Fit & fearless!
This month, our columnist, endurance athlete and former BBC Breakfast presenter Louise Minchin, shares her advice on how to find joy in movement and make it part of a healthy, happy life.
WORDS: LOUISE MINCHIN. PORTRAIT OF LOUISE: RACHEL JOSEPH.
If you’ve lost your motivation to keep yourself moving it can be hard to find it again. Recently I’ve been thinking about how you might get back to what you love.
It can happen for lots of reasons; for example if you have had an injury, or even just a cold and had to put your feet up for a bit, it can be hard to persuade yourself to pick up your old habits again. Sometimes the cause of your malaise is not so clear-cut, it can just creep up on you without you even realising. That walk, swim or whatever it is that you once had as part of your routine seems not to fit into your life: it is too much of an effort, there are obstacles in the way, other things that you need to do. Before you know it, you have stopped.
Thank you to the woman who asked me about how I keep myself motivated when I met her at The National Outdoor Expo. I think when she posed the question, she might have assumed that I never lose my mojo, but I most certainly do. And when things start feeling harder than normal, I try to make a plan to get me back on track.
First, I put something fun in my diary, an event that I know, when the date arrives, I will enjoy. This year, I am going to swim around the Scilly Isles as part of an organised two-day challenge. I have wanted to do it for years, and although it will be tough and the water will be cold, I can’t think of anything more exciting than swimming around the islands with a pod of like-minded people.
PRESSURE’S ON!
When I signed up for the swim, I had been out of the pool for about three months, and to be fit enough to manage 15km over the space of 48 hours I needed to change
