The World According to Jennyfur

Sometimes I think I am my own worst critic and that I tend to guilt trip myself over minuscule offenses. I guess this is probably a good thing and a bad thing.  I’ve been feeling guilty that I haven’t really either had the time to work out or the impetus to work out very much this week. Its been off and on like this since November.  Its not to say that I’ve been hibernating in a cave by any means. I’ve just wavered from sticking to a 20-90 minute daily workout.

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.

I’m closing in on the one year mark of my journey into health, fitness and vegetarianism. I started Weight Watchers a week after New Years. Its been an interesting journey to say the least — one which I wish I had embarked on much much sooner.

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.

Its been a month since my last blog post.  I’m still enjoying my pescetarian/vegetarian lifestyle. It has been a little over two months now and I haven’t hit any major road bumps. Oddly enough, at brunch over the weekend I glanced at a friends breakfast sausage and my brain parsed the craving as that of wanting a Morning Star Farms or Boca vegetarian breakfast sausage. I can’t say that I actually miss meat at all or even crave it at this point.

My appetite has increased a little bit, but I am not sure if that has to do entirely with dietary changes or the change of seasons, its probably a little of both. My weight has been fluctuating a little bit lately, but I’ve been holding steady in the 158-163 range, which is perfectly fine.  I’ve been hovering on the high end of that weight range instead of in the middle. I’m not sure why its fluctuated up a little bit, but my guess its probably a combination of the change of season, allergies, adjusting to a vegetarian diet or other health issues. I’m keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t keep fluctuating upwards. I’ve probably been a little lax on keeping my eating in check, which is something I need to be more vigilant about.  I’ve just noticed that my appetite has increased a bit since making the switch to the pescetarian diet.  I’m sure it will level out over time and that I need to do more research on balancing out my daily diet. I’m trying not to obsess about it because obsessing about every pound can be an unhealthy practice in and of itself.

Since I last posted I picked up a couple more yoga DVD’s: Shiva Rea’s Yoga Shakti and Duncan Wong’s Yogic Arts Awakening Level. I really like Shiva Rea’s workouts and have yet to be disappointed by them. I’ve only had the chance to give the DVD a spin once or twice since I got it, but I really enjoy it thusfar and haven’t had too much trouble, well aside from my three problem areas: headstand, handstand and forearm balance. I don’t really have the adequate space to practice them at home without running the risk of damaging furniture or breaking a window. I’m thinking about seeking some private yoga training over the holidays on these specific areas. I’ve seen classes offered, but I’d rather be instructed one on one than spend two hours falling on my ass in front of twenty people. The Yogic Arts DVD is a bit different, it combines traditional yoga moves with some martial arts postures and movements along with elements of Thai massage.

I’m mostly vigilant in trying to workout every day. I do recognize that sometimes this just isn’t a possibility. I packed up my yoga mat over the weekend for an out of town wedding and threw in a few 20 minute workouts here and there during down time or before bed. This was my first time doing yoga while traveling. The rest of the week has been off, I haven’t been feeling 100% well with allergies and stomach issues. For the most part, I tossed in shorter workouts throughout the week. I’m still mixing in some abs/core work when I can using the stability ball.

Since this gets automatically posted to my Facebook, here is the link to my blog http://www.jennifervatza.com/2009/11/dietyogaupdate/

Namaste!

I’ve started weighing myself daily, more out of curiosity than obsessiveness, to see what my actual weight range is over the course of a week. My average on the high side is 165, while my low is 163. I seem to be skipping over 164 altogether. Its just fascinating to me, I’ve noticed my weight stays around the high for a few weeks then drops to the lower weight and stays there for a few weeks and so on and so forth.

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.

I managed to drop two pounds this week. I had been hovering in around 167 for awhile and then was steady at 166 all week, then dropped to 165. I find it kind of funny since I am on the Weight Watcher’s maintenance plan that when I lose weight, I get these funny little messages saying things like: on the maintanence plan your weight should at best fluctuate two pounds in either direction of your target weight. If you are continuing to lose weight try using ALL of your daily points, your 35 flex points and activity points.  I actually balked at the idea of having to actually consume all those extra points during a week. I’ve never depleted the full 35 flex points, let alone delve into the 40+ activity points I get per week.

I’m actually quite happy losing  1-2 pounds a month even while on the maintenance plan. I’d like to maybe get down another 10 pounds, which would put me at the mid-range of the healthy weight range for my height (5’9″), which is 135-169. I’d like to be somewhere in the middle. In other news, my BMI (Body Mass Index) dropped from 25 to 24 since I lost an additional few pounds. I’m happy to have purchased and totally rocking out in two medium size t-shirts that fit nicely.

This week has been a little off as far as my exercise routine goes, mostly due to monthly girl problems… but I had the second part of the Abs & Core yoga workshop that I’ve been taking at Dhyana Yoga in West Philly.  I still have no idea how people do hot yoga or bikram. It was 85 degrees in the room and I sweat through every layer of clothing and then some. It has been a challenging class and a lot of fun.

Since I last posted, I am holding steady around 166-167, which is fantastic considering that I have been overindulging a bit, though to be fair, my idea of overindulging has drastically changed. My worst day I rounded out at about 40 points on the Weight Watcher’s method versus my normal 26. Granted, I have an extra 35 points a week for splurging that even at my worst I never burn through let alone the 30-40+ activity points I get through working out. I was playing around with the limits since I had been losing weight while on maintenance, which suggested that something was out of balance. I don’t want to revert to any bad habits, but my appetite has been a little more increased over the past couple of weeks. I think this is probably due to slacking on taking my daily vitamin regiment, which I am trying to get back into the habit of doing. When it comes to vitamins, I do really good for a few months and then slack for a few weeks.

Since my last fitness related post, I am happy to report that I have started taking some yoga classes at Dhyana Yoga (They have locations in Olde City, Center City and West Philly). Much to my own surprise I am really loving the classes. I’ve taken a couple different ones: All Levels Vinyasa, Vinyasa 101, All Levels Kundalini and am taking a 3 week workshop for Abs & Core strengthening. Its funny I think the All Levels Vinyasa was much easier than the Vinyasa 101 class. I still wanna try out their Yin Yoga classes and their Jivamukti ones. The Jivamukti classes are at odd hours that don’t really work well with my schedule, one is on Sunday mornings and one is during the week, but fairly late in the evening.

I’ve also picked up a couple new DVD’s and a book as well. I am so totally loving Shiva Rea’s Yoga Trance Dance DVD. Its so much fun, as it combines free form dance, some kundalini yoga exercises and some more fluid dance like yoga asanas. I always laugh when I’m doing dance workouts because I turn everything into variations of good ole’ goth dances, either swishy or stompy. I guess old habits do really die hard. The segments are much shorter than the Liquid Flow DVD I have of hers and much more suitable for beginners. I really like her DVDs alot. I got an Abs & Core one in the mail from Netflix that I am looking forwards to checking out.

I’ve been exploring the Jivamukti Yoga method created by David Life and Sharon Gannon. I picked up the book and their DVD Transform Yourself with Jivamukti Yoga. The workout is challenging as it includes some amount of backbends, shoulder stands and headstands. I can do backbends pretty well, but my lower/middle back has been hurting for the past couple of weeks so I can’t sustain it too long. It only really hurts when I do things like wheel, cobra or upward facing dog, so I have to modify them a little bit. I’m not a fan of shoulder stands for two reasons, one I end up drowning in my own boobs and two I have a lot of loose skin on my abdomen from losing weight (hence the abs & core focusing lately). I did learn a modification at one of the vinyasa classes I took recently, which helps immensely, by putting a yoga block under the base of your spine. When it comes to headstands, I have to get over the fear of breaking my neck and also the same issues from the shoulder stands apply. There are a couple modifications that I am comfortable doing in the mean time. In any case, I really like Jivamukti Yoga. I’m still reading the book, so far its been focusing on some historic yoga information as well as spiritual, karmic and ethical focuses in ones path towards enlightenment.

I’ve been meaning to write a follow up the the piece I wrote on Health & Fitness: Dieting awhile back because I get a lot of questions on a regular basis on dieting and fitness. I’m no expert by any means and different things work for everyone. The best I advice I can give is start slowly. Don’t expect to jump straight into a two hour high impact aerobic work out, running 5 miles a day or spending every evening at the gym. Once you get past that, working out comes easily and naturally. Personally speaking, I prefer to work out at home because I can do it at my own pace and am not tied to spending X amount of hours at the gym. I can take breaks between workouts and move at my own pace.

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’m still working the Weight Watcher’s maintenance plan for now, though I managed to lose a pound this week without even trying and whilst splurging a bit more than usual between my birthaversary party last Friday and a couple brunch & lunch excursions. I’m not complaining seeing as I had braced myself for the possibility of having gained a couple pounds.

I’m still working out  a ton… mostly doing various yoga stuff. I picked up a DVD I really like by Shiva Rea recently. Parts of it I can do really well and then there is just a ton of epic fail segments and the I am so not doing that segments. Luckily the DVD is broken down by segment so I can customize my work out with what I can do versus trying to kill myself with a handstand workout that would probably result in death and destruction. I’ve gotten a lot stronger and have built up my upper body and arm muscles significantly. I can finally do chaturanga without epic fails. Now Side Plank is my new enemy. I need to learn the modified version because doing half-chaturanga (knees on the floor) helped me figure out how to do it in full.

I’m at a weird point in my weight loss and fitness. I want to lose another 10-15 pounds, but I am worried about my stretch marks getting worse and feel like I should focus on that and tightening my abdomen and building muscle mass and toning my body. I realized that when I lean forward, my belly hollows inward on the sides and I have this hideous pouch of loose skin. I like saggy kitteh tummy that flails back and forth when they run. I always called it “mummy tummy” because Apocalypse had it pretty significantly.  In any case, I really need to focus my workouts, which gets hard when  I am busier and whatnot. I really need to do Pilates every day in addition to my yoga workouts. I haven’t done much weight training lately and have been ignoring my poor elliptical machine again.

I discovered ala the Kundalini Yoga DVD that I picked up a few weeks ago that I absolutely love gong music/meditation. Its so weird, my body actually craves it like I would crave a cigarette.

My weight has been holding steady around 169, which I am fine with. I’m doing fine on the maintenance plan for Weight Watchers. My fibroids are still acting up, which is annoying and until it regulates back to some semblance of normality I am going to stay on the maintenance plan. I still want to lose another 10-15 pounds, but I can be patient.

In the meantime, I am still exercising and staying active. I got Kundalini Yoga dvd from Netflix and I absolutely love it. Its challenging and different from most of the other yoga dvd’s I’ve seen. Each section has a series of poses and you’ll focus on one for a few minutes transitioning and repeating it with increasing speed, which is rather challenging at times. Oh and the best part, you have to keep your eyes closed the whole time. More than anything I love the kundalini meditation with gongs. Its amazing and beyond relaxing.

As I am writing this I just noticed Madelaine is stretched across the folded towel on my yoga mat. She does quite a nice sphinx. I wish I had my camera because she looks so fricking cute.

Lost another pound this week bringing the weight loss total to 23 pounds. I’m glad I have been posting back up logs here, because I tried to re-enter my previous weights into the WW site after setting a new goal and failed epically, I had to resort to the dates and weights in my LJ. My weight loss has slowed down a bit to one pound per week, which is still fine. I’ve been focusing more on toning and building muscles and strength lately, so I am probably not losing as much since i am building up muscle mass versus fat. I am excited to be closing in on being within a healthy weight range for my height and having the corresponding BMI as well.

I’ve been doing much better at preparing dinner when I get home, even if they are quick and simple dishes, its better than popping a Lean Cuisine in the microwave. Last night I made cheese tortellini, with pasta sauce, ground sausage and a touch of parmesan. I find doing a little pre-planning before I get home does the trick. I assess what I am in the mood for, what I have at home and anything that I would need to pick up en route. I find it hard to pre-plan too far in advance since I am a mood eater. I can’t just eat steak and green beans because today is Friday and it was pre-ordained to be steak and green beans day.

I received a new fitness DVD from Jennifer Kries Hot Body Cool Mind series from Netflix. I really like the pace of the workout as it is broken up into several segments including, Qigong, which I am interested to learn more about, Pilates, Yoga and Dance. Pilates are hell. Makes my yoga fails pale in comparison. How can one fail at sitting up from a supine position is beyond me, but I could only get so far without pushing up with my hands. Her Waking Energy DVD should arrive today from Netflix as well. Looking at the difficulty in the first level of this series, I am nowhere near ready for level 2 or 3 yet.