Indulge me a little - it's my birthday!

Warning! This post is not about crochet, knitting, yarn or beads. In fact, it has nothing to do with my life as a crochet designer. It does, however, have everything to do with my life in general and, as I have now been asked by quite a few people to share the details of my fifty something year old health and fitness journey, here goes! 

​May 2024 was a very special month for me. My parents celebrated their 60th Wedding Anniversary (with a letter from the King!) on the 9th and my Dad turned 90 on the 17th. On May 21st, after a conversation with Emma about the menopause and specifically the weight gain associated with it, I decided to change my life!

September 2019

The Past

​I have always been relatively fit – in my opinion anyway! As a kid I was a member of the badminton squad at school and used to love charging about on my bike – like most kids who were teenagers in the 80s! I have belonged to a gym for many years (nothing fancy, just Pure Gym which is still around £20 a month) and used to swim and run regularly when my kids were younger. I think my diet was pretty good too. As a vegetarian with an aversion to processed food, I ate (and still eat) a lot of good stuff and take a few supplements to make up for the shortfalls of not eating meat or fish. The main problem, until 21st May 2024, was simply that I ate too much of certain things, and possibly not enough of others and had a bit of a crisps, dips and wine after work habit too….
 
I was always a slim child with a big appetite. Luckily for me, and probably due in part to my nervous disposition, I was able to eat heartily without much thought for many years, never really having to be careful about what I ate until I was in my late 20s when I was diagnosed with an overactive thyroid (a kind post pregnancy gift from my body!). I had my thyroid (mostly) removed in my mid 30s leading to an underactive thyroid, slower metabolism and lifelong medication. Add into this a hysterectomy at 40 and the joy of an early menopause and bingo! The weight slowly went up, the aches and pains started and everything else that goes with being a woman in midlife started to set in. Aren't we lucky!

June 2015

The Conversation

​For many years I told myself lots of untruths. That I was fit (enough), that I wasn’t that big (size 16 is average), that my thyroid condition meant I couldn’t lose weight, that the menopause was hindering any effort to get fit and feel good, that my knees and back ached so much that I couldn’t possibly consider more exercise. The list is probably longer, but you get the gist!
 
On May 21st 2024, Emma and I were chatting, and she told me about a weight loss app she had been using called Noom. When I think about that conversation now, I don’t think that losing weight and getting fit was particularly on my radar, but listening to Emma say how helpful she was finding the app, not just from a weight loss perspective, but also in terms of lifestyle choices and mental wellbeing, I decided it was worth a try.

Noom

​I am not on any kind of an affiliate scheme with Noom, and I am sure that there are other very similar apps, especially as it is pretty much all about calorie counting, balancing what you eat with exercise, making sure that you are eating the ‘right’ amounts in terms of nutrients and hitting the right percentages of food types – basically, carbohydrates, fats and proteins.
 
I yoyo dieted for years, and had relative success with Slimming World and Weight Watchers, but nothing stuck long term and within a few months I would be back where I started from. The game changer for me with Noom was weighing in everyday and being ‘allowed’ to have free days, where I could pretty much eat what I wanted. Having a suggested calorie intake that was flexible and made allowances in terms of extra calories to balance exercise made the whole idea of a ‘diet’ much easier to deal with and the daily coaching sessions on my phone helped me really keep up the momentum.

September 2024

Cara

​I was looking back through pics from that first year on Noom and I can see that my face and body started to change about two months in, by which time I was down by about 7 kilos, but for a few months everything stopped moving by anything significant. I was happy with the loss of weight and possibly would have stopped there, like I have done before, but I had started to see posts and news articles about the importance of strength training in menopause. As the thought of serious training at the gym terrified me, it took me a few months to build up enough courage to have a session with a Personal Trainer, and it is the date of my first session with Cara (the 11th October 2024) that has become another important anniversary for me.
 
I get quite emotional about Cara these days as I credit her for literally changing the shape of the rest of my life. she has given me the confidence to lift free weights (in a very male dominated environment) and look at ways that I can improve my diet to reach the best results for my body. 

I realise that having a PT is a total privilege and that I am lucky to be able to meet up with her once a week. To balance the cost of this I have made changes to other areas of my life - we definitely spend less money on take aways, eating out and our food shopping, but it is still a financial consideration that I have decided to build into my life. 

August 2025

Before & Now (not after!)

May 2026

The Present

I catch up with Cara on a Friday morning and two other mornings I strength train on my own, using sessions that Cara has given me as a guide. Twice a week I do cardio sessions and am really happy to be back to treadmill running, which has really improved my fitness and achey back! 

I am not an evening person and I knew from the get go that if I was going to start a fitness habit that it had to be a morning thing. It means I have to work later into the evening, after dinner and it means that TV shows, movies and evening crochet time on the settee is not always on the cards these days, but training first thing is the only way I know I will slot it into my life more or less daily. I don't train at the weekend.

​I am still careful about food and always make sure I hit my macros, getting plenty of protein and fruit and veg, but with the training `and exercise that I now do the weight has stabilised, even with the naughtyish weekends and Saturday cocktail habit!
I am no longer a member of Noom, but I do use it for logging my weight from time to time and I also use a free calorie counting app called My Fitness Pal when I feel the need to check up on what I am eating.

The Future

​There have, of course, been set backs along the way, but I have tried really hard not to let little weight gains or work/holiday interruptions stop me returning to training, which I now do every week day. Losing more weight is not on my radar, but gaining muscle and toning my body is definitely on my forever list! Someone asked me a while ago what event I was training for and my answer was 'old age'!

About a year into my sessions with Cara I asked her when it was going to get easier - her reply was 'never'. It never gets easier if you push yourself to achieve more and more. It's true of everything in life isn't it! If things were easy, we would all be able to do them all of the time! My journey has been REALLY hard at times, but I am so proud of where I am and feel so much better than I ever thought was possible as I start to navigate my late 50s. My fitness goal is to achieve a set of chin ups, this means I am working on my back, chest and core strength. I will share a video of where I am at the moment on my Janie Crow Lifestyle account if you want to take a look.

If you made it this far, thank you for allowing me to indulge myself in this blog post - it feels important to me that I write it down. If you feel inspired to make changes to your own life and want to ask me anything else about my journey please feel free to email me [email protected]. If you have read this far in the hope that I might actually mention yarn or crochet then my reward to you is a 20% discount code for download patterns via Etsy and Ravelry for this weekend. Enter JANIE57 at checkout. The code is valid until midnight (BST) on Sunday 31st May.

​Thanks for reading!