Walk on the wild side with chocolate

By Virginia Winder
I'm writing this blog with chocolate melting in my mouth.
Dark chocolate, high in antioxidants, delicious and slightly forbidden. It's also giving me an instant endorphin kick. Mmm.
You see, it's OK to indulge every so often, to take a walk on the wild side without guilt.
I talked to a bloke today and he quizzed me about food, concerned I may get obsessive about eating or develop a disorder.
Fat chance - not when there's chocolate in the world.
Or chicken mole. That's a Mexican dish of chicken and chocolate sauce.
It's fine to enjoy food, eat every mouthful slowly and savour the flavour. I've talked about this before, but every time I eat it's about making choices.
Wise choices that will help fuel my mind and body. I've cut down on carbohydrates, given cheese and butter the flick and added more blueberries (I crave them!), walnuts, salmon and protein to my diet.
Fresh, unprocessed and home-made, that's the way to go.
And be mindful. Sometimes I take a bite of something, hold it in my mouth and imagine where it came from. Who grew the cocoa beans in this chocolate? Where is that farm? What does it look like and who picked these beans - a machine or human hands.
I love doing that. Sometimes I do it with other things too, like a book. I hold one in my hands and flick through it, knowing that a person wrote every word, a tree grew tall and was cut down by a person using a human-made tool to make paper for the pages, that someone mixed the ink... you can see how far you can think about a seemingly simple thing.
The reshaping of a body, a life, is the same.
It's a process that begins with a decision, then a short walk, a few lengths, a bike ride or a gym workout.
And then more and more and more.
With each training session there are changes, like the ease of breathing, a lightness of step, a gentle hill that felt like a hard slog is a breeze on the bike.
Then clothes feel big.
Others items fit.
This is a slow metamorphosis, which won't be obvious to others at first and then a friend will exclaim how your face has changed or you look glowing. Then you realise that these supportive people are your mirrors, reflecting you back to you.
But most important of all is how you feel.
After allowing a freight train of words to flow through my head, there are three that stand out: Motivation, determination and revelation. The first two are self-explanatory, the third is about finding out that I still enjoy exercise and, in fact, love it, with a passion.
Along with that joy of getting out there and doing it, is the growing pleasure of writing about it.
This blog is no slog.
Tomorrow I'll tell you about a man called Clint, a short-term and long-term training programme, remind us about SMART goals and then I'll tell you a true story about generosity.
It's an amazing one.
But for now, I'll leave you with a story about Ben Davis.
Watch this video and enjoy the soundtrack.

Yesterday, I:
Walked for 50 minutes
Ate like an angel
Slept for 9 hours
Worked for 5 hours
Drank 3 cups of coffee
Drank more water than ever (about 1.5 litres)

Today, I:
Slept for 6 hours
Did no exercise
Had a triathlon-training planning session
Worked for 9 hours
Ate pretty well (walked away from pizza and beer, but indulged in dark chocolate)
Had 3 cups of coffee
Drank about 1 litre of water