxury of reducing my work load significantly. This gave me finally the time and space to look a bit after myself, mainly by slowly starting to work-out again. The last 7, 8 years (ugh) I was only able to every now and then squeeze in two or three weeks of regular training until the next wave of workload, family activities or some sort of stress was putting me off it again. 
And while I always enjoyed a rather slim frame, I am not going to ly to you: muscle loss above the age of 35 is real! 

Now, for me, when I want to keep my shape, it is not at all about weight. I ditched looking at the scales nearly twenty years ago and pretty much rely on my body feeling. Having gone through some very light weight shifts and four pregnancies during my life, I know quite precisely how much I weigh just by looking at the mirror. But what normally gives me more of a headache is when I loose my muscle toning. And I am not talking about very visible muscle toning, just a normal, healthy balance between muscle and fat. Besides this,  it is mostly about staying fit. Fit in the sense that I want to be able to do the bicycle tour with my kids, go on that hike, be able to climb up on something or put in a spontaneous sprint whenever needed without dying after a mere fraction of the activity because of lack of force, endurance or flexibility. In short, I want to be a physically functional person and the older you get the more effort it takes to keep these abilities. 

Additionally to all that I am hopeless when it comes to putting myself first. The curse of a traditional upbringing, so to speak. I will put everyone and everything in front of my needs in the hope to then have the "freedom" (read: time) to do something for myself. It is no surprise that it does not work like that, sometimes some things have to give. 

After a successful start with quite regular "training" - which could consist of a sharp, long walk (I despise jogging, sorry, always did), some weight lifting, some light yoga and some short HIIT-workouts at home, I managed to step up my game for nearly a months with the help of an online plattform that I discovered, specifically targeted on women. The workouts are pretty tough and a challenge but also very effective and I was doing great progress for three weeks. And then it happened again! Despite  having a lesser workload, lesser extracurriculum activities to take care of for the kids (since they are mostly incorporated in school) and in general a more relaxed life, I felt stressed out, had some hormonal roller-coaster going on, bad sleep and - stopped training for a good 10 days.
The last 3 of these 10 days I managed to put my schedule in such a way that - despite wanting to start again - it was literally impossible because I had planed times so badly for meals and activities. Talk about messing up for oneself. Nagging in the back of my mind was the fear that all the work I had put in so far would be in vain and I had to start over - again. It needs a good level of fitness to keep the results for a longer time without working out in my age and I am not there yet. Actually, I will have to put in a year of constant training to be able to put in a longer pause without loosing any of my gains. 

But yesterday I managed, I rolled out the yoga mat, put my dumbbells and my laptop in front of me, a big water bottle close by and started again. I did an express core workout of roughly 20 minutes, added some leg and gluts and arms and then I was done. And yes, I felt the pause of those 10 days but still the feeling of having gotten over all those hinders being back at it again: priceless.