Exercise Update

Well, I've made a solid attempt at exercising! Last week I went to yoga twice. Once, I mentioned here and the other was with my brother's girlfriend. She took me to Yoga to the People which is a free yoga studio. We went to the location on St. Mark's but I believe there are others (including one in Seattle or something). Everything they do is donation based and so the classes are jammed packed. We got there early and had a really great time. They whip you through poses, but it all felt really good in my body.

I really think the reason I prefer yoga to any other exercise is the mind/body aspect of it. Just the conciousness of your breath and your movements in yoga is unlike any other exercise I've done. Obviously in every exercise class or workout video or whatever they tell you to breathe, but yoga really flows. Breathing is as much a part of your practice as anything else.

This morning I went back to the class at my gym. Not a great class but really convenient (it gets out 15 minutes before I am supposed to be at work, giving me enough time to run to Starbucks, run to the office, change and start my day). I bought a groupon for a yoga studio by work and it's 10 classes and expires on Feb 14!! Need to get my butt to those classes, but I tend to book my after-work activities and their morning class is at 7am... which is early. (Though I think this may be a situation of suckitupandgoanna.) I think I need to find classes, put them on my Google Calendar (I do everything my GCal says I should!) and have that be the end of it.

Still though, I got on my scale (in the evening ... to be fair) and was WAY up. I whipped out a little food journal I stopped using in October. Christine says that I get lazy at night and just don't count the calories that I eat at that point, so I'm hoping something like this will make me more accountable. I don't really know how that happened, but clearly I need a little bit of a reality check. Complacency, I guess, is not enough. It was a little distressing especially after how hard the last 5 pounds were to lose. To see them back plus some was not ideal. I didn't let Christine weigh me last week for a variety of reasons, but I don't think I get two get-out-of-jail-passes in a row.

Hopefully if I can keep my eating in check this week and continue to exercise, I can get them off (again).

She suggested I cap my alcohol at two drinks a week. We'll see. I'll make the switch (again) to wines and light beers. Sigh. And compensate for alcohol by not drinking. This may be questionable but if you don't eat, you get drunk faster and therefore don't drink as many calories. So if getting inebriated is the goal...

She suggested I seriously consider night eating and cap it at 150 calories. Fine. My favorite evening snack right now is a chocolate VitaMuffin with 2 tablespoons of PB2 and some fat free whipped cream. Sinfully delightful for 150 calories!

PB2 is powdered peanut butter! They take out all the oil and fat and what's left is powder. You add water and it's sort of like peanut butter. It's not quite the same, obviously. And some argue that the healthiest part of the peanut butter is the oil. However, on a low fat diet, it's kind of a detriment. So... it's a solution to my peanut butter problem. And at 45 calories for two tablespoons, it's pretty kick ass low cal alternative. I even made ants on a log today! It was super good. Brought me back to the good old days.

Also I just joined this site called fitocracy.com! (If anyone wants an invite, let me know!) It basically tracks your work outs and gives you points for going to the gym. Variable points depending on what you do. You can level up and everything. They also have forums/groups/whatever and people tend to give a lot of support. Let me know if you join. We should support each other there!