February 13, 2020

Self love is an act of political warfare

Filed under: bloggery,things I read on the internet — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 9:53 am

 

self care is political warfare

Today is The International Day of Self-Love. I keep a calendar of days of stuff and things, to decide whether or not I want to celebrate them. I like the idea that every day should have purpose: to remember, reflect or celebrate. This is a good one. It’s important to take time to care for yourself, especially if this isn’t something you usually do. Women in particular are societally conditioned to care for others above themselves.

Yesterday was not a good day for me. Nothing horrible happened – don’t worry. But it was a day of not achieving and feeling rather slumped and tired. It’s okay to have a bad day. Today will be better. I will achieve my goals and I will do so thinking of Audre Lord, a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.”

After she had been diagnosed with cancer for a second time, Audre Lorde wrote in a new book A Burst of Light: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Self care is radical. Let’s have a radical day today.

January 27, 2020

Holocaust Memorial Day

Filed under: adventures in the world of today,things Rhiannon does not like — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 3:13 pm

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day: a day for remembering the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. The systematic murder of six million Jews across Europe began with the separating and dehumanising of the Jewish people. Today there is increasing division and hateful rhetoric. The theme for this year’s memorial is Stand Together. We need to stand together with others in our communities in order to stop the spread of identity-based hostility by using our voices, presence, platform or influence – whatever that might be.

When I think of activism I think of Martin Niemöller. His short poem encapsulates that need to stand together. It’s worth bearing in mind as well that Niemöller was speaking from his own experience, about his complicity in genoicide though staying silent at the time.

Today, as well as the staggering numbers of the murdered dead, I think about the living. I think particularly about Muslim friends with the growing rise in anti-Islamic hatespeech in the UK, and I think about my European friends for whom this will be a particularly difficult week, and about trans persons who I see constantly targeted by people who should be their allies. Sometimes it can be hard to speak up for yourself when you are being bullied or victimised. That makes it all the more important to challenge abuse when we see it on behalf of those who may feel alone, unheard or unseen.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
- Martin Niemöller

January 15, 2020

New year’s resolutions

Filed under: About Rhiannon Lassiter,adventures in the world of today,life — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 3:25 pm

I always make new year’s resolutions. Here’s my 2020 list so far. They may not all get completed this year but I plan to make a start on all of them.

Writing

  • Finish the novel
  • Start another novel

Fitness

  • Zumba instructor training
  • Start teaching Zumba
  • Get to my new goal weight

Marketing / consultancy

  • Make more work phone calls
  • Read more non fiction
  • Read books and articles about healthcare and startups

Self improvement

  • Start Spanish lessons again
  • Make clothes.
  • Learn how to do makeup properly.
  • Buy more colourful clothes.

So far I’m doing great at buying clothes!

January 1, 2020

My top nine instagram posts in 2019

Filed under: Uncategorized — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 3:15 pm

I’m so much better at updating Instagram than my blog. Here’s what I’ve been up to over there.

July 24, 2019

Bimbling around in startup land

Filed under: bloggery,Fitness,Startups,things Rhiannon likes — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 7:41 pm

I’ve been having ever such adventures with startups. My new lifestyle (since March this year) takes place in startup land and I am learning all about innovation spaces and the ecosystem of incubators and accelerators and boot camps – oh my!

A couple of months back I attended an OXLEP growth hub event full of startups pitching their ideas. I met some very interesting and lovely people but the only startup I’ve followed up with as a user is Bimble. Bimble is a cross between Pinterest and Trip Advisor. Build a list, on whatever topic you like. Search for locations and add them. Write a short piece (450 words max) on why you like it.

I ran into a technical challenge in that my list of innovation centres was hampered by the fact they’re not all listed on google yet and that’s where Bimble gets its data. But the interface was easy to use and the techncial support was swift and friendly. The more I use it the functions I want from it. I want to see who favourites my lists, I want more powers to follow list creators, I want more ways to explore my community and lists near me, I want more editorial and tagging functions. I want the ability to export my lists in case this start up stops.

I think the fact I keep wanting more is a good sign. I nearly walked away after my first technical issue but something brings me back to Bimble. I think because it’s not quite like anything else. It feels fresh and user-generated. You’re not trapped in the box of how Trip Advisor wants you to define things. You’re not just pinning and moving on like Pinterest. I feel an urge to create and curate better lists. Oh, and I like the name too. Absolutely amazed they secured Bimble.com – is the term “bimble” that obscure? Who doesn’t like to bimble around?

Right now I have two lists: Innovation Centres and Spa Days. You can find them at my user profile: https://bimble.com/user/rhiannonlassiter. Go and have a bimble around the site and let me know your thoughts!

January 14, 2019

Tidying Up with Marie Kondo

Filed under: RhiWatches — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 2:42 pm

I thought I’d like this. I didn’t.

The folding was fine. I do fold some of my items like this already. (Not T shirts because I fold them so you can see the logo).

But why is the first approach to make a huge pile in the middle of the room? Is it to fill you with horror at how much you own? That one woman was chuckling with glee at throwing things out, in a kind of mania. But will she regret it?

It doesn’t work for books, those people with “lots of books” had about 23 books. That’s… not a lot of books.

The keep or chuck philosophy doesn’t have room for maybe. So some people sit paralysed by indecision. Make a maybe pile and you can move on, and come back to that question later. Eg old print outs with comments long since incorporated into novels – chuck, old contracts – keep, old training manuals – maybe.

What about items that don’t spark joy but you need them anyway? My partner said his work trousers are like that. I think I might naturally be inclined to find the joy in any item which is the opposite problem.

Cables… I stuck with the show for the answer to this problem. Folding them up small in a drawer is not an answer. I already do that – and she’s missed the tiny ziploc bag trick too. What about cables in USE?! How to keep them tidy and accessible?

But I am on a drive to decrease my stuff anyway so perhaps I’m not the intended audience. A lot of those people seemed to struggle to take the first step.

Oh and it would have been nice for the show to explain she’s religiously a Shinto animist, instead of portraying her as a kind of magic tidying pixie.

January 11, 2019

Change is possible, you can do it, I did!

Filed under: Fitness,living in the future,things Rhiannon likes — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 11:57 am

I wrote this post on the 11th of January 2018, one year ago, about going to the gym and attending classes. I was thinking about it the other day and thinking about how much has changed since then. I decided I’d write another post about going to the gym for first timers and people who are just getting started working out.

If you want advice about the etiquette of going to the gym there’s a great Ask Reddit post full of crowd-sourced wisdom. Some top comments are about not worrying that you don’t belong (because the gym is for everyone) and to rack your weights and not block the weight rack (because it messes things up for others).

Here’s some things I learned on my own health and fitness journey:

First came discipline, then came enjoyment, then came a lifestyle

I used to go to the gym after work. I’d walk on a treadmill, push some weights. I never enjoyed it, never got that endorphin high people talked about, never seemed to get much benefit from it. In Spring 2017 I started doing something I did like, taking walks, enjoying being outside. Then in Summer 2017 I did Couchto5k. Before then I’d never felt any urge to run and I didn’t even run for buses. But friends had done it and they had come to love running. I learned to run. Little by little, I went from running for 30 second to running for an hour. Sadly I didn’t come to love running, and I don’t do it any more, but I did it. I ran that 5k many times. And it taught me that I could do more than I thought.

In that post from January last year I talked about attending gym classes. I fell in love with Zumba, liked Aerobics and Body Pump, hated Tabata. In March I posted again about finally achieving that endorphin high. At that point I loved everything. I thought about retraining as a fitness instructor, that’s how much I loved the gym. I smashed through goals in March to a level that’s at the peak of all my data charts. But a person I respect warned me I was going too hard and others warned me that overtraining is a thing and gym can be an unhealthy addiction too. I listened and I reined back. I dropped the number of HIIT classes and started doing Pilates.

Today, I still love Zumba. I don’t do Pump any more because I’ve moved on to more serious weight lifting which isn’t super compatible with the class. (It’s a good class though, even if I can lift more on my own I find it challenging when I do it, not the weight but the reps.) I don’t usually do Tabata because again it isn’t compatible with my personal regime but I did it this week and enjoyed it. But Tabata is a lot easier at my lighter weight and greater strength. It is tough without core strength, which I definitely lacked back then. Pilates has helped with that and with calm and balance. I used to think what was the point if a class where I wasn’t burning calories hard but I’ve come to appreciate what Pilates gives me.

Mostly, I just like the gym. I like working out, I like classes, I like the culture and community. I like the lessons it teaches me, i like learning and being active. I watch out for overtraining, have regular rest periods, attend five or six classes a week, not two a day, work out three times a week with a personal trainer and do the extra gym work she gives me. I’m healthy and happy. I live in an active mindful way that extends beyond the gym. I hope this is a sustainable lifestyle, not just an addiction or obsession. I’ve moved out of weight loss and into fitness and maintenance, which involves some retraining of the brain.

If you’re experiencing any part of this. If you hate what you’re doing at the gym if you feel no connection to your work outs I’d say keep going but also look for something you might like better and keep an open mind. If you’re having that endorphin rush, enjoy it, but look after your knees and don’t go so hard you break yourself. I got stronger and fitter through adding more rest periods and backing off from just the calorie burn.

Being data-driven gave me a feeling of power

boditrax progress
I learned to count things. I’ve never been that much for counting outside of work. And counting calories sounding depressing and weird. But I grew to enjoy data analysis in my job and that translated into enjoying it in my personal life.

With FitBit to count my calories out, I got interested on counting calories in. I followed CICO, a simple equation that to lose weight your calories out must be greater than your calories in. So tracking those things gave me control of my weightloss. It wasn’t easy, but the knowledge gave me power. People give Kate Moss a lot of grief for the quotation “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” but for me it was helpful. I didn’t adopt this as a mantra, but I did remind myself that eating extra calories would give me a short term high but seeing the scales drop an extra pound would give me a greater sense of achievement. But sometimes those extra calories were worth it and I fully enjoyed them knowing I was making a choice to do so.

As I said to my friend the other day, sometimes counting calories is actually fun. You are making choices about food about whether that food is worth it to you or not. That is part of mindful eating. Calories are not my enemy. They are a scientific fact. I don’t get on with slimfast or weight watchers because I don’t like the idea of “sins” or “cheats”. I prefer to think of additional delicious calories as treats. The important thing for me was to be honest with myself about the choices I was making and to log the data truthfully.

And I found that fitness was something where putting in the work got results. That was superbly satisfying.

The person I am today looks very different from the person I was a year ago, I got there step by step

I take photos for myself. I take them to connect my mental image of myself with a physical reality. I can see progress better in photos taken once a month than in my day to day self as seen in the mirror. I took them to remind myself of how far I’ve come and to encourage me to keep going.

I share them because seeing progress pictures of others helped me. The subreddits r/loseit and r/progresspics are full of examples of people who have progressed from fat to fit. I talk about my journey because it’s important to me. I hope that some people may also find it helpful to hear my story. And, I confess, I’m proud of my achievements and I like to celebrate them.

People started to notice me, I started to see myself differently

Everyone says “no one is looking at you” but I didn’t find that completely true.

No one was ever mean to me, no one every laughed at me for being fat in the gym, for going to wrong way or messing something up. Never. The people who do that shit aren’t tolerated in decent places. Any story online of people doing it ends with them being expelled from their gym. And if anyone ever does that to you report it.

But when I started to lose weight I found that people approached me to ask about it and congratulate me. That may be something you find uncomfortable. Initially I found that a mixture of exhilarating and uncomfortable. Along my journey I also got stronger with more noticeable muscles, that also attracted notice. I get a lot of attention at the gym because I made a notable transformation in a year. I’ve tried to be honest about the fact I was privileged with time and and a financial position that allowed me to invest both in fitness. I try to be aware that what has worked for me may not be the right choice for someone who asks for advice. I can only tell my story. I’ve become more comfortable with doing that. I’ve posted my progress photos online. I’ve appeared on my gym’s instagram as a success story. There are videos on my trainer’s feed of me working out.

If you start the gym tomorrow and you notice me, you’ll see a slim fit person who doesn’t struggle in class, someone who knows her way around and calls the trainers by name. That’s not who I was a year ago and if I notice you, a new person in the class it’s because i’ve spotted you’re looking around for a mat or a space and I’ll point you at the hooks on the wall where they keep the mats or move up and make space for you. I’m not going to tell you how to do your workout, that’s your job and the trainer’s but I’ll share anything I know, if you ask. And when I was new people did the same for me.

The gym is for everyone. You are capable of more than you imagine. Put in the work and you will surprise yourself. I surprise myself every day.

November 29, 2018

Gooooooaaal! That was a goal!

Filed under: About Rhiannon Lassiter,Fitness,living in the future — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 3:57 pm

I’m all about the goals and this morning I completed a major one.

I’ve written before on my blog about fatness and fitness. I got fat by accident through not paying attention. I got fit by starting to pay attention and then a lot of hard work. Along the way my goals changed.

In June I started working out with a personal trainer. At that point I knew I could achieve weight loss, what I wanted was the ability to “do everything we do in class without needing to rest or failing to complete the set”, as I explained to Eli, my trainer.

With Eli I have become much stronger and fitter and more toned. I got compliments before on weight loss but now I get them on my musculature. Me! Being complimented on my muscles! (I know it’s problematic to compliment people on weight loss but at the gym it does happen, it’s meant well and at least half the people are tactful about it.)

Because I was building muscle I had to reduce my number of classes. Rest periods are important for muscle growth and I had to decide between fitness (more rest periods) and weight loss (burning more calories). I chose the first so my loss slowed down. My trainer increasingly told me that I was fit enough now that weightloss should not be a factor. But she understood when I said I wanted to hit that goal.

I started my weightloss journey in on the 9th of February 2017, my 40th birthday, at 96.8kg, over 15 stone. I was technically obese. (Yes, it was a shock to me too.)

Today, 29 November 2018, I completed it. As of this morning I weigh 64kg. That’s 10 stone in old money. I have lost a third of my body weight.

And now the next part of my journey begins. Now I enter the sunlit uplands of focusing on fitness. I don’t intend to gain weight, although Christmas is coming so realistically I may put on a bit, but that’s okay. I will continue to be mindful of what I eat but I’m not setting another weightloss goal.

For those curious about BMI, at my height of 161cm (5 foot 3), my BMI is circa 24. That’s only just within the acceptable range. I have a lot of doubts about BMI as a measure. I think it is a useful guideline but it is not the final arbiter of health. I like data, but I like detailed data, the kind I get from Boditrax technologies which measures many aspects of a person such as muscle to fat ratio. That’s more important to me than BMI. However, I did allow it to inform my goal weight.

I set staggered goals, the first was to achieve 76kg (12 stone) which I thought was sensible and realistic. When I first set the secondary goal of 64kg I thought that was dauntingly difficult. Along the way I realised it wasn’t going to be as hard as I feared. But by then I’d learned a lot about myself.

How did I achieve it? Everyone is different and what worked for me may not be the thing that works for someone else. For me, I benefitted from ample time, because I had taken a sabbatical from work to focus on personal goals – and that is the privilege of working in the public sector and of having savings. I used a FitBit to track aspects of my fitness and MyFitnessPal to calculate calorie intake. I was very data driven. I got started with walking, then I did Couchto5k which changed my attitude significantly (although not to running, I don’t like running as it turns out), then I started gym classes and learned to enjoy aerobics, zumba and weight lifting. I got serious about diet and nutrition and learned how to become a better cook. I did not give up any food although I experimented with different ways of eating. The next step was to work with a personal trainer (again a privilege to be able to afford this) and it was to my advantage that I had already prepared my body so I could focus on improving my form. I increased my water intake several times. It turns out water is pretty important.

And you know what else is important? Happiness. That is my number one life goal. I never would have imagined that working out could make me so happy. I have always been a person who lived inside my head. My body was just the transportation mechanism that carried it about. I don’t feel like that any more. I live inside my whole holistic self. I am integrated in a way I’ve never been before. I am living in the after. And it feels great.

November 12, 2018

Armistice Day

Filed under: bloggery,living in the future — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 9:07 am

WB Yeats said that the war poets weren’t proper poetry. He called them passive suffering and dismissed them from the Oxford Book of Modern Verse.

They suffered, those poets. And there wasn’t much they could do about it. What they could do, they did. Which was to leave us their words and their warning.

Let’s not get too romantic about what they called the Great War. Two million people died for patriotism and pride. They died stupidly and futilely and painfully, or they came back shattered and maimed and full of horror. It was an epic tragedy.

Yeats thought that, in times of peace, war should be forgotten like a fever dream. I believe those who forget the mistakes of the past will sleepwalk into a nightmare.

On Remembrance Sunday, I wear the red poppy with a white one: for the memory of the fallen and the hope of peace to come.

And I remember Wilfred Owen, who knew how stupid his death was, but did his best to make it mean something.

October 24, 2018

Halloween offer

Filed under: Little Witches,special offer — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 9:20 am

Little Witches cover

This Halloween, I’m offering the eBook of my junior title Little Witches for only 99p, reduced from £5.67.

The offer is open from Saturday, October 27, 2018, 8:00 AM GMT to Saturday, November 3, 2018, 12:00 AM GMT.

You can read a sample chapter first and find out more about the book on its webpage. Read what others said about it including Frances Hardinge, Ann Giles, Imogen Russell Williams and KM Lockwood.

To buy the eBook from Amazon just click here. But wait until the offer opens!

You can also buy the print version but due to publication costs this isn’t included in the offer. Buy it here for £5.65.

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