The Trials Of Being Uber Uncool...

My children are getting older. Each year they grow, their little memories get sharper and sharper. And they are now hitting that era where they are choosing to mock me. I won’t tell a lie – it’s getting a lot harder to wear daggy clothes to the supermarket with them because they gently tell me how bad I look. Well - my daughter just blurts it out, but my kind-hearted son might just 'check' whether I want to change my shorts before we leave the house. A sure sign he is growing up is that when his friends arrive at the door, before he brings them inside he comes to do a once-over to make sure I'm actually wearing shorts and not just a long t-shirt like I used to be able to get away with.

I still have one child left in the “Mum is cool no matter what she does” zone. My love and appreciation for him gets deeper each day and if I had one wish, it would be to keep him right there for a little longer. Example: A couple of weeks ago I was at the footy watching my 13-year-old. My little Benji was there too, sitting on the bleachers and keeping the big boys entertained. My Benji is big on character which is translated into – he talks all of the time about anything and everything, and will often break into spontaneous dance, comedy or song … whichever will keep his audience in place for longer. And this is what I overheard on that particular day;

Benji: “Hey boys – I know everyone’s name on the field. Everyone’s!”

Boys: … silence….

Benji: “You can test me if you want … there’s Elijah and Graeme and…”

Boys: “So who is that one (points to a boy on the wing)…”

Benji: “Kaden”

Boys: … underwhelmed silence….

Benji: “I’ve got a six pack you know”

Boys: “you do not have a six pack” (general laughter)

Benji: “I DO SO HAVE A SIX PACK!! You can ask my Mum!! She’s a world champion bodybuilder!! Her name is Kirsten Engels – search it up!!”

Me: …. I’m dying with a mixture of pure embarrassment and a very small sliver of pride… hehe - love that boy!

My older two used to think I was cool … sob sob … thinking all I touched was magic. I remember reading them the coolest book ever about Treacle the Fying Donkey and they thought my tattoo of a Pegasus was my personal ode to Treacle (instead of a tragic 80’s love for all things magical). They would read the book and scream with delight at “Mummy’s Treacle”!! But now they know Peggy pre-dated Treacle and it was just a coincidence .. the magic didn’t live on forever…

And here’s the kicker - I have long been a bit of a dag in a world of ‘too cool for school’ gymies. I can’t seem to ever pull off the cool thing and the more I try, the harder I fall. It’s generally on a public scale and these days even my kids see it and they aren’t afraid to mention it. I was thinking over my epic gym bloopers an, in no particular order, here are some of my reel highlights;

·         In 2013, while at the academy in Darwin, I decided to join a gym for 3 months. I poked my head in to a few but couldn’t get the vibe. I eventually found myself at Snap Casuarina where I marched up the front door and tried to open it. Locked. Like a dick, I pulled on the door a little more and gave an embarrassed sort of tap/knock to get the staff’s attention. Very kindly, no one acknowledged me and I had to retreat feeling more than a little silly. To add insult to injury, I walked into the shopping centre attached to Snap and took the opportunity to lean up against the only gym window and peek in through the glass to see if anyone was inside. I did the whole cupped hands/squinty eyes with one jammed shut/open mouth/nose-to-the-glass look, to try and get a panoramic view around the heavy window signage, but couldn’t see a thing. It wasn’t until the following day when I joined up, returned and triumphantly entered the gym that I realised my whole window-peering effort would have been massively funny entertainment for all of those lined up on the treadmills, rowers and ellipticals who actually overlook that one and only window, realising they would have had front row seats to  a squinty, nose-squashed women doing a one-eyed peer through the itty-bitty gap between the signs!

·         A couple of months later, while at said gym, I loaded up a deadlift bar and got myself ready for an almighty effort. “just another fiver each side should do it” I thought. I sauntered to the side of the rack {sauntering in the gym is a style of walking that belongs to those that like to acknowledge and feel the strength of their own presence} and I checked myself out just a little more in a few of the many mirrors that line just about every available surface of the building. I finally leaned forward to get my weight plate and, in doing so, fairly and squarely smacked my forehead on the rounded plate-stacking pin. F***K it hurt!!! And those once kind mirrors now only sought to show my boo-boo to all present from every bloody angle!! I tried to get on with my lifting but had a round bulls-eye style mark between my eyes and I was seeing stars which put me right off my game and I think I just went home and ate peanut butter instead.

·         Which leads me to a fairly recent incident occurring right here in my little beloved gym, Fitness Works. As often explained, I wear cordless headphones (colour: white), while training and I listen to geeky podcasts. I look like a cousin to the cyborgs and need no help to stay on the wrong side of cool. On this day, I was doing some particularly gruelling dumbbell shoulder presses. As per cool protocol, I dropped those weights after the last rep. {dropping weights after the last rep shows that you are working in the hard-arse zone. If you are able to carefully put them down, you aren’t nearly cool enough and should rethink your db choice. If you want to look cool but remain safe, only drop the last few mm’s. Only dickheads drop them from up high}. So I dropped them a ml from the ground and one rolled away on me. After my resting time was up, I leaned down and forward to roll back the hefty wee dumbbell but the excitement of the latest research into insulin resistance clearly led me to losing all sensibility and I promptly stood up and fair smacked the very top and middle of my skull on the weight-stacker-pin for the leg press. Picture now a female 40-something cyborg slowly drifting to the ground like a fading rose – all the while trying not to make a scene!! For a few minutes I was too scared to touch the top of my head in case there was a hole there. The pain to my head exceeded the pain to my pride – which is rare.

I could go on and on about my gym and training mishaps, but I’ll leave you with the brief highlights;

·         In 2012 I completed trained three PT clients, went to the hairdressers and finally caught up with friends at the Coffee Club before realising I had my Lorna Jane skort on completely inside out. And considering these babies have an inbuilt pair of shorts, it was quite a feat in itself to achieve.

·         In 2013, I completed a 6km morning walk only to find that I had on two completely different styled, coloured and sized shoes on.

·         In 2016 – yes folks, the legend lives on – I arrived at the gym and completed most of my workout before Rob pointed out that my top was on inside out. And it wasn’t one of those “you can’t really tell” tops – oh no – it had a great big white tag flapping out to the side for all to see.

·         In 2013 I decided to step things up in the incline press department. I stacked up a barbell with a little more than was sensible and decided to throw caution to the wind!! Hoo-ha!! No excuses!! Anyways, I was quite good at predicting which rep would be my last and would abort the mission prior to failure. But anyone who knows anything about incline presses will know that it’s an awkward move. To replace the bar means, not only getting it up, but getting it up and backwards at a weird angle, on to pins that are inevitably placed at irregular points that don’t suit the lifters arm-span. This set up was no exception. And I’m sure you can see where this is going …. Here I am on about rep number 5, and I make a quick assessment and decide number 6 will happen. I start the ascent and it’s tough, but I’m committed to getting it up. A bit of heavy breathing and a nasty grunt and she’s up!! Triumphant!! But it’s too high for those damn pins so I need to lower it a bit and then hoist back. The millisecond I started lowering, the strength train left the station and the barbell came down incredibly smoothly but ever-so-heavily and it sort of hovered somewhere between my neck and chest – neither being an area I wanted particularly to squash. I could see my good friend Peter in the squat rack via the mirrors. I could only see him on the ‘up’ of the squat and I was frantically trying to catch his attention before I either cut off my neck artery or lost my boobs forever! I kept calling his name but his damn cordless headphones were working against me and he must have been doing a marathon set because he didn’t let up on those squats!! Finally, and very thankfully, another gym-goer saw my face turning blue and probably thought that the paused rep was going on a bit too long so he ran to my rescue. After assessment of body parts, all was well … other than that darned pride.

·         When it comes to bodybuilding and the shows – I have oh-so-many stories and I’ll save them for their own special episode. Of notable mention was the first waxing experience but a close second was the bikini malfunction on the national stage. Look out for this episode – it’ll be funny for some … and cringe-worthy for me. Oh – and I must give a little teaser for the time that I had a stopover in Melbourne and decided to apply a coat of thick tan (being two nights before a comp). While in the starkers, I decided to cook a steak in my little camp-ground cabin, however the stove top got a little too hot and started smoking. Nek minnet – the bloody smoke alarm starts shrieking and I’m caught between waving a tee-towel to stop the sound and prevent the fire trucks arriving – or putting on some clothes to save a shred of pride before the firies stormed in. I was literally swaying between the tee-towel and the onesie, desperately trying to find some common-sense with a severely depleted brain and a ridiculously golden-brown body!! I’ll let you know what happened next episode!

So what was the point of these Monday confessions? Easy. If I could count how many people (women!) who have given me reasons why they won’t go to the gym, or go into the weights room, or try bodybuilding, or give group fitness a go – and have cited the reason that they feel intimidated or not worthy or not cool enough for any of these activities – I’ve just proven to you that you another person who is way, way, way not cool enough exists. I’m her. I’ll never be cutting-edge-cool – in fact I’m probably uber-uncool (I have always wanted to use ‘uber’ in something!!!) and I still go after what I want to go after.

I researched the 5-3-1 protocol over the last month and I wrote up my weights and am starting on it today. I’m not strong enough, technical enough or hard-arsed enough to even attempt this I’m sure. But here I am, doing it anyway. Who gives a flying shit whether I look cool doing it or not? More importantly to me is what podcast should I listen to while I’m doing it?

And just in case you weren't completely convinced;

- I don't call anyone "hun" or "babe"

- I don't own any lululemon gear

- I don't raise my eyebrows instead of saying "hello"

- I try to look people in the eye when speaking to them - however old-fashioned that may be

- I have only just decided to I like Sia and Chandelier is one of my current favs (I definitely and absolutely do NOT listen to thrash metal or rap music - even if it would lift my coolness rankings in an instant!)

This is an infinte list...

Training Part 2 – that ended up being anything BUT Training Part 2 – saving it for Part 3….

Once upon a hot Weipa night, while working for the most retarded boss in the entire world (that, by the way, is Fact -  not Opinion – ask anyone), I decided that it was time to hand back my glock, hang up the handcuffs and file my pile of official notebooks. I was done. No longer could I ignore the fact that the crooks had more brain-cells than the head-honcho and that was too much for this police-girl to bear.

So I put on my thinking cap and made a decision to re-train myself and pick a new career – couldn’t be that hard could it?? While flicking through magazines in order to find my next venture, I stumbled across an ad for the NT Police. Nothing really caught my eye until I got to the paragraph containing the wages. From that point on, I just knew it was the perfect job!! For Rob!! Didn’t take too much to sell the idea to him and before we knew it he had appointments for testing, followed by an interview in Brisbane and then it was the agonizing wait for the phone call. I guess it’s no secret that the phone call did come and he was so excited he used lights and sirens to pull me over while I was driving home from the shops – which looked sorta stupid in a town the size of Weipa. Rob is a pretty laid-back sort of a guy but he was fizzing with this news. He gushed out that we were moving to “the Territree!!”. I was terribly excited and asked which station he was posted to. Rob, “Ummm – I don’t actually know. I forgot to ask!” We quickly decided it was important enough to call straight back and ask. I noticed Rob was a touch cagey when he came back to me and I demanded to know where we were going to live in this Territree place. “Umm – yeah – well. We’ve been posted to Katherine – woohoo!!!” Right. Katherine. No idea. Never heard of it. Google maps was immediately consulted and we instantaneously decided to appeal the decision!! Like hell was I moving to ButtCrap Nowhere!!! Which is quite funny considering we lived in Cape York in a remote town of 3,000 people and even more crocs than humans…..

After the initial shock, we gave in to the Universe and decided we would hold our heads high and enter Katherine with a good attitude. Easier for me as I could see myself living a life of leisurely luxury!! But just in case I got bored, I decided to press on with my new career – and it seemed sensible to stick to what I loved most … training. So I signed up online to do my Certificate 3 & 4 in Personal Training. The cost was in the few thousands so I wanted to succeed and make it a viable ‘thing’ to do. I remember working my shifts and then listening to the tutorials while getting the kids’ dinners, or doing the housework. I was seriously addicted to the learning – the nutrition especially intrigued me and I couldn’t get enough of that stuff. The course was a pleasure to complete and I’m quite surprised at how negative a lot of people are during their courses. Maybe I lucked in with the course I used.

So in late February 2011, I finished up my police career and I thought it was for good. It was a very strange feeling after 13 years and such huge personal investments into that job. Not to mention I had married a policeman and we had three little police babies. We had worked in a few places in NZ and then transferred our skills to Qld where we had worked in Logan (another story!!) before relocating to the Cape. Just to be keep things interesting right to the end, my last week in ‘the job’ included two quite funny and memorable incidents;

#1 – The Dolphin Incident

So we are working in this funny little town in the middle of nowhere. Only two of us worked at any given time and we had no radio coms to anywhere so decisions sometimes had to be made – even the really hard ones. I like decision making most times.

I remember that particular Saturday evening shift. It was typical steamy heat and we knew that as soon as the sun started setting, the mosquitos would be out in full force. Those mozzies absolutely love the taste of my blood so I would usually drench myself in repellent the minute they started buzzing. It hadn’t gotten to that stage yet so it must have all kicked off maybe around 4pm. We got a call saying that someone staying at the local resort had seen a beached dolphin and she was really concerned about its welfare. We were asked to head down to the general area and see what had happened. Police are very used to receiving information that often turns out to be vastly different from the reality so I fully expected to see a dolphin – but I thought it would be wallowing in the shallows.

What we arrived to see was a huge dolphin lying up on completely dry land, hundreds of metres from any water. It was almost comical to see it in such an unnatural state. We had huge king tides in Weipa so it was reasonable that the dolphin had come in with the tide and that’s where it stayed while the water ran out.

We took stock of the position and then, as we got closer, we could see the poor thing was in a terrible state with its breathing loud, shallow and laboured. Along with that I swear it was crying – reminded me of how turtles look when they are caught and brought it on the boats, they have what look to be tears streaming down their lil cheeks. Back to the dolphin – we had information that the locals had tried to get it back in to the water but it returned with the tide and seemed to beach itself a second time. No one could do any more with it and the tourists at the resort were very distressed by its poor condition and state.

It was very apparent to me (and anyone with half a brain) that the dolphin had to be put down. And that’s where things started getting untidy. Dolphins are a protected species and police organisations sometimes try to please everyone just a bit too much in my humble opinion. I decided I would shoot it and put it out of its misery. I checked with the locals (dolphins having a significance to Aboriginal culture) and they didn’t mind, in fact they were supportive of the proposed action. I spoke to the Cairns boss and he agreed. I spoke to a Sea World vet and he too agreed, telling me that dolphins beached themselves when in distress.

In conjunction with the apparent distress of the dolphin, we also had critical logistical issues closing in on us. We were in a mangrove area and the sun was setting. The gazillion mosquitos were out in force and I was getting annihilated. On top of that, the tide was coming in quickly. Weipa is like the capital of Croc Country. They are everywhere!!!! Huge saltwater crocodiles who would not care that I was being a wildlife warrior. I had no intention of meeting up with one (interestingly enough, a mine-worker was attacked almost exactly in that spot some three weeks later. He held on to the mangroves while the croc grabbed his legs and did a few death rolls, breaking his legs and pelvis. He was only spared when someone heard his screams and used sticks to beat off the croc). I was in a hurry to get this done for so many reasons.

So we pushed back the sticky-beakers and I then used my glock to deliver the fatal shot My male colleague had offered to step in at this point but I had started the job and I was going to finish is, despite a rather uncomfortable act to carry out. It was over in a flash and I for one felt fine about what I’d done. And then it started unravelling….

The boss in Cairns contacted the bigger boss in Cairns and told him what had happened. The bigger boss wasn’t happy … the first boss reneged and pretended he didn’t give us permission to do it. The first boss and I had some pretty heated words. Then they had a meeting. The biggest bosses in the north all got together and had a further ‘meeting’ about the death of the dolphin. They wanted to avoid a media scrum, potentially labelling us as heartless Dolphin Killers. My dubious act coincided with some random dolphin pup that had been found slaughtered at the Gold Coast the same weekend apparently. Similarities could be found apparently (what the actual fuck??!!!). Someone might find The Body and carry out an autopsy and determine that we shouldn’t have shot it. The stupidity of the information being fed up to us was mind-boggling.

So these meetings took place in the glass offices of the city bosses while I sat at home, half laughing and half fuming at the ridiculousness of it all. I had been involved in far worse situations where my own safety was at high risk – and had less involvement with bosses. The dolphin was certainly getting its fair share of posthumous attention. At first light I trekked back to the scene of the mammal-homicide and Rob and I dug a giant hole and buried the said ‘victim’ in order to hide the evidence. Job done. We never spoke of it again…

And that, my friends, is the Dolphin Incident. The only thing I have ever shot and killed…

#2 – The Last Fight

I have had some pretty good blues in the police – and I mean some pretty darn good ones! There was the time I arrested that awful woman who was doing her business in the middle of a suburban road – and she bit me like a rabid dog as I was cuffing her! That one stands out because I can remember sobbing in the loos when no one was looking. Most have been the almost-expected result of wading into a DV or wrestling grog off those that don’t want to give it over. On pretty much my last operational shift as a copper in Cape York, we did the usual drive-by of the only respectable place to drink late, being the local Golf Club. As per usual there was a large group of mainly late teens/early 20’s/late 20’s/early 30’s…. milling around outside. As per usual, a lot of them called out “gdday” and some stopped for a yarn. We were there to dissuade people from drink driving and to fly-the-flag and let them know we were still awake.

As we completed all of our official duties from the front seat of the Troopy, a really strange thing happened. A nicely dressed, relatively ‘normal’ looking (you learn to categorise levels of normality as a copper) lady walked slowly up to the front of our vehicle. She looked right at us as she took hold of the very long and very necessary long-range aerial, and then she completely bent it over and pretty much ruined it. We were gobsmacked. Even had a laugh at how ridiculously blatant she was.

I got out of the car and called out to her. She simply turned around and began walking away. I didn’t know whether to laugh or yell at her – it was just so bizarre. So I walked up behind her, as she wasn’t even walking away fast, and I tapped her on the shoulder. At that point, this ‘lovely’ lady turned around and delivered a hay-maker punch straight to the side of my head. It was the most unexpected, unprovoked hit of my career to date and it definitely took me by surprise. I had been indulging in an awful lot of weight training over the past two years so my next move was quick and decisive and I was quite impressed with my own strength. From there it all went downhill and we were surrounded by a ring of half-haters, half-supporters – all pretty pissed. We got out of there as quick as we could and the cheeky minx had a crash-course on how not to treat officers of the law. She rang to complain later but not at all about the hands-on lessons she learned – she complained only that we lost one of her thongs during the arrest process. Go figure.

It was an apt and funny end to my stint as a Cape York Copper.

And then we moved to that funny little place called Katherine. Well I did, and the kids, while Rob lived it up at the NT Police Academy. Unfortunately, our furniture and car didn’t arrive for another 6 weeks due to being literally left on the side of the road in Cape York for a couple of weeks – forgotten about by the transport company – and secondly because it got stuck in the flooding through Qld. So the kids and I camped out in a unit and I borrowed the complex’s transport van to trek us around. I found out that the seatbelts were faulty on the first school drop off when I went to the back to get Benji out of his car seat only to find that he was literally hanging upside down, still strapped in, when the seatbelt failed to retract. Little bugger was red in the face but hadn’t even cried while driving upside all the way to the school.

With no house and no furniture or car, it was pretty easy to plough through the last bit of my studies and I made a decision to start an outdoor bootcamp. I didn’t know a soul in the NT and I had no idea where to even start with this little idea. But I ran with it and started advertising here and there. My qualification was due to be signed off on July 3 and my first bootcamp was about a week later – just enough time to organise the insurance. I had an awful lot of enquiries and I started feeling a little bit queasy about the whole idea. I had no experience with running any bootcamps, I hadn’t really been to any and I didn’t even really like group fitness. What a fraud!! But I just felt in my bones that this was the right thing to do. I spent hours and hours and days and weeks planning out the sessions and I decided that I wanted to make it measurable. I wanted some sort of testing that could be worked on and re-tested at a later date. So my first test would be a nice easy one. The good old Beep Test.

On night one of the Katherine Ladies Bootcamp, I sat under the tree an hour early and I literally started shaking with fear. About 15mins before the start time, the ladies started arriving. And more came. And more. And more. 48 in fact. All looking to me for guidance and leadership. I went around the corner, gave myself a stiff uppercut and then arranged these mammoth group into one huge long line and they did the beep test – much to their horror. And from there we carried on into a solid hour of bootcamp fun! And we did all again on the Thursday. And we carried on doing it for 2 years. I loved that bootcamp!!! Really loved it. I never cancelled or postponed a session – ever. It was my pride and joy and I met some of the best people in the world.

We eventually opened up to blokes and entered teams into the Fun Runs and other events. The friendships I made have lasted. I truly believed in what we did each Tuesday and Thursday and it became so popular that we ran all through the holidays and even threw in a Saturday morning HIIT for fun. My Tuesday numbers were always high – with a regular 30 being quite common. Thursday was the quieter night with 10-20 regular contenders. The recipe for success was what I had learned in my working life. Stick to things you actually believe in. Organisation is the key to confidence. And keep it real. The only exercise I ever asked of them that I couldn’t do myself was Double-Unders. And I still can’t do them!!

Here's a link to a video taken of the first few weeks of my precious bootcamp;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk3CQrsWNBc

The reason this whole blog has any relevance whatsoever to my training is because the fact that I was suddenly spending all of my working hours helping others to achieve their training goals. It left me feeling somewhat lost – and that’s when I decided it was time to make my own goal.

That decision led me into a world I didn’t even really know existed.

Look out for Part 3…. I’m too tired to keep going on this one tonight. 

Training. Where do I start? Like food, I’ve pretty much made every mistake known to wo/man/kind. It’s all there in my past and not-so-distant-past. FB kindly records all shortcomings so no use trying to deny it;

·         Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I only did cardio. I was your typical ‘walk in the door and beeline to the cardio machines’ sort of girl. My idea of mixing it up was swapping the Woman’s Day for a Women’s Weekly mag. End result: kept moderately lean but flabby legs that didn’t ever change.

·         I often wonder why I didn’t ever gravitate to working with weights and I can only say that my confidence in a gym was always so very low. I used to pound the treadie and watch the girls arrive and linger around the reception area, chatting with staff. I wondered what they chatted about. Wondered how they found the confidence to speak with people they didn’t really know. I was truly surprised that the gym members would go out on social events together and have Christmas and Easter parties. For me the gym was somewhere that I snuck into – incognito – and completed my hour of cardio before slinking out. The odd smile here and there was about as social as it got for me and I was in awe of those that made it a culture.

·         And then came Group Fitness. The way to turn up and be put through my paces without having to think of a thing. It wasn’t always plain sailing though I’ll have you know; my ability to “mirror” the instructor was not good. Instead I would find a suitable candidate who looked like they knew what they were doing and stand behind them so I could be sure I wasn’t going to grape-vine the wrong way. On that, I learnt all the moves and felt just a tad proud! I have never been a dancer and this was about as close as I was ever going to get to a stage performance so I made sure my hoe-downs and foot-flicks were completed with as much panache as I could muster. I even ventured into the area of Active Wear – and let me tell you that all the way back then (sigh…), you only wore this shit to the gym so you had to be a true-believer to invest in it.

An incident I’d rather forget (but can’t ever) involves both my 90’s active-wear and my fennel laxative bars. I seriously can’t face sharing the details but I can say that ultra-tight bike-pants underneath a G-string hiked-up leotard were a recipe for disaster when time was tight and the loos were upstairs. Enough on that.

·         2010 was my first introduction to weights. Real weights. My beautiful Cape York friend had a garage full of iron and I can truly say I had absolutely no idea what to do with most of it. Left to my own devices I might have thrown together some bicep curls, triceps dips and crunches and called that a ‘Workout’. So she had a complete beginner on her hands.

This whole new world opened up for me and I couldn’t get enough of it. Rows, deadlifts, presses, sumo high-pulls, uprights – we did them all and we did them often. I had a baby less than a year old and I swear he spent at least one hour a day on that garage floor playing with toys and watching his mama sweat it out. Having had two other babies, I can tell you that this new style of training did absolute wonders for shattering the stay-at-home-mum blues I had experienced with my first two.

Just to explain (though not needed for those closest to me) – I’m no Mother Earth. I have three children and I love them more than I’ve loved anything in this world – but I’m still no Mother Earth. I used to read books on how to be a Mum and I did every free course being offered by every community organisation in relation to new babies. I have certificates for; How to Survive Sleep Deprivation and Still Love Your Baby (barely worked). Baby & You: A New & Beautiful Beginning (say it 50 times and I’ll believe it eventually). Baby Massage (a room full of nuded up baby bottoms was sort of cute!). How to Keep the Passion Alive Once Baby Arrives (Rob made me go. Epic fail in his books).

On the up-side, I have successfully grown them to ages 13, 12 and 8 and that is pretty good really. I hang my head with a touch of shame and admit that there’s some things I just didn’t conquer – in no particular order; I didn’t do home-craft with them. I only made their baby food from scratch because I was too tight to buy it – not due to any healthy aspects. I only paid for swimming lessons for one baby (aged 6months) because I thought it was all a big rip-off scam at that age – the others I just tipped water over their heads in the  bath. I did not ever take them to the Wiggles in concert (though Rob offered Hi 5 and I didn’t let him). I have never paid for professional photos of my kids (other than pixie pics or the free shopping centre Santa ones). I made up lies to avoid having to watch kid’s movies – apart from Nemo and Toy Story. Two had dummies, one refused – and I only ditched them because I hated getting up in the night to put it back in. And here’s the one that I have to drag myself to admit …. not sure I can do this … “you can do it Kirst – just say it quickly and it’ll be out there” – inhale/exhale – even when they were babies I would pretend I was asleep so that Rob would have to deal with them, even though he was a shift worker – I detested getting up in the night …. Not sure I’ll admit that ever again my lifetime. Oh – and here’s one more for free – new mothers can be the most superior bitches in the world – new mothers will know what I mean by that.

So I’m completely weird and that’s ok, sort of. I also had another issue that I was only talking to a colleague about the other day. Throughout my life, in particular my teens onward, I found I would have a serious psychological and sometimes even physical reaction to cold and grey weather. I’m sure everyone gets a little down when it’s bleak and rainy for days on end – but this was different I think. The slightest hint of summer turning to autumn and a change of thought process would start with me. I would spiral down and feel like I had to tread water to keep above it all. Once I had children it became seriously hard to shake and I found myself in freezing cold, grey, rainy, bleak, shitty Auckland (sorry Aucks people) and I couldn’t find my way out. We moved multiple times. We moved from old houses to brand new ones. We bought a spectacular block of land over-looking the ocean. We paid $6K for our dream house plans. I pushed myself to venture outdoors and I kept up with my incessant cardio – but I knew the quality of life for our family was suffering because of me. So we moved to Australia and have been here ever since. It’s taken a while to find the right spot but here we are in Darwin and I can honestly say that the top end sunshine is like medicine to me. Those bleak days with the bleak moods are non-existent and, even after 6 years in the north and 10 years in Oz, I still wake every morning and feel grateful for my beautiful, warm and sunny life – surrounded by palm trees and sweat balls. I look back and feel proud that, as a family, we found a problem and solved it even though it meant a full country change. Our children have thrived over here and are now very proud citizens with an Aussie boy added once we got here. They know nothing different other than the sunshine, sports and weirdness of the top end and we have no intentions whatsoever of leaving it any day soon.

·         Back to training. After my intro to weights, I haven’t looked back. Finally, those blasted legs have made changes. I’m not ready to strap on a red bikini and slo-mo down the beach anytime soon, but I didn’t have great legs to start with and now they are a better version of the same ones. I’m grown-up enough to realise that I will not ever have the muscular, long, lean, brown pins of a super-model, but I’m sort of glad I don’t possess the ones I’m genetically pre-disposed to sans-exercise. A bit of tan goes a bloody long way to dealing with the imperfections by the by.

But this training intro wasn’t enough – it was just the first taste of what was to become my life for the next few years as I ditched my profession and became a full-time fitness trainer. And the fun really started.

So my next lot of training bloopers, blunders and best-bits can wait until Part 2. This gets really interesting now so don’t go far…..

Starting Off With - Where I Once Was...

I had to start with a foodie blog – how predictable. I feel like I’ve harped on about myself so many times now but I guess it wouldn’t be fair to withhold just how kooky I have been … can be … desire not to be one day….

But, like all sensible approaches - it's absolutely not point trying to change if you don't first take stock of where you are. It's all common sense - how can you change what you don't acknowledge as being a problem worth changing? I won't deny I've made huge changes since this time in my life, but here it is in all its gory glory.

I’ll try and make this brief and to the point; if there is anything particularly stupid that anyone has done with regards to food and diets – I’ve been there and have many different sized t-shirts to prove it. I’ll try to highlight only those points that I think are relevant;

·         Growing up I ate anything that was put in front of me. My favourite family meal of all time was when Mum (sorry about this Ma) boiled the living hell out of large chunks of white potato, teaming them on a dinner plate with a once-frozen-in-a-box (yes a box!!!)-but-now-grilled lamb chop with perhaps a blob of melted cheddar cheese on top to fancy it up a little. The really special bit was when that sneaky potato soaked up some of the boiled water only to spit it out on my plate a bit later on, making the whole meal look like it was swimming in a murky, milky mess. My second favourite was my Grandma’s boiled celery with cheese sauce on top. As you can see, fine-food is in my blood.

·         I was not over-weight as a child. Maybe a little heavy at times but well within what I would call a normal range.

·         I left home and introduced myself to fast-food. I gave no thought whatsoever to whether Fillet O Fish was actually real fish – I only knew that it tasted most excellent with a layer of fries smeared in the free McD’s ketchup (a-ha – bet you didn’t know about that!! They don’t tell anyone but it’s a hidden beauty they hide behind the counter, only to be released on demand) added to the mix.

·      
I got Hepatitis B in my early 20’s and dropped about 5 kilos while turning steadily yellow. Nobody seemed disconcerted at my sunny-coloured eyes, but they commented readily on how great I looked minus the kilos. It dawned on me like a concrete block that I must have looked like shit before the illness-induced diet. I made myself a promise that I’d not return to pre-sick weight and I relished my new-found stardom. I took up chewing gum and smoking fags as a way to keep hunger at bay.

·         I started taking a horrendously intense look at food and calorie and kilojoules and rules and diets and all things skinny. I found out some fabulous facts that I could centre my life around and – by-George – they worked!! Here are my top 8;

o   Fruits are sugar. Sugar is bad. Don’t eat fruit.

o   Bread is sugar in a bad disguise. Don’t eat bread or anything that includes bread.

o   Carrots are orange-sugar – see above.

o   Milk is white sugar.

o   Vegetables are good if they are green so consume as many as you can stomach. Dry retching is the best penance and means you are doing well.

o   Meat is negligible. Eat it a bit when you absolutely have to.

o   Fennell is brilliant. I’ll tell you why a little later.

o   Oranges are def sugar but they are a better form of sugar so eat as many as you want – up to a few kilos per day if need be and blame turning yellow on this orange-habit.

·         I found the wonderful world of laxative bars. One a day seemed to do the trick nicely. Actually – too nicely some days. I was grateful that I was quite an agile runner at that time. This bar was a fennel flavour and even to this day (some 20 years later) I CANNOT STAND the smell of fennel.

·         Fast forward a year or two and I was now dangerously thin. I quit my job to concentrate more on dieting. It was seriously tiring so I moved back home. My Mum cried buckets. She asked Jesus to help. He might have helped a little but I fought Him the whole way.

·         And then the tables turned. My hunger grew too huge so I re-introduced myself to food. But somehow my little appetite switch got turned off in the confusion and I had no “stop” button. My favourite foods of all turned out to be, in no particular order; muesli, sultanas, raisins, dried figs, nuts, bread, jam and condensed milk. I drank the condensed milk straight out of the can through two little holes that I would puncture into the lid – glossy, creamy goodness!! I put on weight. Who would have thought??

·         Fast forward again and I’m a nicely rounded fat arse who has no idea what the hell just happened or how to get back to ‘normal’ – whatever the hell normal was.

·         I tried Weight Watchers. Nil success. But I do have a little tip for beginners. It’s a secret thing I made up and I’m sure no one else knows about it. Prior to the first weigh in I would go nuts!! Eat anything and everything and I wouldn’t stop until I had to and it would be an epic night. This ensured that, while weigh in #1 would be fairly ordinary, week #2 would be crazy good!!!! Oh what a high dropping a gazillion kilos at once!! Week 3 … not so much. Week 4 … already looking for a new gimmick to try.

·         I tried Jenny Craig. Didn’t go through with signing up after realising I had to actually meet a real-live counsellor – eek!!

·         I moved to Africa and mingled with people that truly had to work to eat. No government hand-outs. No huge supermarkets with a pile of variety. No food regulations to ensure high standards. Just village people eating whatever they had and making no fuss about it. I came back down to earth in a thud and my body thanked me for it. I developed a real taste for bbq’d maize cobs.

·       

            I joined the police and managed to regulate my input with my output and I learned to lever up or down with piles of cardio activities – mainly running at a steady state for miles and miles while day-dreaming about not having to run. I loved/hated running but realised it was a necessary evil for someone who loved their food. My food habits were sort of ‘normal’ by this stage and most days I had weetbix for brekkie, sandwich for lunch, pasta/potato/bread and vegies and meat for dinner with fruit and other nibbles for snacks. I would probably blow out most weekends with a good taste for wine, nibbles and drunken fast-food – dripping cheese-and-onion toasted sandwiches being my all-time favourite.

·         I was introduced to weight training in 2010 while working remote and it was scary how quickly I agreed to drop the cardio. But I still refused to change my food habits or even look at the health aspects of nutrition. I was happily munching on the usual family meals from my bag of everyday tricks; spag bol, mac cheese, bangers and mash, fish pie, pasta and stirfry – absolutely nothing wrong with any of them.

·          

        In 2012 I started training for a bodybuilding show and was forced (if I wanted success) to change my habits. All of sudden I became familiar with food combinations that I had not even considered once before; oats, protein powder, chicken breasts, lentils, cous cous, screeds of all-things-green, cottage cheese, tofu ….. I loved it but balked badly at the prep time.

·         Shades of obsession came back and I found myself counting and controlling and justifying my choices – mainly to myself. Bodybuilding gave me a legitimate way to see-saw my weight and I got pretty good at it. But something in me knew/knows it isn’t healthy, despite hiding it behind such a great sport.

·         I’ve heard/read/listened to screeds of information on nutrition and have settled on a way that suits me and my family. It is fairly simplistic and I’ll go into it more in a future blog.

·         

       For now, I’ll make these points;

o   I use minimal (and I really mean minimal) supplements

o   I do believe that what you eat and when you eat it will help immensely in fat control

o   I think knowing too much about too many things can be a definite hindrance for busy minds

o   I think it’s all too freakin complicated – eat less and move more works for anyone starting out – let’s not mix up lean strategies of a bodybuilder with fat-loss strategies for the everyday person

o   Choices are everything and they are one thing that everyone has power over

After Months of Silence - I'm Back!

So I sat down last weekend and, after a lot of thought, I decided that I wanted to keep on blogging. I love writing – it’s cathartic and a way for me to dump the information from my busy head. I have an ongoing battle with trying to relax my mind and writing helps. I tried a short meditation course too and I really liked what they taught me. I had a buddy with me and I think it all worked too well on her because she managed to nod-off mid-class. It’s a bit cruel how tired we can feel sometimes until the head hits the pillow!!

I stopped writing my last blog because I felt I had nothing more to say specifically about comp prep. Strange really considering I was prepping at that time. I think this last comp made me very aware of how superficial it can all get. Reading information throughout social media that I thought was crap got annoying and I didn’t want to be yet another person droning on about the usual blah, blah of topics; fasted cardio, no cardio, carbs at night, training regimes, powerlifting, crossfit, bad judging, blah blah blah. I got bored of it all and blog-bailed. FYI – I did compete and I did win. That was pretty cool but I actually didn’t love the whole comp experience. I felt out of place. My issue. Maybe a story for another time.

But now I’m back and I’ve decided to try and share my own experiences - so rather than tell people what to do, which is fraught with danger, I am just going to write about what I have experienced. I anticipate my target market being people in the same position as I am. And that is;

I’m a very average woman in my early 40’s. I haven’t achieved anything super-special in my life but I have a lot of little bits and pieces that I’m proud of. I’m seriously happy in my marriage after 18 years together – he is my Prince Charming and I immensely respect my husband. He treats me like an absolute queen and I thank the universe every day for crossing our paths in that smelly, smokey police bar in Otahuhu, Auckland in 1999 after I fell down 2 flights of stairs and managed to lose all of my spare change and break half a packet of my social fags.

On that same path, we have three children that I could go on about for days – but it’s sufficient to say they are pretty darn cool and they complete our happy household. Currently aged 13, 12 and 7.

Second to family I have my career. I’m a proud cop and have been for 18 years – pretty much frontline for the majority though I’ve worked remote, city, rural and beachside. I’ve attended all of those horror jobs that everyone knows about and lived to tell my tales. I have fought with gang-members in NZ, ripped grog out of hands in Cape York, and suffered through the bogans in Eagleby. I now work in investigations and finally have a predominantly Mon-Fri job – which has been agonisingly out of my reach due to so many jurisdiction changes over the years. Being a recruit three times has ensured that I never really got a chance to be too much of an arrogant wanker. It was genuinely hard to feel or even look too-cool-for-school in a hi-viz vest, guarding alcohol shops for 8 hour stretches. 

This job of mine has provided me with the biggest laughs (I executed a search warrant on the wrong house once – maybe it wasn’t me laughing the loudest that time but there was def plenty of laughing!), the lowest of lows (road trauma really took it out of me in those early years – the sights, smells and sounds can stay with you for years), excitement beyond what almost any other job can provide (pursuits, armed sieges and half-priced McDonalds), and some truly weird little gems (I had to shoot a dolphin once – don’t even ask!!), but it has been a constant in my life for so long now and I thrive on the variety. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else and I am genuinely grateful to do what I do.

And then then there’s my training. The other constant. The thing that I credit with keeping me sane through the years of shift-work, the pressures of the jobs, the journey of pregnancy and babies, the highs and lows of being an emergency services worker and the daily stress of being a mum who is pulled in so many directions at one time. In our early years together, I would melt-down a bit … a lot … quite a lot … often … and Rob would come at me with a wine glass in one hand and runners in the other. More often than not I would pick the runners first closely followed by the wine glass on my return. Back then I only ever really ran for exercise. My philosophy was that I had to do just enough cardio to support my food habit and if I could stay a certain weight, I was happy with that. Again – how life has changed.

In 2012 I decided to become 'A Bodybuilder'. I took it extremely seriously and spent 9 months following my diet to the letter. It was hell on earth but I won. I carried on to do a few more comps;

2012 – Darwin INBA – Overall Figure

2012 – Nationals INBA – 4^th Figure Novice, 4^th Figure Open

2013 – Darwin WFF – First Figure

2013 – Southern Hemispheres WFF – 3^rd Masters

2014 – Darwin NABBA – Overall Figure

2014 – Nationals NABBA – 3^rd Masters

2014 – Worlds WFF – 5^th Figure

2016 – Darwin INBA – Overall Figure

So I’ve done a few and won a few. I've made some decent changes along the way,

My desire now is to get on with life and continue learning how to integrate all of the best bits of my training and nutrition into a lifestyle that is sustainable, still reaping results and able to be adapted to the occasion.

I am a trainer too by the way. I have a little business called Final Stage and I train bodybuilders into comps. I absolutely love it. But by far the majority of enquiries I have had always relate to the every-day person (mainly women) who simply have no idea where to start in order to get their health and training into line with what they want their bodies to look like. I understand that. Unfortunately the desire to change is not actually half the battle. It’s only the beginning. It’ll take more than a mere thought and that’s where I lose most of them. To the point that I gave up even trying to help as I felt like a fraud with such a bad rate of success.

So this blog is about how I manage to make it work for me. I’m hoping it might give some good ideas and, more likely, some good laughs at my expense. I love a good laugh and I do some pretty stupid things sometimes.

This is a wrap for post #1 and I’ll finish with this;

     At some stage in your life we are all forced to face our health – it’ll either be on our terms or the doctor’s terms but it will happen.

-         
     The cumulative effect of anything will have the greatest outcome. Spend consistent time making good choices and you’ll have good results. Spent consistent time making bad choices …

-          Bodybuilding competitions are great fun but they are only a hobby. I took it way too seriously once upon a time and now realise that it’s a great thing to do but it's no more or less important than anyone else's hobbies. Once a Go Fund Me account is started with pleas for money to go to a comp - holy crap, the plot has been lost well and truly.

-          You CAN fit in good food and excellent training around family, work and life. The fact that people don’t is because they won’t – not because they can’t. But not everyone will believe that.