Fitness

Gym, Gains & Getting Going

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It’s been almost a year and a half since I started my fitness journey. There’s been a whole load of ups as well as some downs that I genuinely thought I wouldn’t come back from. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve put myself in hospital and I’ve found a bunch of supportive as fuck, kick ass people.

I talked about starting this journey a good six months before I found a personal trainer and stepped a foot in the gym. My mind was torn between thoughts of wether I could actually do this and wether it even mattered what I thought, I just needed to do it

Honestly that first step was the hardest but also one of the best I’ve ever taken in my life.

When I first started it was off the back of being bed bound and I didn’t really have a goal other than to just get my ass there and survive.

Starting an exercise routine is hard enough as your average sedentary person. When you add some chronic pain, seizures and all the other health problems that can come along with them, it’s even fucking harder.

I still don’t have a specific goal other than surviving the session, but the affect regular training has had on me over the last 18months has been incredible, There may not have been some drastic weight loss transformation, but the changes physically and mentally have made every tear or panic attack worth it.

  • I’ve gained a lot more muscle and strength than I thought I ever would.
  • I’ve gained confidence
  • A good 80% of the time I can get off the floor myself if I have a seizure.
  • I’ve learnt the difference between good and bad pain.
  • Physically I cope with high pain days better
  • I’ve gained a little control of my diet. It’s not perfect but it’s also not total chaos.
  • I’ve learnt that weight / the number on the scale is not the be all and end all.
  • I’ve made some really close friends and finally on this list…..
  • I’ve proved in more ways than one I’m stronger than I thought

The main point of this post wasn’t just to tell you what I’ve learnt so far on this never ending journey…. (It’s a lifestyle y’all).

I also wanted to encourage others who may be thinking of working out, getting a personal trainer and taking that first step. Plus those who may be early on in developing a regular exercise routine, yeah it’s gonna suck at times but keeping at it may just change your life.

I dunno if you’ve found my rambling helpful or not. I deffo want to do more fitness type posts including fitness fashion. Us big boobed, plus size girls like to look cute while melting in our own sweat. #Facts

If you’ve got an idea or suggestion for a post let me know and until next time…..

Love Always

Charlotte

xxx

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Uncategorized

You aren’t a blogger!!

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Get comfy as this is a bit of a read, a bit of a ramble and a whole lot of truth.

I’ve written blog posts and deleted them. Written them and had them removed. As soon as my passion for blogging returned it was almost like the world was against the idea.

I write this in July 2019. I haven’t written posted anything on here this year and to be honest I didn’t do much in blogging terms last year.

How long do you have to go with out posting before you just have to admit to yourself, “You aren’t a blogger” ?

I dunno, to be honest it doesn’t even really matter. I’ve spent years in some way, shape or form sharing my life online and I’ve always loved doing it.

Wether I’ve talked chronic illness, health, fitness, fashion or anything else. I’ve done it from a deep love of writing and sharing my thoughts on those things. However as much as I’ve loved sharing the inner workings of my mind. I love my Grandad more.

If you’ve followed me anywhere online over the years you’ll know my Grandad was ill a long time. My biggest fan, I lived and cared for him throughout his sickness. There’s been many videos & posts where I’ve cried my eyes out over my grandad and how hard I found the whole situation.

Eventually I hit a point where being so public became too painful. I knew he didn’t have long left to live. I struggled with my own health and being online was no longer fun. I just wanted to be private and make the most of the precious time we had left.

My Grandad finally passed away 2 months ago at the beginning of May. Most days are still a struggle as I grieve and come to terms with this new chapter of life. A new chapter that’s reignited my passion and love of sharing my life online.

I’m excited again!!

I don’t promise a schedule or a specific type of content but I promise everything I post will be written because I’ve truly wanted to write it and because I love and believe in what I’ve written.

Speak soon

Charlotte xxx

Personal

Reintroducing Myself

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So because I haven’t been overly active on this blog for a while. I kind of want to re introduce myself and share some things that’ll allow anyone new here to get to know me.

I realise this isn’t the most, I guess, original post but I do think it’s kind of important. If you’ve been here a while, you may think,

“Oh I know all this”

“She’s done similar posts before”

That maybe so, but people grow, people change etc so give it a chance yeah.

Here’s some facts about me 🙂

  1. My real name is Charlotte Louise not Charlotte Debs
  2. I’m 27 years old
  3. My birthday is April 24th, so I’m a Taurus.
  4. I was born quite prematurely so spent some time in the Special Care Baby Unit.
  5. I was born and raised in Cornwall, Uk 🇬🇧 This touristy county is home sweet home and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
  6. Despite living in a place world famous for surfing. I’ve literally been probably only a handful of times throughout my life.
  7. I don’t really drink alcohol anymore and haven’t done since 2014
  8. I love tattoos and would love to get more.
  9. Despite having piercings, I’ve always been a tattoo person.
  10. I’m the oldest and only have brothers.
  11. Despite being the oldest I’m the only one without kids.
  12. I’m an auntie to 5 wonderful boys and 2 pretty little girls.
  13. I can’t drive and it’s something I really wish I could do.
  14. I struggle daily with chronic pain and fatigue.
  15. Although I originally started blogging in 2014. I definitely at this current time see myself as more of a live streamer.
  16. I genuinely feel like social media has helped me through some of my hardest days.
  17. I really hope through sharing my life and story online, that I help or inspire at least one person.
  18. My Favourite film is Beauty & The Beast. The original. Although I guess the live action version is pretty cool too.
  19. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 15.
  20. I’ve had the same 3 closest friends since I was 16.
  21. I could live in pyjamas
  22. Or leggings.
  23. For the last couple of years I’ve cared for my grandparents.
  24. I could live of cups of hot tea but the amount of sugar Id consume would be crazy sooooo.
  25. I’m a big lover of Monster Energy Drinks.
  26. I collect Trainers / Sneakers but I’m selling a lot of them on Depop soooo https://www.depop.com/c_debs/
  27. I’m 6 months into a fitness journey
  28. I’m a HELL NO CARDIO kinda girl 😂
  29. I don’t feel like myself if my nails aren’t painted.
  30. I’m a total girly girl despite growing up what I’d consider a tomboy.

I hope you enjoyed learning a little about me. Anything we have in common?

Love Charlotte

xxx

Fitness

My Favourite Smoothie

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Christmas 2015 I received the wonderful gift of a NutriBullet. The juicing / smoothie hype / trend was real back then and after being ill, I thought it’d be a good way of managing to squeeze some more calories, fruit and veg etc.

In general I’ve heard lots of advice and info given from trainers about how bad it is to drink your calories. Over all though, the truth is, as long your consuming at a calorie deficit, no matter their form, you’re going to lose weight.

Recently as I’ve over hauled my diet, I’ve re discovered my love for smoothies and my faithful NutriBullet. So today I’m going to a favourite recipe combination that I’ve been loving lately.

250 – 300ml Almond Milk

1 Medium Banana

40g Peanut Butter

1 Tablespoon Cacao Powder

This came to 446 calories.

Admittedly that’s a high calorie smoothie. Realistically though I’d never drink a glass of milk or eat a banana so it helps to get init my diet some vital goodness it’d otherwise miss out on.

It’s also super filling. ( I don’t tend to drink mine all in one go)

Top tip: Be careful with nut butters. It’s super easy to under estimate exactly how much your really consuming. Lots of people think they’re being healthy adding a tablespoon of peanut butter, weigh it out to avoid your smoothie yumminess causing weight gain.

Follow me on Instagram to see more food and fitness content. www.instagram.com/charlottedebs

Love Charlotte

xxx

chronic illness

Illness shouldn’t be competition

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Originally, back in 2014, I got into blogging and social media as a way to share my experiences around living with chronic pain and fatigue. To, I guess relieve some of the loneliness and isolation I felt because of these things. Did it work? Did it help? Yeah of course. I suspect there are thousands who use the internet every day for those very same reasons.

The world of social media can be very simply put, split into different groups of categories/ communities. The fitness community, chronic illness community, beauty community etc

Today I want to focus on the chronic illness world.

Compared to other internet sub groups. There are some real problems within our community that you don’t really see anywhere else. For example I’ve never seen those in the beauty world exclude others for doing well in life. Yet that’s exactly what happens in the chronic illness world.

Hey you managed to go to the gym, to school, work etc. You didn’t have surgery or take a certain medication. Well, you’re not really sick then. Bye.

It’s absolute madness.

Everyone seems to forget that we’re all on different paths in life. We all have different definitions of normal, different goals etc. My normal could be another persons worst day. Similarly my worst day could be someone else’s normal.

Instead of excluding others and constantly judging. I think we really need to be more encouraging. Congratulate the person who managed to get out of bed and meet their friends today. If anything surely others struggling with illness, know how difficult something so seemingly simple can be.

Be kind. We’ve all fighting our own battles.

Charlotte

xxx

chronic illness · Fitness · Uncategorized

Going To The Gym With Chronic Pain.

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At the end of March I started getting serious about my fitness journey. It was something I’d talked about probably for the last 6 months. I just hadn’t got round to doing it. Honestly I think it was fear that put me off. The fear of hurting myself and ending up adding to my existing pain.

That hasn’t been the case though and I’ve enjoyed every gym session. Even the ones where I’ve felt like shite and dragging myself to a workout has been the last thing I wanna do. Don’t get me wrong it’s not been easy, but investing in a personal trainer and a gym membership has definitely been a worthwhile investment.

I’m still very early into my training programme and have been sharing my journey so far across social media, mainly for myself, as a way of holding myself accountable and keeping a visual diary of any progress.

Mentioning the decision to get fit online was really fucking scary. I’d be a liar if I said all the feedback has been positive but judging by my inbox several people have been ‘inspired’. (I’m no inspiration believe me) I hope this post helps in some way based on my experience so far.

Getting started on your fitness journey first of all requires some brutal honesty with yourself, mainly are you really ready? Whilst there’s no doubt that exercise can be helpful at any point in your chronic pain journey, jumping in full force only a few weeks after diagnosis sounds like it could only end badly. My personal belief is that you need to have already grieved for your past life and accepted your condition and limitations BEFORE making the decision to ‘get fit’.

This leads to my next point about being somewhat stable. Working out requires being able to tell the difference between what is your ‘normal’ pain that you can push past, (I hate the term normal but can’t think of another way to word this) acute pain that means something’s wrong / you need to stop and finally the good pain associated with a good training session. Yeah I know, believe it or not there is a ‘good’ type of pain, who’d of thought?

You need to be able to commit. Ready to commit. This whole journey has been outrageously frustrating at times. There’s been tears more times than I’d like to admit. There’s been a lot of laughs too though. You can’t just give up at the first hurdle. Unfortunately you’ve just gotta accept it’s gonna be hard at times.

Be open minded and flexible. Originally my goal was to just be able to get out of bed, show up and survive a training session. Now we’re coming into October and my goal has changed. Not every day or session is gonna be easy. Life gets in the way, health gets in the way. Accept that this is a journey and sometimes there’s going to be bumps in the road.

Take things one day at a time and try not to get discouraged. That’s my plan anyway.

You can follow and keep up with my journey on Instagram.

Charlotte

xxx

Personal

Things Change…

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I can’t explain how much has changed since the last time I wrote a blog post. I almost don’t really know where to start.

I kind of lost my passion for writing and have been focused on caring for my grandparents. It’s been hard and over the last few years and more intensely in the last few months, I’ve felt like I’ve not really done a lot for myself. I feel a little lost in life and unsure of who I am and what I want.

As my living / family/ personal situation has changed. I’m slowly starting to focus on me again, what I enjoy and what I want to do. Just typing this feels amazing. Blogging has always been such a love of mine.

I’ve thrown myself into a fitness journey over the last couple of months. (You’ll already know this if you follow me on Instagram). Originally, just getting there for an hour a week and surviving was an achievement. Now I’ve more time, I’m really upping my game and hoping to share the results. Getting into an exercise regime with chronic pain and fatigue is certainly difficult but it’s not impossible. I really want to inspire at least one person through sharing my story. If I can do it I honestly believe anyone can.

I’m still live-streaming most days and hoping to grow my audience even more. I love sitting and chatting to everyone raw and unedited. I like to think people appreciate how open I am about my life and struggles. Occasionally I’m funny too, so I’ve been told.

Health wise I very much, like I always have, take things day by day and one step at a time. My health is a blog post in itself mind so I don’t really want to say too much on the subject here. Maybe I could talk about at some point in…….. BLOGTOBER

Yep you read that right. I’m doing BLOGTOBER again this year. I gave it a go in 2017 and really enjoyed it. I’ve been thinking about it over the last week or so and think it would be a great way of kick starting this site again 🙂

Maybe a post every day for a month will make up for what an appalling blogger I’ve been the rest of 2018 lol

So if you’re new here, hit the follow button so you don’t miss a thing.

I’ve missed you all. I’ve missed this site.

Charlotte xxx

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