Ever since I posted the interview I did for Miss Dashwood, the one where I revealed that I’ve only gotten into exercise and fitness over the past few years, clients have been asking me what I looked like before. And fair enough. I know some of them thought I was THAT girl at school, the one who was always good at sports, athletic, and adventurous. It literally makes me wet myself with laughter when I hear that because I sooooooooooooooo wasn’t!!!! In high school I was on the tennis team. OMG, the stress of match days was horrendous! I was AWFUL! I don’t even know why I put myself through that humiliation but I’m glad I did, it probably made me a stronger person for it. The funniest thing is that when I met my now husband all those years ago, he googled me (I mean, seriously) and what came up was the profile of some tennis star at UCLA who shared the same name. So for the longest time he thought he was dating a tennis pro, and a humble one at that. Over dinner in the first few weeks of dating he asked if I was good at tennis, without divulging that he had stalked me on the internet. My response was ‘ummmmm, kinda????,’ to which he coyly beamed back at me. It still makes me laugh when I think about it, although Dom (who IS naturally very good at all sports) was probably quite disappointed.
Anyway, fast forward to present day and although I’m the same person as I was, I have learned to love having a strong, able body that can run and jump and lift ridiculously heavy weights (relatively speaking obvs). I still have no desire to do anything extreme like running an 8 day marathon in the desert, or getting electrocuted in a freezing cold river, but I do like how exercise makes me look and feel.
Soooooo, the point of all this is to show you my recent transformation. I’ve been teaching for a few years and slowly falling in love with different types of exercise like pilates, yoga, weight training, cardio. But what really changed the shape of my body, my 38 year old, mommy of 3 gorgeous kids body, was when I added HIIT training to my weekly routine. It’s when I started to sweat. I mean, really sweat. Like I couldn’t actually go anywhere after a session because I smelled like a man. After a pilates class I could always just touch up my make up and go, but after a HIIT session I’d have to shower. And wash my hair. Which was annoying but the results were worth it.
So these pictures are from January 2016 – May 2016 (4 months). The ONLY thing that I did differently was add 2-3 short HIIT sessions to my week. My diet stayed the same, my drinking habits stayed the same, my social life the same, everything the same. I just allowed my body to get hot, to sweat, to WORK at max capacity, a few times a week. I allowed myself to feel serious discomfort and to not care what I looked like during or after. And this is when the real change started. 15 minutes, 3 times a week.
Moral of the story- if I can do it, anyone can. Being female and nearly 40, I have ever changing hormones working against me, which make it harder to shift body fat. But it’s not impossible. It can easily be done with a bit of tinkering to your exercise regime. It’s not about training harder, but training smarter.
Love,
Sophie
