Yoga mishaps of an ageing Piglet – Piglet’s Comedy Club

Photo Credit: Petra Röder, Photo Express

I’ve been feeling a bit depressed about my weight recently and have been completely unable to shift the excess kilos. Any efforts at dieting have been short-lived and resulted in adding to my surplus rather than reducing it. My ludicrous attempts to loose 10 kilos in 10 weeks (see this post) were quickly thwarted by life, and I actually managed to put on 5 kilos along the way!

I have tried to take some steps to loosing weight in the recent weeks. I used to be a dancer. It doesn’t seem like an eternity ago but it must have been, as after a 40 minute drive across town to a dance studio I’d found on the internet I was bitterly disappointed.

As I walked in I realized the receptionist and all the dancers loitering around were about 18 and made me look ancient. They all looked like extras from Pineapple Dance Studios, and I looked just like Louis – the old one (if you don’t know about Pineapple then have a look at some of these videos, they’re a scream!Pineapple Dance Studios on YouTube).

The receptionist showing me around asked how many years ago it had been since I had danced. Note: Not just how long ago, but how many years ago… She kindly advised that their lessons were not really for beginners (she obviously didn’t believe that I had once danced professionally, albeit on ice!) and invited me to attend an open day if I wanted to try… it was a nice let down but I’m a very busy lady and 40 minutes drive across town is just too far and too much time in the car to reflect on the fact that I can no longer move as I once did.

MC Hammer Pants

Things came to a head on my holiday in Portugal when I was forced to wear MC Hammer style pants under dresses, as my dresses had turned themselves into tunics and had become indecent to wear in public. The MCH pants were actually supposed to have been tracksuit bottoms (but are actually harem pants or so I’m told) which I was expecting to wear elegantly with high heels. Not so.

Determined to look better, get fit and loose weight without being so strict that I set myself up for failure as I did last time. So, last Monday I set myself a target of loosing 4 kilos in 4 weeks before my next trip. To celebrate the setting of a realistic target, Hubby and I order Pizza Domino one final time and then weighed ourselves the next morning, hopefully being at our heaviest.

Not just content to do a gentle diet, I decided to embark on a keep fit routine as well and this, my dear readers, in where things started to unravel at an alarming rate.

Tuesday night: 30 minutes on the cross trainer followed by floor exercises and weights. At some point the blood circulation in my feet was cut off (my feet are too fat for my trainers?) and I lost all sensation in my toes! Manically rubbed my feet after and eventually all feeling came back. Great! This might just work, or so I thought.

Wednesday night: Time to add some diversity to my routine. If you’ve bought a packet of Fitness cereal recently (yes, this is how serious I am, even my breakfast cereal is called Fitness!) you would’ve received a free Les Mills DVD; Either Body Balance or Body Pump. I’d managed to eat my way through two boxes so had both DVD’s. I’d heard great things about these DVD’s so aching all over from the day before (don’t laugh, because I couldn’t so much my abdominal muscles hurt), I motivated myself to get stuck in and popped the Body Balance on in the machine.

Piglet’s Comedy Club

Setting: Living room, yoga mat on floor, television playing fitness DVD, a mixture of Yoga and Pilates.

Character: Piglet, dressed in holey tracksuit, bare feet (trainers too tight) and looking motivated. Spare tyre round middle held in place by too tight t-shirt.

Scene 1: Lady on DVD starts demonstrating the routine, Piglet to follow. Downward Dog. Grunt. Lady effortlessly slides from position to position, throwing in a plank from time to time. Piglet scrabbles around on all fours, bum in air, back on all fours in order to stand up, whoops, she’s toppled over. Another grunt. Ridiculous laughter. She tries to do the Plank but fails miserably and then splat on her face. Scene repeats.

Scene 2: 15 minutes later.
Frightfully fit ladies on DVD still doing graceful pilates moves. Piglet still flailing around in all directions. Time to lie on front on the floor. Extend arm and opposite leg, bend both and grab foot from behind. Piglet’s body will not move, hand grapples frantically trying to find foot. Ladies on DVD carry out said move with elegance, Piglet falls over without having held foot.

End Credits: Ladies on DVD are honed, toned and fighting fit. Piglet cannot get back up. Stays on floor. Crys. Is old. Spare tyre still there.

Yep, that’s right; I must have done something wrong as I wasn’t able to walk for three days after! Imagine the old ladies you sometimes see at the Dr’s surgery or at the market. The one’s wearing the contention tights and super sensible orthopedic shoes because they’ve had a hip replacement job? Well I was walking just like them. I couldn’t stand up, sit down or even turnaround without being in dreadful pain so I had to add to the hole in the French social security budget.

Miracously my hip is better now, but the Dr wants me to get an x-ray to check it out as he thinks there could be some joint damage. He’s also banned me from any sporty activity for the time being. Is this what ageing is about? And what about loosing weight?

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