The pleasure of moving for moving's sake

This week's guest blogger, Nancy Khan, trained to be a Chocolate Fairy last year and is running workshops in Birmingham.  If you live in the area and would like to attend a Beyond Chocolate course, Nancy would love to hear from you!  Meet Nancy 

I’ve never been a fan of exercise.  I used to hide in the toilets during P.E at school, or my mum would write me a note, as she was no fan either.

I’ve bought countless fitness videos, tried tap dancing classes and been a very infrequent gym user, only to revert to my default position on the sofa!

When I started experimenting with the Beyond Chocolate Principles I left Move till last, still afraid of failure.

I then joined a women’s fitness group, armed with the mantra “I only have to do it once” and guess what –I loved it! 

We meet on a Saturday morning at the reservoir, and I realise why I didn’t enjoy the videos and the gym is that I would rather work out outdoors.  We walk and/or run round the reservoir, we use the benches for tricep dips, we play music from a car stereo and do salsa, aerobics, kick boxing, whatever takes our fancy, and it’s fun!   

I was clearly having so much fun that now my husband, my son and his girlfriend come too.  I go running with my brother during the week, and my son joins us with some of his friends, so moving for me has touched so many other peoples’ lives.

Encouraged by my success I started training for the Birmingham half marathon, but soon realised that the training regime was taking the fun out of running.  As soon as I started imposing “I must go running” instead of “I want to go running” I began to resent going, so I’ve eased off.  I would love to do the half marathon one day, but when I naturally feel able to do it rather than pushing myself and spoiling the pleasure of moving for moving’s sake!