First steps into dance

I was a chubby child. And somewhere between the ages of 6 and 8, the schoolyard taught me to see my body as disgusting and shameful. It was one of the most powerful, most enduring, most life-changing lessons I was to learn from school. I still experience its influence every single day.

One of the ways in which this knowledge manifested itself was in a particular horror at dance. Having internalised that my body was disgusting, the last thing I wanted to do was draw attention to it by moving it around, maybe causing it to wobble or jiggle. And, already bearing the brunt of ridicule and teasing for even existing in this body, I never wanted to do anything in public view where I might appear clumsy or inept, or in any way invite even more mistreatment and contempt.

So, apart from whatever enforced dancing lessons at school I could not escape by feigning illness, I avoided dance floors from then on at almost all costs. Maybe the highest of those costs were refusing point-blank to join in the dancing at my brother's wedding, and, a few years later, being relieved that my fiancée agreed to not having any dancing at our wedding at all.  

And yet...

Part of me loved dance. While I hated those dancing lessons at school, I loved the actual dancing (it would have been great if I were invisible, or alone). Over the years, I made a couple of furtive excursions into dance, when it felt very safe to do so. For example, a short stint of latin dance classes, accompanied by a nun I knew; or a casual, one-off Lindy hop class at a jazz festival with a group of other absolute beginners.

And I loved to watch dance: I remember first going to the ballet with my parents when I was about 10 or 11 years old,¹ beginning a life-long adoration of this art form. Years later, I came to love watching flamenco performance as well. But for me, dance was something for other people to do.

Fast-forward to the present.

Step 1: Zumba

Over the last two years, I've been on a journey to re-make my body. Part of that has been exploring different forms of exercise. For me, the support and encouragement of friends has been a vital ingredient in this venture. So when one of them put out an invitation to join them for some free fitness classes being offered in our city (the Medibank Feel Good program), I was eager to go along. And when I looked up one of the classes, Zumba, and discovered that it wasn't that thing inside the big inflatable balls² but was exercise inspired by latin dance, I was filled with a mixture of simultaneous trepidation and curiosity.

So, on 2 April 2015, a rainy Thursday afternoon, I made my way to South Bank. Looking around, I was relieved to see that I didn't know anybody other than my friend. I was still very worried about looking ridiculous.

The class wasn't easy for me. I felt like I was doing the right move only about 25% of the time and felt my balance and co-ordination taxed to their absolute limits. By the end of the 45 minutes, I was not only physically exhausted, but my brain had turned to mush from trying to control my limbs into making unfamiliar movements, while simultaneously translating the instructor's visual cues into actions. I felt sore and overwhelmed, but I had also had so much fun! Unlike running and cycling, which took time for me to fall in love with, Zumba hooked me right from the start. And as for my fears? I discovered that I was focusing so hard on the movements and following the instructor that I became completely unaware of anyone around me. I learned that I didn't have to worry about what anybody else thought: I wasn't going to perceive it anyway.

The Feel Good program runs twice a year, in ten-week blocks during autumn and spring. By the end of the autumn 2015 block, I became a Zumba regular and already started seeking other places to get my Zumba fix while Feel Good wasn't running. I was delighted to find out that Brisbane City Council was offering free Zumba classes on Saturday mornings as part of its Active Parks program.³ And when that block of classes finished, I found a regular Saturday morning class close to home and became a regular there.

By now, my confidence had grown enormously, and I felt like at last, I was dancing the right steps in most of the routines at least most of the time. A huge moment of validation arrived on 16 January 2016. Our instructor had a practice of inviting classmembers onto stage with them for some tracks, to dance in front of the whole class. On this day, I was invited up for the first time! In a little under a year, I had gone from someone who wouldn't dare to be seen dancing to being not just comfortable, but excited to be getting up on stage. I scored a commemorative wristband too.

But soon, some changes in my weekly schedule made it difficult to get to a Saturday morning Zumba class, and I was left searching for alternatives.

Although I hadn't known it at the time, connections that I'd made through the free, public programs I'd attended would pave the way forward. At Active Parks, I'd met an instructor whose style and energy I really enjoyed. When, later in the year, they also taught classes in the Feel Good program, I was excited to learn that they worked at Pure, a gym near my workplace that provides the instructors for the program. So when I was offered a great deal on a membership package there, I readily signed up!

Step 2: Barre

Zumba alone would have made my Pure membership worthwhile to me, but this gym also offers the most amazing variety of other classes: everything from traditional aerobics-style workouts to more kinds of yoga than I knew existed, to pilates classes on mats and on machines, to hula-hooping and mini-trampolining... and barre.

The start of my journey to become fit and healthy was purely being unhappy with the way I looked. I restricted food dramatically (even stupidly) and exercised intensely to shed a large amount of bodyweight: eventually, 63 kg (139 lb) of it.  As my weight decreased, I started having to engage with a new question: I knew what kind of body I didn't want; but what kind of body did I want? To be honest, I still don't really know the answer to that (and the question has become less important to me anyway). But when a friend suggested that maybe I could now start building muscle, I freaked out a little bit. As much as I knew I didn't want to live in a fat body any more, I also knew that I didn't like the look of a bulky, muscular physique. And by now, running and cycling had already made my thighs larger and more muscular than I was happy to see. I was actively avoiding any strength training out of fear of what it might do to my body. When I told my friend that, their advice was to look at athletes' bodies across different sports, see which physiques appealed to me most, and this might give me a clue about what kind of training might take me in the direction I wanted. My psychologist endorsed this approach too, and made me aware of photographer Howard Schatz's iconic and amazing work Athlete. (If you're not familiar with it, I highly encourage you to take a look!)

As I perused these images, I could quickly see that none of them appealed to me as much as the understated leanness of a dancer's body: strength without bulk. But I had no real idea of where to even begin to translate that insight into any kind of training, and the idea just sat at the back of my mind. By the time I joined Pure several months later, I had never even heard of barre classes as a form of exercise outside of ballet training (and I couldn't imagine I'd be ever be doing that — isn't that something you have to start when you're about 3 years old? Don't you have to be ultra-flexible and have perfect balance and co-ordination?) So, when the timetable app and a poster on the gym wall offered this class and described it as "Beautiful. Graceful. Transforming." and as creating "long, lean physiques", I knew I had to give barre a try!

Before I even went to my first class, I was lucky to have a practical demonstration that strength does not equal bulk. A free personal training session was included in my Pure membership, and as luck would have it, the trainer to whom I was assigned was the architect of Pure's barre program, and a former professional ballerina. Much physically smaller than me, lean and slender, I was amazed to see her lift weights apparently effortlessly and with complete control that had me struggling and wobbling all over the place. It was a powerful visual reassurance not to fear becoming strong.

On 25 August 2016, I stood at the barre for the first time. I was nervous, but also wildly excited. When a couple of other participants also raised their hands at the instructor's question "Is this anyone's first barre class?" I felt myself relax a tiny bit. Over the next half-hour, I had the surreal experience of terms I'd known for years, and movements I could recognise by sight — plié and grand plié, relevé, arabesque, the positions of the arms and feet — suddenly coming to life. It felt like I had gained an extra sense. It's like reading a verbal description of a picture and then seeing it for yourself. And even more to my astonishment, although I was shaky and weak and my range of movement small, I could make some of these moves! Crude and imperfect, sure, but what I saw in the mirror was at least recognisable to me. Now, as we're often reminded, a barre class is not a dance class. But it does contain some of the same building blocks, and it was a thrill beyond words to experience that. It would set the scene for the next step.

And beyond all the positive ballet associations, nothing had ever made my body feel so good as barre does.  More than that — since radically changing the shape of my body, my whole sense of the space around my body feels weird and distorted. My body moves in unexpected ways. It fits through spaces it seems like it shouldn't. My limbs bend in ways that feel unnatural. Sometimes this just feels odd; other times it's even disconcerting. Nothing I have tried has better connected me to this new body, the way it moves, and the way it occupies the space around it than barre has. It's also done wonders for my posture!

So my appetite for barre quickly increased. One class a week was not enough, and soon I was doing two, then three. Taking more classes let me experience a range of different approaches to barre, reflecting different instructors' personal styles and backgrounds. Some classes had a stronger pilates flavour; others were more yoga-like; others more like an aerobics workout. I liked all of them, and enjoyed the variety of this barre-smörgåsbord. But the classes I found I liked best were the ones that had the strongest ballet elements. In these classes, it felt like my vocabulary of movement (and terminology) would grow just that little bit more every week: tendu, fondu, attitude, retiré... Discovering how much I enjoyed this style of class left me wanting still more.

But to skip ahead slightly, on 4 March 2017, I took part in a charity fundraiser ("Pure Palooza") which saw me do a barre class (amongst other classes) out in public — on the main stage of the Queen Street Mall, the heart of Brisbane's CBD. In other words, totally exposed and in public! Not only was I quite OK with this, but I really enjoyed the experience. Less dance-related, but more tellingly, I was also OK now with the other classes in public that formed part of the event, even things like hula-hooping and mini-trampolining that I had only done once or twice and was by no means competent at. My need to feel like I really knew what I was doing before letting other people see me do it was gone (at least in this context). The journey I'm describing in this post gave me that.

Step 3: Ballet

The appetite that barre classes had kindled in me led me to question my assumptions about ballet. Might it actually be possible to learn to dance as an adult? Google immediately confirmed that it was; and that there were a number of options for adult beginners in ballet right here in Brisbane, including classes offered through the community engagement and education arm of our state ballet company, Queensland Ballet. Their "Ballet Basics" level is a structured course designed specifically for people like me: adults who had never danced before. I couldn't wait to sign up!

On 12 January 2017, I attended the first of two "taster" classes I had enrolled for; opportunities for prospective students to see if they liked what the course had to offer. I did. Very much. The four months of barre had definitely helped prepare me by making some of the positions and movements familiar. But even from the very first taster class, I was learning new things, and loving the experience. And maybe the best thing that Zumba and barre had given me was the freedom to be wrong; in other words, to be a learner. I was OK with not being perfect straight away, even when other people could see me!

The course itself began two weeks later and over the next two months, we would vastly expand on our collection of steps. It was everything I had hoped for and more. By the end of Ballet Basics, we were stringing some of what we had learned together; week 5 was the first class in which I felt we had started to dance, even if it was a sequence of only about six steps. I realised that, in addition to the foundations of dance itself, I also enjoyed soaking up the little bits of the ritual and etiquette of this beautiful art that we were exposed to. In short, the more I experienced, the more I loved it.  

"Graduation" and the end of the course felt like another real validation, and I'm very eager to progress on to the next level: Beginner Ballet!

The best thing about being an absolute beginner is the joyful anticipation of the long journey ahead.

Final thoughts

I wrote this post to commemorate three recent milestones:

• the second anniversary of "taking the plunge" at my first Zumba class
• my 50th barre class
• completing the Ballet Basics course

Two years ago, all of this would have been unimaginable: not only that I would be able to take up ballet, but even that I would want to learn to dance rather than just watch from the sidelines. My life has become unrecognisable, and I am deeply grateful to my friends and teachers for their inspiration and encouragement. And of course, to my darling wife Laura who supports all my dreams and passions. I loved dancing with you last year at your birthday, the first time outside a class context, and only the second time ever. And we have a big anniversary coming up...

Collected from Facebook. Forgive the
grammar; the message itself
could not be more true.

My journey into dance has also been a journey out of self-consciousness and into self-confidence; and yet, if there's one message I wish I could send back in time to myself it's that dance is for everybody.

At Zumba, at barre, and at ballet, I have met fellow students with a wide range of ages, body shapes, and abilities, brought together by a love of just how well music and movement go together. If you're reading this, and you've always wanted to dance but you're worried about any of those things, I wish I could share that same message with you.

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¹ I'm disappointed that I haven't been able to pin-point the production, despite generous assistance from Queensland Ballet trying to match my childhood recollections with their historical records. It seems that my earliest ballet memories are a mish-mash of a number of different performances. 
² That's Zorb, for the record.
³ New Farm Park; for any of my parkrun friends reading this, it was the proximity of this Zumba class that brought me to New Farm to try parkrun, even though Stone's Corner and South Bank parkruns are actually closer to me!

Note: this post updated 25 April 2017 for improved historical accuracy.

On my 50th Parkrun

My third Parkrun, 16 May 2015.
My time was 28:36.¹

This Saturday, I will run my 50th Parkrun, and the occasion makes me think about the role this movement has played in changing my life. If you don't know what it is, you should take a few minutes to read about it now.

If you know me or my story, you know about my struggle over the last year and a half with conquering my life-long obesity and building up my health, fitness, and confidence.

I don’t want to dwell on the food restriction part of what I did, because it was unhealthy and foolish — even dangerous — and nobody should feel “inspired” to copy it.

But this milestone Parkrun makes me reflect on how things used to be on the energy output side of the equation: miserable 3AM starts at the gym, so that I could get up on a treadmill for a daily dose of physical activity. I chose that time of day because I knew that absolutely nothing was going to interfere with my routine at that hour. I didn’t enjoy the gym, and I relied entirely on willpower and routine to sustain my activity there. Even when my wife and I would go away for a weekend, I would get up at the same time to take advantage of the hotel gym so I would not break my routine. I felt like if I allowed any exceptions, I wouldn’t be able to force myself back into the pattern.

But around April, a friend suggested replacing the gym ordeal with exercise that I might actually enjoy, and pointed me to Parkrun as an example.
I’ll admit that I was sceptical. The thought that I might like physical activity was still completely foreign to me, and nothing about the months of 3AM sessions at the gym had convinced me otherwise! But I like to pride myself on being open to trying new things, and so one Saturday in May, off I went.

I wasn’t an instant convert. But what I did immediately like was an overall sense of achievement and acceptance. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t run the whole 5km, and it didn’t matter that there were people faster than me or slower than me. So the next Saturday I came back, and I realised I liked being able to compare my effort and my results to the previous week. Soon, I was a regular.

But what turned Parkrun from a recurring calendar reminder into a passion was the sense of community. One week, a pacerunner helped me to a new PB, and chatted nearly the whole time we were out there — even when I couldn’t respond (“Can’t… talk… breathing…”) Not only that, but the next week, she greeted me again, and introduced me to some other regulars. Before I knew it, I had Parkrun friends.

It wasn’t long before Parkrun became a gateway into other recreational running, and soon I was entering events: City 2 South, Bridge to Brisbane, and then in early 2016, my first half-marathon!

And the gym membership? Cancelled. Exercise as an unwelcome chore had been replaced by exercise I loved: running, cycling, and Zumba (those are other stories…) Now, I don’t have to force myself into physical activity — I eagerly look forward to it in my daily life.

At my lightest, I dropped 63kg below my starting weight. I’m up a few kilos since then because although I’m still losing fat (more slowly now), I’m gaining muscle. And my health and fitness are the best they’ve been in my entire life.²

My theme for my 50th
Parkrun: Shiny and
sparkly!

Obviously Parkrun is just one ingredient in my journey over the last 20 months, but it’s been a vital one, because of the way it changed my outlook in a really fundamental and significant way. Therefore, 50 Parkruns is a particularly important milestone for me, because to me, it means that this is a transformation that has taken root and stuck. This is a lasting change.

I owe thanks to so many people: special thank-yous to Angela for a great suggestion, and to Kelly for befriending me and bringing me into the group. A big thank you to the whole New Farm Parkrun community for being a wonderfully accepting and welcoming group of people. Thank you to all my friends who offered so much encouragement along the way and “liked” or favourited” all those status updates and tweets — that really meant something to me. And thank you to my wife Laura and my ma Barbara for your unflagging, enthusiastic support for these big changes and transformations.

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¹ My current PB (personal best) for New Farm Parkrun is 23:35, run on 27 August 2016. My best 5km time anywhere is 23:02, which I ran at the International Women's Day Fun Run this year at Southbank. 

² A few recent stats:

• Resting heart rate: 46 beats per minute
• VO₂max estimated at 47mL/kg/min based on 85% submax test
• Resting metabolic rate: 2059 Cal/day
• Body fat: 14.6%

One year of cycling

One year ago today, I put into action a plan to learn to ride a bike. Not having acquired the skill in childhood, I set out to teach myself from scratch, using what I had read on the internet and a hired CityCycle. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. Cycling has brought me many hours of joy and introduced me to a new passion.

Today, I’m looking back at some of the highlights (OK, and one lowlight) of the 5,250km I’ve ridden since then. 

April 26

At a nearby park, I spent an hour sitting on a CityCycle, just rolling it 50 metres down a slope, then walking it back up to the top, then rolling it back down again. On subsequent visits, I’d learn to steer and pedal.

May 16

I bought my first bike! A shiny, red Reid Vintage Ladies 7-speed Classic cruiser. Bought with the express intention of only being used to commute between home and work, that plan lasted only a few weeks before she started taking me just about everywhere. I adore this bike and her timeless, graceful look, but the cheap Reid components aren’t very durable. She’s currently dismantled, awaiting a rebuild.

October 18

The very day I bought my first bike, a friend jokingly challenged me to join them on Bicycle Queensland’s 100-km Brisbane to Gold Coast Cycle Challenge later in the year. I immediately agreed! It was a difficult ride for me, made even harder by the solid tyres I had on the bike at the time. Five hours of riding after leaving South Bank, I was rolling past the finish line at Southport in one of the proudest moments of my life: my first “century ride”!

November 12

I bought my second bike! While preparing for the ride to the Gold Coast, I did a training ride with the friend who had challenged me; me on my cruiser and they on their carbon-fibre road bike. As I laboured up a mild incline somewhere near Toowong, I looked over at my friend’s bike and noted the economy of motion and apparent ease, and realised that if I wanted to continue with longer rides, I would need a bike better suited to the job. As I researched what to buy, I unexpectedly fell in love with a gorgeous Bianchi Intenso Dama Bianca and knew that this was the road bike for me!

December 2

I hadn’t owned that gorgeous Bianchi for very long before I came off her. Landing face-first onto a concrete path, I suffered the first broken bone of my life: my jaw! (The red arrow in the photo points to a bit of bone that is supposed to be attached to the bit of bone to the left of it. I also got my first ride in an ambulance). Recuperation took months, and being restricted to soft foods was no fun at Christmas. But I was back on the bike straight away (thankfully undamaged beyond a few scratches).

February 7

My darling wife Laura bought a bike the day before, and on February 7 we took a short ride together for the first time. By the following week, we started riding to work together at least a few days a week, something we continue to this day. With two small children, all the time we can get together is a blessing.

February 13

In February, I tackled Mt Coot-tha (the highest point in my home city) in the inaugural Coot-tha Burn event. The climb is 2km, at an average gradient of 9%, but never having done it before, I set out with no sense of whether I’d be able to complete it or not. After listening to other riders’ stories of their first time up the mountain, I decided I’d be happy to complete the ride in 15 minutes. I did it in just over 11. One thing I continue to love about cycling is throwing myself at new challenges without knowing what the outcome will be.

April 17

Since the Brisbane-to-Gold-Coast, I’d completed a few more century rides, but the Ipswich 100 event gave me the chance of trying myself out on an “imperial century”: 100 miles (160km). Again, a big part of the appeal to me was the uncertainty of whether I’d be able to make it or not; this ride was 50% further than I’d ever gone before. But I completed it in 7 hours of riding.

Today

And today was just another ordinary commute, like hundreds that I’ve done now: home to work, work to uni, uni to home. There is just no way that I could have imagined what lay ahead of me even one year ago. How much can change!

Weight loss update 12

This morning I’m really excited to report passing two new milestones!

First, at 82.1 kg, my BMI (Body–Mass Index) is now 24.2 kg/m². And, going on BMI alone, that means that for the first time in my adult life (and, probably, the first time since infancy), I am not overweight! (The threshold, by definition, is 25.0 kg/m²). Now, I’m fully aware that there are all kinds of problems with what BMI gets used for¹, but this still feels like a significant achievement for me and I’m revelling in it.

The second milestone is that I have now passed the 60-kg mark; having shed a total of 60.5kg now!

The target remains at 80kg, which I should hit within the next week or two. At that point, I’ll need to create a new strategy. I’ll get a body composition scan to find out just how much fat is left on my body and choose a new target based on that number rather than just on overall bodyweight.

I’m also not that much closer to making a maintenance plan. I guess I’ll know just how quickly I need that once I get the body composition done.

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¹ Take a look at: 

• “Top 10 Reasons Why the BMI is Bogus”, Keith Devlin, NPR
• “Why BMI is inaccurate and miselading”, Christian Nordqvist, Medical News Today
• “Why the Body Mass Index (BMI) is a Poor Measure of Your Health”, Peter Janiszewski, Obesity Panacea
• “Why BMI Isn’t the best Measure for Weight (or Health)”, Alexandra Sifferlin, Time

for just a start on the subject

Bicycle renovations

On Tuesday night, I was about to cycle home from uni on my cruiser, Grace, when, on the first pedal stroke, the chain came apart. Not only that, but when I inspected her drivetrain trying to figure out what had happened, I noticed that the chainring was very, very bent:

Added to a back wheel that was already again in need of replacement anyway (broken spoke, out of true), I knew that the repair bill would exceed the cost of the bike. What to do?

• I already had existing ideas that at some stage I would take Grace off the road for a while for some planned upgrades — a repaint to repair deep scratches and damage from early days of learning to ride, plus better drivetrain components.
• In the course of a normal week, I park my bike for long periods unattended in places I’m not comfortable leaving my Bianchi roadbike, so I needed a replacement for commuting. 
• With uni semester already started, I needed a replacement now. 
• Buying bike similar to Grace would allow me to make use of components, accessories, and spares that I’d already bought, and 
• Facebook ads had informed me that Reid is currently running out remaining stock of this model: the Vintage Ladies 7-Speed Classic. 

So the time seemed right to give this bike a well-earned rest, and on Thursday, I plonked down $199 for a near-twin:

I spent Saturday afternoon transferring components and accessories from old to new, until I had my beloved cruiser down to little more than frame and forks:

I put aside the brand-new Reid components, so that when Grace’s rebuild is complete, I can swap these back and hopefully sell or donate the bike I just bought as a complete and new-looking unit. 

A few friends and family members have asked me why I didn’t just buy a “better” bike instead of this stand-in and the planned extensive upgrades.

Two reasons. First, I’m very sentimental, and I feel a deep sense of attachment to this bike (my first bike, the bike that took me to the Gold Coast on one of the biggest and most fun adventures of my life). Second, the aesthetics of a bike are crucial to any notion of “better” to me, and I’m yet to find any readily-available cruiser whose looks I prefer, or any hybrid I like the looks of at all.

Next steps will be to complete Grace’s disassembly, buy the rack and fenders I want to upgrade to, and start looking at powdercoating options.

Weight loss update 11

Events conspired in late 2015 to slow my weight loss. Contributing factors included:

• my university study load taking my focus and attention from my weight loss 
• a jaw injury from a bike accident forcing a change in my diet
• eating festive food at Christmas

So in January, I have renewed my efforts. I had previously achieved my primary goal weight of 90kg, and at this point was pretty happy with how I looked. The two exceptions were a little more fat on my belly and on my upper back. So I have set a new goal of 80kg so I can reappraise at that point. 

This year, I'm trying something a little different: Nestlé's Optifast system. These are meal replacement shakes, each of which provides 200 calories. I am living on two of these per day: actually a little more than I was consuming in 2015. 

The system is simplicity itself! Optifast is sold in boxes of sachets of powder. Preparing a meal is as simple as tearing open a packet, adding it to 250mL of water, and shaking it up! This is my kind of cooking! 

I am also keeping physically active: maintaining my running, cycling, and Zumba, and still learning to swim. I try to achieve a calorie deficit of around 2,000 calories per day, which should be a weight loss in the vicinity of 2kg per week. 

The first week of Optifast gave me spectacular results, letting me shed 3.9kg,and this morning, I passed the 55kg milestone! 

Shouldn't be long to 80kg!

(And then the real work—figuring out how to stay there—begins...) 

2015 in review, and goals for 2016

It is my custom at this time of year to list off the films, books, and performances that I've enjoyed over the previous twelve months (2014, 2013), but 2015 was a very strange year for me, one in which I read hardly a book, watched hardly a film or TV show, played hardly a game, and didn’t go to a single play, concert, opera, or ballet.

Instead, I have worked on transforming my life.

2015

The biggest changes for me this year were:

• Losing a lot of weight (52kg; photos below taken just over 1 year apart!)
  
• Returning to tertiary study for the first time in 17 years (starting an MBA at UQ Business School mid-year)

These had a number of follow-on effects:

• I discovered forms of exercise that I either enjoy for their own sake (intrinsic motivation): Zumba and cycling, or which I enjoy for the sense of achievement that I get from participating in events (extrinsic motivation): running. Social motivation is strong in both cases too, and I am indebted to the friends who introduced me to these activities, and to the new friends I have made through them who keep me focused and coming back.
  

  City2South 14 June 14km in 1h33m	Brisbane Marathon Festival 2 August 10km in 57min	Bridge to Brisbane 30 August 10km in 58 min	Brisbane 2 Gold Coast 18 October 100km in 4h56m

  
  
• Of these forms of exercise, I have been open to experimenting with ones entirely new to me: Zumba and cycling were things I’d never done before. I’m now experimenting with swimming, which is practically new too. 
• I have enjoyed buying clothes in regular sizes and being able to experiment with finding a style for myself. My life up to now has been having to make do with what was available in plus sizes and trying to find clothes to disguise my shape as much as possible. I’m not confident that I really know what I’m doing yet, but I’m working on it and I’m enjoying the process. 
• I have developed a level of self-confidence I’ve never had before. I feel like I’ve finally bested the crippling shyness that’s been with me all my life. Part of this has been a huge reduction in the amount of body-shame I feel, and part has been learning from friendly, confident people (in the ParkRun community and in the MBA course). I have been able to adopt some of their confident behaviours until I felt the confidence myself. 
• I have learned to play to my strengths more consciously and deliberately, encouraged by both my workplace and my studies. Conversely, I learned a difficult but valuable lesson in the futility of trying to be what I thought other people wanted me to be (which turned out to be wrong anyway).

2016

So, on to what I want to achieve for the year ahead (SMART goals in bold):

• Lose more weight! My rate of weight loss plateaued off late in the year as my study commitments intensified, followed quickly by food changes brought about by a broken jaw (bicycle accident) and the festive season. In late October, I hit my initial goal weight of 90kg; and this morning I weighed 97kg (that difference is not only body weight though; it also includes the fact that I’m presently well-fed and well-hydrated). I want to get my weight down to a new goal of 80kg by the end of June, and then stabilise it. 
• The stabilisation will require thinking about eating for long-term nutrition, not just as fuel (calories). I need to find foods that strike the right balance of enjoyable–nutritious–convenient. At the moment, it seems hard to satisfy more than two of those criteria. 
• Finish my MBA. The UQ MBA is made up of 12 units: 
• I completed 3 in Semester 2 last year
• I am doing 2 in the present Summer Semester
• I plan to do 
• 3 more in Semester one, 
• 2 more in the Winter Semester, and 
• the final 2 in Semester two
• Running: presently, I do a 5km weekly ParkRun, and participate in events around the 10km mark. I want to:
• keep ParkRunning, and  
• earn my 50-run shirt this year
• get my time down to under 24 minutes for the 5km.
• Volunteer at ParkRun after every 10 runs.
• extend the 10km runs to half-marathons this year, where available.
• Consider getting some coaching
• Cycling: I will 
• keep commuting by bike 
• participate in more events this year in the 100km-ish range. 
• find or create more opportunities for social cycling too. 
• ride my first “Imperial century” — 100 miles (160km). 
• ride 10,000km in 2016 (I rode 3,000km in 2015.) 
• Consider getting some coaching
• Zumba: I will keep zumbaing! I have no specific goals right now beyond getting better!
• Swimming: I want to be able to 
• swim 1km in under 30 minutes and then appraise whether this is something I want to keep in my life. Assuming that I learn to like it enough to keep doing it, I am attracted to the idea of triathlon. 
• Read for pleasure again, see some movies, watch some TV, go to a play/concert/opera/ballet, play a board game — do some fun stuff again! (No numbers on these though)

Other stuff I want to do but for which I have no specific goals yet. I don’t know how much of this I’ll be able to cram into 2016!

• Fix my posture: I have a bad stoop from a lifetime of obesity and social anxiety. Now that I’m thinner, I’m really noticing this in photos.
• Fix my flexibility: Even with so much weight gone and with so much regular exercise, I am not very flexible. In particular, my lower back is a problem: the closest I can come to touching my toes is just past my knees. This made it very difficult to get the right fit on a road bike for me. (My current set-up is comfortable, but probably not as efficient as it could be).
• Overcome more fears and anxieties. A few years ago, I bettered my fear of dentistry. This year, I overcame a life-long shyness. There are a few other specific fears I want to target “soon”. (I have no idea yet of how to even approach these. I tried a head-on approach to the needle phobia a few years ago and I think I made it worse...)
• needles (about a 1-in-4 chance of passing out; nausea, tunnel-vision, and sound of blood rushing in ears even discussing the subject)
• authority figures (police and security of all kinds; practically guaranteed to freak me out the longer an interaction continues)
• body shame (I have only been able to get into a swimming pool covered up Edwardian-style!)

• Note that the fear of authority figures and the body-shame work together to keep me from travelling by air. The body-shame keeps me from medical screening that I should get. 
• Try some more things I’ve either never done before or not done much of. Some ideas include:
• latin dance
• fencing
• horse-riding
• rifle-shooting
• archery
• fly a glider (sailplane, not hang-glider)
• sail a boat (increased proficiency in swimming might be a prerequisite to this one!)
• Investigate meditation. I bested my fear of dentistry by learning how to put myself into a state of deep relaxation. I would like to explore further in this direction. 

That should be enough for a year!