I made it out to an Align & Flow yoga class on Tuesday at Dhyana Yoga in Olde City.  I got my usual daily walking quote in Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I was under the weather on Thursday so I took a sick day for my yearly internal server maintenance. My body demanded to be taken offline for 24  hours and I obeyed. This week promises to be a little more enterprising. I have the potential to take yoga classes Wednesday and Thursday, in addition to the arm balance clinic I signed up for at the Mainline Dhyana Yoga.

In comparison to my activity levels prior to  January 2009, even at my most epic slacking these days, I am still leaps and bounds more active than I was back then. I just end up feeling guilty when I am not constantly pushing myself. I wasn’t feeling overly energetic this evening, but managed to squeeze out an hour long yin yoga / restorative yoga session at home. I think I needed it more mentally than physically, but that is one of the great thing about yoga — heals the body, mind and spirit and depending on your needs you can focus on the area most deficient.

I guess I wouldn’t feel so bad with the fluctuations in my fitness regime had my weight and appetite not also been in flux. My weight has been fluctuating around for the past few weeks. I’ve gone anywhere from 157 to 165. I weigh myself daily and its up and down and up and down. My appetite has been elevated lately, but I think that is because of the time of year and that it is cold. I’m trying to reign it in a little. I adjusted my Weight Watcher’s maintenance points down to 25 from 26 since I was burning through most of my flex points for the week, at least this will hopefully keep me in line and I will level out back around 160.

Following up to my last blog post about the problems I had been having with my hips… I am happy to report that those issues have seemingly resolved a bit. I found the perfect hip strengthening DVD: Yoga Link: Hip Helpers with Jill Miller. I’m trying to schedule in the practice once or twice a week since it takes time to strengthen the hips. The constant nagging pain has been gone for a couple weeks now.

The journey has not come without its challenges. Modifying my diet and cutting out all meats except for fish and seafood were the easy part. I’ve never once this year felt deprived of the foods I love and enjoy. I don’t feel like I am dieting to the point of not enjoying eating. All that said I’ve managed to make it through the hardest time of the year when it comes to dieting — the dreaded holidays.  My weight has been relatively stable fluctuating throughout the low 160’s.

The majority of my challenges are overcoming my physical limitations and recovering from the damage that being overweight caused to my physical being. I’ve had to spend a lot of time focusing on strengthening target areas. When I first started doing yoga I had to build up my upper body and arm strength because even the simplest of poses left me quavering upon collapse.  Those areas leveled out over time and then I had to work on building up my core muscles, which has been a work in progress. Since I carried a lot of my weight in my abdomen, it has been very hard tightening up the loose skin and rebuilding muscle mass. This also started to help improving my balance issues. I’ve always been somewhat flexible and that wasn’t ever an issue — it all comes down to strength and balance.

My biggest physical issue to date is in my hips — while they are flexible they lack strength, which contributes to balance issues among other things. Basically, the problem I am having is that the bones in my hip joints seem to be grinding together, which is terribly uncomfortable. It used to only bother me when I was working out specifically doing hip flexibility exercises, but it has gotten worse over the past month. I probably am going to make an appointment with an orthopaedist who specializes in sports medicine. I would never consider myself an athelete, but I want to make sure that doing yoga is not aggravating the problem more.

I realized recently that my inability to do yoga inversions (headstands, handstands and forearm balances) stems from these hip issues. I understand the mechanism of the poses and how to do them — its just getting my hips to work right and to do the right things. Hopefully, like the other physical issues I’ve had that this will resolve itself over time.

Aside from the hip issues, I feel great — I feel healthy — I feel younger and I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since highschool. I do have my regrets. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to address these issues. I wish I had the courage to change sooner than later. The moral of the story is that its never too late to start the journey.

I think I need to start planning in advance, which is a complete contradiction to my mood based decisions. If I am not in the mood to eat something no matter how much I love it, it will be a wholly unsatisfying meal. I usually try to balance out my meals into categories. I rarely will sit down and just eat a large quantity of one thing. Trying to pre-plan a significant portion of those options is mind boggling to me.

• Breakfast – usually a diet soda, tea, Weight Watchers muffin, or English Muffin with egg, cheese & vegetarian Canadian Bacon or any kind of cereal or granola, meal bar. I really don’t stray too far beyond those basics.
• Lunch – a beverage (water, soda etc), a main lunch item (sandwich, frozen thing, packaged thing), some sort of side dish, which can vary in combination’s of fruit, yogurt, veggies, cottage cheese and/or occasionally a starch item and some sort of dessert (perhaps a piece of dark chocolate, any of the Weight Watchers desserts, fruit leather, 100 calorie snack packs etc)
• Dinner – a beverage, main dish, side dish(es) and dessert
• Snack – varies, but usually defaults to popcorn, nuts, sorbet, Weight Watchers products, or cereal

Otherwise, the conversion is going well, I haven’t had any major meat cravings or longings. If anything, it is forcing me not to be a lazy ass in the kitchen and to be more creative with my options.

Abs & Core Galore
Seeing as over the course of 2009 that I have lost nearly 40 pounds and have gotten into pretty darned good shape for the first time in my life, my abs & core sorely need more attention. I carried the bulk of my weight from hips to tits. When I lost that weight I ended up with a lot of loose skin and poorly developed abs/core muscles. Looks can be deceiving when I am standing upright I have a relatively flat belly, but as soon as I lean forward the skin just hangs there. Think about it this way try on your regular bra size, then try one on that is a few cup sizes too big, the same principle applies to skin elasticity. Its very common to have to redevelop more extensively certain problem areas. My biggest complaints are the stretch marks on my chest, hips and thighs;  and the loose skin around my waist and chest. All are easily correctable if you have the means to afford plastic surgery. Otherwise, its a daily regiment of skin firming lotion, stretch mark lotion and toning exercises to target those problem areas.

I picked up a copy of Prevention’s Flat Abs special magazine. It is still on the shelves in most of the local supermarkets and booksellers I have seen in the area. I highly recommend it, more for the workouts than anything else. I’ve been doing 3-4 of the workout segments on most nights coupled with some cool down yoga poses and have really been enjoying the workouts. I highly recommend, whether you pick up this guide or not to invest in a stability ball. I picked up one from ACE, which is fine, but the workout DVD it came with was horrible. I swear it looked like it was filmed on a crappy home video camera in 1988 and was transferred poorly to dvd and as if it had been filmed in the lobby of some office. The exercises were pretty basic and some where just stupid… like I really don’t see how dribbling a stability ball does anything other than making you look silly, but I digress.  Otherwise the stability ball is fine.  I’m trying out some various stability ball work out dvd’s.  Balance Ball: Core Cross Train is pretty decent. It has three 20 minute workout segments focusing on upper body, lower body and back/abs. In general, I like the fitness and yoga dvds under Gaiam and Acacia the best.

In one of the recent issues of Yoga Journal, they had a feature on abs & core yoga with a series of  maybe 10 poses for increasing core strength. As much as I love yoga,  its not as core developing as pilates and other workouts. There are some poses that are a fusion of yoga, pilates and other core strengthening exercises. I usually do the sequence of poses from the article in addition to the core work from the Flat Abs workouts.

The main reason I have been focusing on so much core work for the past couple weeks is, not only for physical purposes, but my lack of core strength impacts my yoga practice in terms of balance for certain standing poses and doing any sort of inversions (headstands, handstands, forearm balance) Although, I did manage a forearm balance by leaning off the side of the bed since I have a hard time hoisting my lower half upwards. Even after a couple weeks, my balance has improved dramatically, I can stand effortlessly in Tree pose without looking as if there was a tornado approaching.  I can even glide effortlessly into Warrior 3 and Half Moon Pose and other standing leg balances.  I still have a way to go before my core is strong enough to attempt the full inversions properly. I have the arm & upper body strength and the leg strength, but in between is lacking.

I feel like I’ve been on a bit of a fitness slump. I’m probably being too hard on myself, seeing as its not like I haven’t been working out at all. I’ve just not been working out every single day. This is also not to say that I am wholly inactive either. I tend to ebb and flow through the cycles of the month. Most of the time, I stick to my daily points with small overages that come out of my flex points. At least one week a month, I want to eat everything in sight that isn’t nailed down, which is usually followed by a week of having a low appetite. My daily fitness follows suit, normally I work out to some extent every day, then I go through some doldrums and either decrease the duration of the work out or don’t work out at all. I guess in the grand scheme of things 20 minutes of exercise is better than nothing.

In better news, I had to buy a dress for my sister-in-laws wedding at the end of the month, much to my shock, I now fit into a Size 10 or Medium sized dress without effort. I can’t remember the last time I was a size 10. I almost always was a size 12 and after the weight gain a size 14. It is definitely a nice feeling knowing that I can now buy clothing pretty much anywhere and have it fit. I was pretty limited for awhile since most places carry very little about a size 12. Suffice it to say, I can’t wait to go jeans shopping this fall since my size 14s and 12s will no longer fit… in a good way.

I’ve been having an off week mood and exercise wise since last week. I’ve just been feeling really run down and unmotivated and consequently while I still try to fit in something every day I am not working out as much. I’ve been doing 20 minute yin yoga workouts and a couple other workouts as well. I really need to get back on the proverbial horse. I don’t want to fall into old patterns. I probably should be a little more lenient on myself. I’ve also taken a few more classes at Dhyana Yoga, so I should give myself credit where credit is due there. I took a wonderful Kundalini Yoga class. I think the best way I can describe kundalini yoga is “yoga for the soul”. I’m going to try and check out one of there yin vinyasa classes this week.

Despite my fitness malaise,  I finished up the Abs & Core workshop at Dhyana as well, which was awesome. Well, save for my complete failure at handstands and headstands. I’ve noticed on key thing through doing yoga, since I dropped 35 pounds this year, my center of gravity is off as is my balance and it varies from side to side. Its getting a little better over time, but I still have a way to go. I remember the first few times I did Warrior 1 or Triangle and toppling over or having to hold on to something. Now, I can do those poses without incident. The headstand/handstand scenario perplexes me. I used to do this stuff all the time when I was younger. Heck, I even took a couple of years of gymnastics before I got too tall to do it. I get to a certain point and then my mind and body freak out in the OMG YOU ARE GOING TO DIE if you do this kind of way. On the flipside, no pun intended, I can do backbends just fine, even with having a consistent strain in my lower/middle back.

Stay tuned for more updates. I have a couple of new posts in the works, which hopefully I will be able to crank out in the next few days. You can add the health & fitness blog feed to your Google Reader or RSS

Luckily, a few years ago we picked up an Elliptical Machine on Craigslist really cheap. They retail new around $1000, I think we got this one for $100 or so. I started out doing 10 minutes a day and honestly I find the use of most gym equipment of that variety to be ungodly boring and tedious. I haven’t stuck with doing the elliptical over the past couple months, but it was a good starting point for me. In addition to using the elliptical, I also have a set of 2lb and 5lb weights, again I started out doing about 10 minutes a day to build upper body and arm strength, which is fairly important for yoga and pilates.

I also try to get in as much walking as I can while I’m at work. Whether its taking a quick jaunt at lunch or the combined efforts of walking a couple blocks from where Tim drops me off in the morning, then walking to the subway to meet up with him at work and also walking from that subway station to where he picks me up. Minus the lunch jaunts I get about 30-45 minutes a day of brisk walking. Also, since I work on the 3rd floor I almost always take the stairs, which throws in some extra exercise while I am at work.

I started exploring Yoga and other types of fitness in February or March. I’ve been practicing at home. Someday I plan on venturing out and taking a weekly class somewhere, but I’m rather broke at the moment because of the house selling drama that has been the past 7-8 months of my life. Also, I can’t find classes downtown that work out with my commute and work schedule. I’ve been trying different types of yoga. I really like Kundalini Yoga and the Vinyasa Flow styles. I’m working on learning the Ashtanga series, but to be honest Sun Salutations kind of bore me after awhile. I sometimes work out on my own, but I find I have greater focus if I work out to a dvd. All you need at home is a decent yoga mat (which you can also use for pilates) and if you so desire a yoga block (its helpful for beginners if you aren’t flexible and are doing modified poses) and a yoga strap. To be honest, I don’t use either all that much, but they aren’t that expensive.

In any case, if you have Netflix, they have an amazing selection of fitness DVDs. I suggest renting a selection to see what you like and what you don’t like. That way you don’t waste a lot of money on DVDs you don’t like or will never use. I have some quirks and preferences I’ve developed over time. For some reason, I have yet to explore any Yoga DVDs done by male instructors. I also cannot and will not tolerate unitards of any kind. I honestly don’t care what the instructors are wearing, but I draw the line at full body unitards. It helps if the instructors have decent voices that are serene and calming. As far as the settings go I can deal with outdoor settings or studio settings although if it looks like it was filmed for some crappy local public access television station I won’t watch it.

Here are some recommendations for DVDs I like:

Jennifer Kries – Yin Yoga
This is the first dvd I started with. Its a compilation of three yin yoga workouts from her Hot Body, Cool Mind Series. Yin Yoga is somewhat different from other yoga varieties, the focus is on the deep tissue and fascia and organ function as opposed to building muscle, tone, flexibility etc. The poses are much longer and all are either sitting or laying poses. The minimum time for a pose is at least 10 breaths, the maximum can go up to 15 minutes. Its a great workout before bed. Most of the poses are fairly easy at all levels, though there are a couple I have trouble with because my boobs get in the way. In the Hot Body, Cool Mind Series, she closes out each work out with a Yin Yoga & Meditation Segment. Its a great transition from the yang (heating) workouts into a yin (cooling) restorative workout.

Jennifer Kries – Hot Body, Cool Mind Level 1
This DVD has a little bit of everything and its broken up into segments so you don’t have to do the whole workout from start to finish everytime. The first two segment are Qigong, one sitting and one standing. Honestly, I don’t know enough about Qigong to really have a grasp at what I am doing, but it seems like a decent, although somewhat long, series of light warm up exercises. The next segment is a relatively short segment, under 10 minutes, called the 5 Tibetans, which are a series of yoga exercises that open up your chakras. I really like them. They are fast paced and get the heart pumping. She has a basic yoga segment covering Sun Salutations and Warrior Sequences, which are very helpful for learning the basics of yoga. The Pilates segment is really good, but it totally kicks my ass every time. While I’ve toned the majority of my body through yoga, I really need to work on pilates for my abdomen. I need to find the right time of day to do pilates because I always seem to end up nauseous afterwards. In addition to all that there are two dance segments: Jazz and Ballet. I really enjoy the Jazz one a lot. Ballett kicks my ass, but I need to give it a try again. I really like the dance aerobic workouts. She closes out the workout with the Yin Yoga and Meditation practice.

Kundalini Yoga with Gurumkh
I love Kundalini Yoga. I feel absolutely amazing after I do either part of all of the workout. Kundalini yoga is quite different from the other forms of yoga I have seen or tried. Its challenging and rewarding. I particularly like this DVD, I find the instructors voice to be quite serene. The Kundalini practice requires you to do the majority of the workout with your eyes closed, with the exception of a few standing sequences. The movements are very fast and fluid each one is done for a couple minutes. There are some breathing exercised throughout. The breath of fire, I hate it and love it. Its kind of like forcing yourself to pant very fast and very hard through the open mouth and then through the nose. I think the best thing to come out of the Kundalini experience is learning how much I absolutely love gong meditations. The peace and serenity, its like I popped a valium. Its clean and euphoric and absolutely amazing.

Shiva Rea – Fluid Power Vinyasa Flow Yoga
Admittedly I picked this up on a whim at REI about a month ago and have done various workouts every day since then. I highly recommend her DVDs because they have a customizable workout that you can create from over 3 hours of various segments that run anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. I still haven’t gotten through all of the segments and some of them are quite advanced like handstands and backbends. Otherwise, I highly recommend her work and am anxiously awaiting checking out some of her other fitness dvds. Next on my list is Yoga Trance Dance… if its anything like the free form flowing meditations I am so there! There are a variety of segments some are really fast and challenging, others are slower, heavy on the counterposes, and dreamy floating off into outer space stuff.

Yoga in Bed
Honestly, skip the DVD and pick up the book. If you have trouble sleeping and/or getting up in the morning this book has a series of poses you can do, while in bed to either relax and wind down before you go to sleep or to get yourself up in the morning.

On occasion when not focusing totally on yoga, which has been a little on the rare side lately, I dabble with using a Resistance Cord for various exercises. I haven’t done it recently, the workout dvd is really challenging. I probably should’ve started with the light cord instead of the medium. So this may be one I return to more regularly once my upper body strength develops further. I also have one of the smaller handheld pilates balls, which adds a different dimension to the workouts. At some point in time, I plan on picking up one of the larger balance balls for pilates.

These days, I work out just about every day. If I am super busy, I still try to squeeze in at least 20 minutes of yoga. I was always one of those people who balked at the concept of exercise. I always had a reason not to do it. I was too busy… blah blah blah. Now, I can’t live without it. My body craves it and I feel awful (not just guilt wise) if I don’t exercise every day. I’m working on a fitness calendar so I can balance out my workout schedule.

One of the biggest changes I have noticed is that I’ve boosted my normally sluggish metabolism and built up a lot of muscle tone overall. Every week I notice something new or slightly different about my body. Its neat to see the change. Part of me wishes I could go back and make a photodocument of all these things.

As I mentioned before I had switched my Weight Watcher’s plan over to maintenance to hold steady at 169, since I had entered a healthy weight range and BMI for my height. I held steady at 169 for a few weeks and then noticed that I had been splurging more and feeling like I was overeating. Since then, I dropped 2-3 more pounds. I’ve been fluctuating between 166-167. I couldn’t figure it out at first, but then someone pointed out to me that the more muscular you are, the more you can eat because your muscles burn fat/calories etc. fairly quickly. Now I don’t want to end up falling into old patterns, but I’ve been playing around with my food intake to test out where I should be as far as my daily points go to hold steady at my current weight.

Of course, I eventually want to lose another 10-15 pounds, but I am more concerned with handling the array of stretch marks that have developed since I dropped 33-34 pounds since January. Like all things I am trying to find a healthy balance between how much I eat, how much I exercise and everything else.

Recommended Reading:
- Yoga For Women by Shakta Kaur Khalsa
- Ashtanga Yoga for Beginners by Michaela Clarke
- Yoga in Bed by Edward Vilga
- The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga: A Practical Guide to Healing Body, Mind, and Spirit by Deepak Chopra and David Simon
- Yoga Journal Magazine

I picked up some small at home fitness items including one of those tension cords doo-dads. It came with a 30 minutes dvd workout, which kicked my ass up and down and all around. I should’ve bought a light tension cord, but opted for the medium. Ay well, I’m building my upper body strength up gradually so its a handy addition to throw into the mix. I also got one of those tension exercisers for your hands and fingers too. I started with light tension. I also picked up a new sports bra and a proper yoga top to solve my “motorboating” problem lol.

I’m kicking ass at sticking to a daily exercise regiment of varying formats. I’ve been going strong on doing yoga daily. Sometimes I do an entire workout, other times I practice poses and transitions and test out new things. I’m more flexible than I think I am, but my balance is complete shit, but only for standing poses, surprisingly backbends and inversions are fine. I almost fell into the eliptical machine during a standing variation of sun salutation b switching between warrior poses and triangle side bend things. I’ve also been sticking to weight training more so than the elliptical machine, though I still use it from time to time. I am really trying to build my upper body and upper arm strength, since that is the other area I am lacking beyond balance. At least my transition to and from plank to downward facing dog are getting better, however my transition from plank to chaturanga to upward facing dog is still awful. I never was able to do push ups, gravity (read: boobs) and poor upper body and arm strength always worked against me. I get to a certain point and then belly flop on the floor and trip over my own feet in the process. I’m sure the cats find it endlessly amusing.

I’ve been incredibly snacky for the past two days for no apparent reason. I’m still doing fine on the diet. I just am curious as to why one day I am fine and the next day I want to eat constantly.

I’ve been enjoying working in a daily fitness routine into my evenings. It keeps me from slothing about online and watching television whilst mindlessly snacking all night. This week I’ve tried to do about an 50-70 minutes of yoga and some weighted exercises for my arms and upper body. Once I get a good routine down, I’ll through a 10-20 min jaunt on the eliptical back into the mix. I am simply amazed by the fact that I am actually exercising, wanting to exercise and actually doing it on a semi-regular basis. I tend to like these sorts of things to do in my own time at home whereas going to the gym or an aerobic class just never appealed much to me. Though I think if those types of things were done with a group of friends it would be fun.