Back Home, Back in Motion, and Apparently Punching Air Counts

Dear Body,

Welcome back to Bogotá.

By now, you know this city is built for movement: hills, sidewalks, sunshine, and a husband who believes in all three.

I landed on the afternoon of Sunday, 18 October, and slipped back into the walking-and-exercise flow almost immediately.

We’re not back at Week Nine levels yet, but move I did.

Week Fifteen averaged 11,436 steps a day. Week Fourteen scraped in at 8,433, and I blame Wednesday the 21st for that.

That was the day jet lag hit me so hard I could barely open my eyes, never mind get my feet to move.

Final count: 2,222 steps.

That’s not a walk.

That’s a commute between the bed and the kettle. Why the kettle? Because, like any good Kenyan, I believe dawa cures everything. You know that hot water, lemon, ginger and honey drink? Yes, that one. That’s what got me out of bed.

I made it back to the gym two days after landing, all thanks to Hubby, who pushed me out of the house.

Apparently, sunlight and exercise are excellent ways to help reset your circadian rhythm.

Fine. He was right. (Don’t tell him.)

And wueh, it felt good.

Every time I work out, I come home asking myself why I don’t do it more often. The post-workout high must be the respectable cousin of the highs people chase through far less wholesome means.

So why can’t my exercise high get me to the gym on its own?

That’s a real question, by the way.

Why is it so easy to crave and chase behaviour that’s bad for us when exercise gives us a similar (possibly even better) high, yet it’s still so hard to commit to?

I haven’t sampled crack for comparison. But there are far more films about crack addiction and recovering crack addicts than about recovering exercise-aholics, so I’d say there’s room for further investigation.

Someone needs to take on that research.

Could that someone be you?

Answers in the comments, please.

And Body, before anyone else says it, let’s talk numbers.

The agreement was four workouts a week.

Week Fourteen: one, leg day.

Week Fifteen: one, Power Boxing.

That’s two out of eight, or 25%.

In school, that’s not a pass.

That’s a meeting with the parents.

The pool hasn’t seen me either, and that two-kilometre swim won’t happen by itself.

So consider this me putting it in writing, in public, where you can all check:

Week Sixteen will be four workouts, and at least one of them will be in the pool.

The one workout I completed in Week Fifteen was a discovery:

Power Boxing.

Wow, oh wow!

Forty-five minutes of punching and kicking the air, dripping in sweat, and I’d burned about 400 calories.

Some of you are wondering why I was this excited about 400 calories, so here’s my confession.

Please don’t laugh.

I genuinely thought that to burn that many calories boxing, I’d need to hit someone, or at least hit something.

Clearly, the air is just as good a sparring partner.

Pretend-punching and kicking an imaginary enemy works perfectly well, and nobody has to press charges.

What else did I love about being home?

Predictable meals!

I made my own breakfast, controlled my own portions and didn’t spend every morning playing hide-and-seek with a buffet table full of pastries calling my name.

At home, it was “See no evil. Eat no evil.”

And… that lasted a few days.

Then a friend arrived from far, far away, from a land more than thirty hours from Bogotá.

Obviously, that meant buying cake to welcome her.

Never mind that she’s Miss Strict Diet herself and doesn’t touch processed food. But hey… what kind of host would I be if I didn’t offer both sweet and savoury options to someone who’d flown more than thirty hours to see me?

Exactly.

So, being the excellent host that I am, I bought the options.

My very disciplined visitor chose eggs, avocado toast and fruit, the works.

And what did I do? I went down the “we don’t waste food in this house” route, and we ate what she didn’t.

And by “we,” I mostly mean ME.

A few days into her visit, my friend looked at me and said:

“Wanjeri, you actually don’t eat much. You just eat the wrong things at the wrong time!”

Huh???

Apparently, eating a slice of cake just because you don’t want it to go to waste isn’t a recognised weight-loss strategy.

It also turns out that ice cream eaten while walking home after lunch still counts.

The calories don’t cancel themselves out just because your legs are moving.

Why did I think they did?

Which school did I go to again?

So here’s what I’m taking into Week Sixteen.

With food, the issue isn’t only how much I eat. I also need to pay attention to what I eat and when I eat it.

With movement, steps are excellent, but steps aren’t workouts.

Four sessions.

At least one in the pool.

You heard me say it.

Hold me to it.

Yours, back home, punching the air and publicly accountable again,

Me