5exercises to energise your day
TODAY I’m showing you how to use weights as part of a resistance workout. For all-round fitness and personal health, I like to do a combination of this kind of training with HIIT cardio and low-intensity steady state (LISS) cardio, such as walking or cycling. The exercises here are all at beginner level so everyone should be able to do them.
Start with weights that are light enough for you to complete the full set.
As you get stronger, increase each weight by 1kg per week. You can use tins or bottles of water if you don’t have dumbbells. Easy.
Do each exercise for 30 seconds then rest for 30 seconds. Do three rounds in total which will take 15 minutes
been horrified. she was loving and caring, but also very old-school in many ways.’
To begin with, Carolyn and David’s marriage was blissfully contented. ‘We were a perfect match intellectually,’ says Carolyn. ‘David was affectionate and loving and my family adored him. our sex life was good. There was nothing odd about it at all. But then, after about 18 months, it started to fizzle out and finally, a few years on, dwindled to nothing.’
Carolyn does not believe there was a straightforward correlation between David’s unspoken homosexuality and the end of their physical relationship.
Their marriage was besieged by pressures that would have tested the firmest of relationships. Both had high-powered jobs earning six-figure salaries, they had taken on taxing home-improvement projects and commuted long distances to work.
Carolyn was also suffering from gynaecological problems, which David found difficult to discuss, and left Carolyn feeling less than desirable.
‘Reigniting our sex life became awkward,’ she recalls. ‘It soon became easier to accept things as they were because, in every other respect, we were really happy together.’
But then, when Carolyn was 32, she started to yearn for a baby. When she stopped taking the Pill her periods also stopped abruptly. An appointment with a specialist then revealed she was going through a premature menopause: she and David would not be able to have children of their own.
‘I felt so many different emotions,’ she recalls, ‘shock and distress which gave way to shame and humiliation. I felt my femininity, my desirability, the person I was, had gone.’
In response, David was, ‘ kind and caring, but he was like a brother, not a lover,’ she recalls.
Within a year they moved to somerset where Carolyn began a new job as an HR director and it was here that she fell under the spell of Brad (not his real name) a ‘ charismatic alpha male who swept me off my feet’.
They soon began a clandestine affair. ‘He made me feel sexy and attractive in a way David never did. And I needed that after the devastation of learning I’d been through a premature menopause and could never have children.
‘I take full responsibility for my affair. It was wrong. But we’re all human. I hadn’t had sex for several years.’
‘Was it really that long?’ David says now. ‘I know it was a long time and it felt wrong. I remember feeling worried that we’d lost something from the relationship, that we needed to do something about it, but we were going through such a stressful time . . .’
‘And our marriage wasn’t unhappy,’ Carolyn points out. ‘No one was more surprised than me when Brad walked into my life and I realised what was missing.’
It wasn’t long before David found out. ‘ I’d seen some texts on Carolyn’s phone that made it quite obvious she was having an affair,’ says David. ‘I felt as if my world had fallen apart. and I confronted her immediately.’
‘And I felt awful; full of selfloathing,’ Carolyn confesses. ‘We didn’t talk about it or sort it out as I didn’t think I was worth his love. We moved into separate rooms.’
They rubbed along, leading separate lives under the same roof. Then in 2013, shortly before Carolyn was due to celebrate her 40th birthday with a big party, she noticed a change in David’s behaviour.
‘He seemed agitated, distracted. When texts came through on his phone he leapt for it. I thought, “There’s another woman.”’
But then she noticed the name flashing up on his mobile was male. Gary. A week later she mustered the courage to broach the subject that had been niggling at her. ‘I asked, “Who’s Gary?” David replied, “ummm. He’s a friend. I met him through work.’
Carolyn then found herself asking her husband if he was having a relationship with Gary (not his real name). Minutes later, as David confessed that yes, he was, the pieces of the jigsaw finally fell into place, ‘our lack of sex life, his inability to talk about sex or intimacy: suddenly it all made perfect sense.’
David explains what propelled him, after 51 years of sublimating his true sexual feelings, to act on them.
‘By that stage I felt that our marriage was not going to survive,’ he admits. ‘It had been in the back of my mind, on and off, I knew that there was a side of my sexuality I’d never explored. I needed to do it and it felt like the right time.’ David moved out of the family home, and they divorced. But their friendship was far from over. If anything, it strengthened.
‘The reason I never told her (about my sexuality) was that I was terrified I’d lose her, my soulmate,’ says David.
He concludes now that there are ‘degrees’ of being gay; that although he is homosexual, ‘ sex might not be as important’ to him as to others.
David’s relationship with Gary didn’t work out: it was David’s first gay encounter and Gary’s first-ever relationship.
THEN David met Andy (not his real name), a carer (also previously in a heterosexual marriage) via a dating app and they now live together near Bath.
David — whose stepfather disappeared from his life many years ago — was able to introduce Andy to both his parents, ‘ and they were fantastic.’
‘My mum was wheelchair-bound with Ms when she met Andy and he, being a carer, was so lovely and very natural with her.
‘Towards the end of our day together, I said to mum, “Have you worked out what our relationship is?” and she said, “Yes.” I said, “Do you mind?” and she replied, “All that matters is that you’re happy.”’
Carolyn, meanwhile, is single. she now heads her own business, MayDey, helping people to navigate change in their lives, and has written a memoir about her personal relationships.
she explains how her anger was corrosive and destructive. ‘When I realised I needed to stop trying not to love David, it was a lightbulb moment,’ she says. ‘He’s still my biggest cheerleader, someone I want to share the good and bad in my life with. I feel I can talk to him about absolutely anything without judgment.
David, meanwhile, is quieter, less effusive, but he clearly adores Carolyn. ‘When we are old, and the sexual side of our lives is not important any more, I can’t think of many people I’d rather live with than David,’ says Carolyn.
David smiles and nods. ‘My life is infinitely richer for knowing her.’
The reason I never told her (about my sexuality) was that I was terrified I’d lose her, my soulmate — David