Vanity killed the hot yoga star

Yes, it is true. I am thinking of taking off my focus bracelets from sunstone for a more cooler version of the practice Today was a really good practice for Fire 90 at Sunstone, but my god I hadn’t been to a fire class in a while and boy was it unbearably hot. So, yeah it got me to thinking, is this actually great for my skin, which is finally starting to clear up once I am obsessive about washing it after the sweaty practice.  So here is the rub, I found this study that suggests that 6 weeks of 43 degrees Celsius (about 104 degrees Fahrenheit)  for only 30 minutes and 3 times a week. My classes are probably about 98, sometimes less, but also they are 60 to 90 minutes long, and some weeks I was going 4-5 times! So, yeah, I don’t want to be wrinkly as I take hot enough showers, and any more exposure might really cause some oxidative damage, oh look at you trying to sound smart.

I guess I can justify fitness and the exposure of heat in that capacity because it isn’t just sitting still and I feel like you are supposed to be active in your daily life, which brings me to my next point. I need a new yoga place. Yeah, I certainly don’t want to quit practice, because it does make me feel good, and I feel like if I were to do it with a DVD at home, I would some how find a way to phone it in or half-ass it, as they say. The group dynamic just works for me. Le sigh, Pure Austin
or as I like to call it “fancy gym” has the best selection of classes for the price as most of the studios here are like 99-120 per month, holy mackerel!!  Even at $64 for the fancy gym, it is a  bit more money then I want to pay, so 24 hour fitness might be the second best at $29-36 a month depending how many gyms you want to have access to, or if you want to pay a stupid enrollment fee, which I don’t. There is also donation based downtown, but this cities two main arteries of traffic are perpetually clogged, and who wants to deal with that, no thank you to stress that I do not need. Haven’t found anything in my location that is cheap except for the damn hell asanas, just kidding.

I may try the Gaiam stuff online, but really the motivation not the actual classes are the problem. The only way I think I would do it is if I was at the apartment’s gym or clubhouse and using my iPad, just so that I am away from the distractions of my apartment. Well, enough pointless rambling and bitching. .

Yoga, Tan, laundry

The good news is that I finally got my lazy ass to hot yoga, and if I really focus my efforts into going the rest of October, no days off, and even with one day off, I can still get the Svadisthana chakra recognition, by the time Halloween rolls around, so that I can celebrate with my orange bracelet. Oh, how such little things amuse me. Also some success came out of my practice serendipitously, I was not able to make it to the room early enough so I was not able to find a place close to the front or side mirror where I normally use so that I can see myself for poses. Well, it seems like that was actually a good thing as I felt like I was able to nail most of them, when I quit worrying about how I looked, and also I felt like I was less obsessed with the skinny young things in my weirdo imaginary thinspo competition that I have in my mind. I guess like the Glitch Mob song is entitled “Starve the ego, feed the soul”:

So, what is the bad news? Well, weekends are notoriously bad (even for all the other bloggers it seems) for food, just in terms of not wanting to stick to a diet, even though I baked asparagus, boiled and blended the sweet potatoes and even poached some chicken, when you sweat for an hour doing push-ups, sit-ups and leg lifts, you tend to get hungry like super hungry.  So, I succumbed to the Domino’s $7.99 pan pizza deal, oh my god, how fantastic this pizza was! Seriously, as James Norton has noted,  they have stepped up their game. I do feel like this pizza is analogous to how good fettuccine alfredo is, vis a vis something with that much butter, cheese and carbohydrates will never suck even if you are a terrible cook. Well, here are the sausage and mushroom calorie bombs (plural!!) in question:

So on a little less horribly unhealthy not, I tried eating something light on Friday night, and I always have a challenge with the Eggvacado oven dish, so I tried whisking the egg, only used a single one this time,  a bit before pouring the mixture into the avocado shell. It turned out pretty well, however a small amount of the egg spilled out on the pan as it always does when trying to balance these halves on the pan. I need some sort of ramekin to snugly hold the halves into place while the eggy-TexMex goodness gets formed. Another good idea would be probably to do sort of like a deviled-avocado mixture like with eggs but have it encased in the skin, not sure how that would be executed, but it certainly sounds good to me.

So, squatober hasn’t really been panning out how I would like, it seems like after the Whole 30, all of my dietary and fitness goals kinda fell through with them. All of my habits dissolved. I tell you one thing that really derails me is going out to drink, not that I do that very often anymore, but even just occasionally it seems that the apartment gets messy because I am too tired to clean, and I become regretful because I spent too much money furthering the cycle of depression, and I just have a general fog about me. Invention idea: some sort of drunk preparation kit, e.g.: cash for drinks so that you know how much to spend, a good hour of cleaning beforehand so that you aren’t stuck with chores in a neurochemically depleted state (hey they don’t call it “wet brain” for nothing),  and perhaps food prepared in advanced with b-vitamin and 5htp supplementation, the former to prevent thiamine deficiency and the later for any serotonin correction you need. So glad, my psychology degree has helped me in some fashion, hyuck hyuck.

I haven’t really had the kind of money to drink, so at least there is that keeping me on the straight and narrow, probably would just be better to be a bit of teetotaler for a while, at least for my wallet’s sake, if nothing else.

Yoga insecurity, The Cult, and ice cream nightmares

via Instagram

Actually living up to the blog’s namesake today. After 12 day hiatus, I got back into my practice with Earth 60.  While I really want to continue a practice about 5-6 days a week, I find it rather difficult to make the Saturday afternoon classes. Sometimes there is no reason other than laziness, ahem, last weekend was a good example of this. While the defensive driving course I took precluded me from going Sunday. My lack of desire to go to the Wood 90 class was the only reason for not attending, so really, there was no excuse.  I did about a mini-20 minute session from lolo, but for fitness’s sake, it was very lacking. I did feel pretty fantastic for the whole day, so maybe it was pretty effective in that regard.

I may have injured my back a little getting back into practice. Okay, how silly is this? I kinda wish that the instructors of classes had their own sessions so that the inexperienced yoginis such as myself could not feel so damned self-conscious. I have had this happen before with people who I thought were showing off. Now, I don’t think they are really showing off, but I get such a complex when I see that they are doing the Utthita Hasta Padangustasana (doesn’t Sanskrit seem like the coolest language?) and I can barely do it with my leg bent!!  Somewhere between full locust and cobra, I believe I strained my back and it really sucks,  but I also fully acknowledge that this is something that is not the fault of the people doing the perfect poses. Seriously, why should they alter their practice, just because I get butthurt that I am not able to do the same thing. It sounds like a personal problem, as they say.

More non-paleo friendly goodness via Noodles and Company, BUT, considering this dish was 660 calories, not great but compared to a Baconator, which I believe is about 1200 calories, I could have done a lot worse. Not good, not bad, just okay. However, it is like I am not even trying anymore to have any sort of structure to my meal plan. Going out to eat is still murder on my pocket book. The meal itself wasn’t bad, but the ice cream afterwards, I am sure doesn’t do me any favors, including giving me nightmares. So the details are sketchy, but I remember there was some sort of police pursuit where I was cornered into a cul-de-sac and then the officer has me pulled over. He mentioned some sort of hit-and-run where I hit some car and then for some reason doesn’t take me to jail, but I guess I was awaiting some trial and then I find out that this was a felony that I was involved in, so I become panicked and realize in a moment of lucidity that it was only a dream, but it seemed to have continued even as I realized it wasn’t real. Not much else I remember, but it was absolutely frightening. So, here is a moment of gratitude that I am not involved in a felony hit and run.

So the alphabetized music catalog each day is superior than a countdown because of my moods. I have been obsessing about The Cult, lately. Not sure what happened to them in the mid 90’s that made them not so great. Perhaps, there is an expiration date on music. Nine Inch Nails seems to be the only band (if you can even really say that about him) that has seems to be eternally awesome, but admittedly I am a bit of a fan girl. Whatevs. Here we are with a few tracks that I adore:

(ps: go watch Cool World if you have not already, it is like Who Framed Roger Rabbit for grown folks!)

My favorite kind of glitter!

The BF does not understand why I like this band and he says that it is a generational thing, because technically I am an X-er, and he is a Millenial. Okay, Mr. Gen Y, why do you like Joy Division? Makes no sense >_< But, I tease.

Whole 30 – Day 28

No yoga today, but as mentioned I obtained the Muladhara bracelet from Sunstone on Saturday. As a naturally inquisitive person, I wanted to know more about this bracelet that I have been wearing everyday, and just about chakras in general. Before you think that I am tripping out and falling into some pseudo-scientific hippy dippy vortex, I have to reassure you (and myself) that I will not be buying any chakra plates, fountains, or any other “opening” devices touted by oppurtunistic scoundrels. One could argue, however, that I have already bought into it by wearing the bracelet only obtained by purchasing. One could also stick a sock in it and stop being such a negative Nancy, said to my skeptical self, of course. Anyway, I had heard from a vague ill-defined source that chakras actually represent never centers in the brain, though a quick search on Wikipedia only references this as the citation for these claims, so it really seems dubious at best. Also, for smiles and giggles, I searched ScienceDaily and scholar.google.com for the term “chakra” and there was nothing to be found for this term

Regardless of whether or not chakras exist, the actual systems of the body exist and that is backed up by evidence, so we can rejoice that there is some empirical evidence. It just distills into being “interesting” which is my point. Since, I am practicing yoga, putting aside my skepticism, I have also researched yogic poses to correspond with the muldhara chakra, and really have found some inconsistency between the various webpages. It reminds me of horoscopes, feng shui, and tarot, the interpretations of the signs, directions, and cards are totally left up to the person who is trying to sell you on it. All of these are good shows to watch from Penn and Teller’s Bullshit, by the way. If you are trying to approach this analytically, it would be reasonable to expect that there would be a consistency within the practice that would be reliably reported from the various sources, granted my methodology was based on searching from people who may or may not be “experts” and have something to sell, and we all know that people on the internet don’t lie! Okay, so the one thing I did find was that the Mountain Pose and Warrior sequence popped up a few times, so rule of thumb, you want to get down with your genitals (hey I am not the pervert, blame the internet) do some of these sanding asanas. Okay, probably as red as the chakra just from the embarassing topic, so moving on.

Today I got my Yummy Farms groupon delivery and the star of the show was the peaches, following by the very tasty sweet potatoes. I puréed some of the yellow tomatoes, diced up the green pepper and sautéed the chicken and onion I had with this, and added some almonds for extra credit, and probably shouldn’t have added the serrano pepper, but live dangerously, right? Garlic, cumin and tumeric, all day long, too.

Well, as I digest this lovely dinner, my FitBit gently reminds me to get off my booty before it flattens into the chair and I am sure a quick look would reveal that I have been sedentary for 10+ hours. This is unacceptable and must be resolved by some kind of workout. What will it be, what will it be?

Whole 30 – Day 24

Drunken yoga, well not really, but this is the third time in a row that I have had lightheadedness and diziness in my practice. One likely culprit is that I like to drink coffee before I go and I believe the heat combined with the activity combined with the dehydration from coffee and having not had any water for 9 hours made me feel pretty crappy. So, next week, even though it will be difficult, I will hold off on the coffee pre-yoga, and just  wait until work for my caffeine jolt. Unfortunately, I even think Yerba (yucky) Matte has this same effect on me. So, it is time to switch out the coffee for water. To my cred, been pretty diligent with my workouts from Jackie Warner.  To the best of my memory, Weekly Wrap-up:

Sunday:  Chest, biceps, Abs – cardio intervals
Monday: legs, shoulders, abs – cardio intervals
Tuesday:  Back, triceps,  abs – cardio intervals
Wednesday: High Intensity Interval training
Thursday: Full body circuit training (all muscle groups)

Everyday this week except for yesterday, I have gone to practice, and mostly I have been walking at an incline on the treadmill to get the rest of the 10k steps. First world problem alert, first world problem alert: it bums me out that the WiFi at the gym isn’t working properly on my tablet anymore. I would much rather read an article or e-book than watch TV. Towards autumn, I will more likely be out at dusk getting my walks, and hopefully I will be able to take them with a Jack Russel terrier!

It is a good thing that I am doing so much activity, too, because last night I had an monster hunger attack eating probably more but we will only post it as half a cup of walnuts (350 calories, yikes!!) and an extra banana right before bed, just so I can store all that sugar as fat, yee-haw. It was definitely a binge, a healthy binge, but a binge, nonetheless. I suspect that it could be some feminine hormones afoot.  But, back to coffee, because no one wants to read about my cycle, I have finally found a beverage that I can drink without any creamer which would help me save some calories. If you are not one for the taste of coffee sans creamer, try the Medium Roast Starbucks Keurig cups. Moving on to the lunches, I have been staying pretty sugar-free during the day by sticking to pre-cooked food, enter chicken and asparagus four ways:

Yesterday, no picture but it was the chicken and asparagus with no side. All of the meals are pretty satisfying, good mixture of carbohydrate, protein, and fat and towards the end of the day I don’t feel as if I am about to die of starvatio, so that is a plus. Tomorrow marks another milestone  for me, so stay tuned!

Whole 30 – Day 21

Dang! Today will conclude 3 weeks of the program, and it surely has been an interesting journey. Yesterday I almost went the whole day without eating fruit, but that dang coconut water was the only thing from making me turn into a gremlin from low blood sugar, that happens, right? GRRRRRRR, the gremlin in my belly, wait it is inside you now, yes, hush, anyway. It is growling this morning. Only thing in my stomach are  some overly seasoned sweet potatoes, (same mistake with the un-tacos of Sunday night, took the lid off and nearly have the bottle spilled inside). It really did not agree with my stomach, but the desire to getting that damn pink focus bracelet drove me to go this morning to my class, and I am thankful that I am learning to have a bit of self-discipline to stick with something besides a job. It only took 3 decades. Much more than a silly wristband, what motivated me to go to class today was my newly created mantra “erosion”.  If you want to know why that is my mantra, read yesterday’s post, sillybutt! Great, now this song is in my head, maybe it is just the clouds that are getting me all darkwave, but goth as lame as it is to everyone else, will always be cool to me:

Whole 30 – Day 20

Today’s Fire 90, despite a setback of  not getting up at 6:00 am for Jackie Warner’s Day 2, workout was fun.  Yesterday was so busy but I managed to get all of my to-do items checked out and felt very accomplished because I planned and executed everything I wanted to do. Maybe it was the coffee, but the morning felt a bit frenzied in getting all the vacuuming, dusting, and surface cleaning finished while simultaneously doing laundry and then cooking lunch. Dinner was too spicy, because I accidentally poured a bit too much cayenne and chilli powder into the turkey mix. Hey, my metabolism can use a bit of a thermogenic kick to burn those calories. I try to get a little bit of HIIT in my television watching. Always moving, getting those steps in. I feel like a total slacker if I am watching Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition while sitting on my rump.

A bit of a motivational musing for Monday. I came, I planned, and I conquered my meals for this week in that the grocery list that I posted yesterday was derived from a meal plan that was created beforehand. You have to do this for the Whole 30 to be completely successful in this program. So, I have the next six days mapped out here:

Friday is on the back, but yes I went old school and just wrote everything down. It may be a bit sloppy with all the scratches and edits, but writing things down just seems more committal than typing things out. Before digitizing my Sunday To-Do’s I wrote it out on paper, and I think that helped me get things done better, though I may use that same template for next week. The comfort in routine is really helping me become more certain and is helping me accomplish my goals.

More musing on the idea of keeping with a habit and committing to your goals, my coworker is also on his own 31 day challenge with yoga, and we were talking about how staying consistent with practice. He brought up the idea of how in nature that erosion happens with constant water flowing against the elements. This meshes with the fact that my yoga classes are based on the five “elements” of nature. Admittedly I would be super stoked to do a class called “Uranium” (industrial yoga!!), but I will settle for Metal \m/, and noticing my how my phsyique is changing is super rewarding. For example, I am noticing a little bit of indentation in my core which looks like a mini-six pack is appearing! I still have some of the body fat, but erosion baby, erosion!

This past Saturday was the last kickboxing sesh I had with my Living Social deal, and due to some financial constraints, I am not continuing the membership, because I have already paid for the membership with yoga. I liked working out there, but really I can accomplish activity through a combination of hooping, walking, yoga, dancing and circuit training through the DVD’s and there is a channel on my Roku that has some workouts! Fitness does not have to be expensive, but the trick is using your own creativity and perhaps a bit of self-discipline to schedule your workouts. As you can see by my posts, that is my own struggle is just getting up early or forcing myself to do it, but I leave, dear reader, on this bit of inspiration:

Day Twenty-Five

A very sartorial Saturday. A little bit discombobulated from the day. Always happens towards the evening, no need for a lecture, I know I am well under my caloric requirement, but my thighs don’t seem to think so, kidding but not really. Feel like a real blogger this week. Just got some SWAG from Brooke at Sweats & Sweets probably going to be putting them on my boots, or saving them for when I have black sneakers, because I think my New Balances look pretty rad with the neon yellow:

Here are the laces:

Anyway, in other fashion news in the laurenverse, look at these kewt size 2-4 skirts I can now pimp:

Day Twenty-Four

Yay weekends, yay closing in on another week of Whole 30. Originally when I considered doing this plan, I thought the weekends were going to be the most difficult. They are turning out, however, to be the easier when given a full refrigerator of food. My weekends pre-Whole 30 generally consisted of a lot of fast food, read sodium and bloat,  which would send my Monday morning weigh-in through the roof. Now, I just will have a moderate breakfast/lunch, fruit and nuts, then a stir-fry for dinner. Also, the weekends give me so much extra space to makeup for the workouts I may have missed throughout the week. (I am looking at you Thursday).

Yesterday and this morning, I felt glued to the bed, but I had the company breakfast to attend yesterday, so getting up early was necessary and Metal this morning. This morning just started off just crappy. My boyfriend and I got into a fight, which by the way caused me to leave my fitbit AND sneakers at home. The hesitance to get up also preempted my breakfast and barely had enough time to choke down some coffee before the day started. Metal class was good except that I really need to get over this body dysmorphic shit that I have going on. It isn’t a good look to be staring woefully or angrily at other students who are younger/thinner than I am and I guess by that logic, hotter. To make matters worse, the teacher went into Hanumanasana as we were all in . I am sure my eyes radiated with chartreuse lightening bolts as I struggled to go into a king pigeon, but clearly not ready to attain. I don’t want to come off as whiney, but my body feels pretty gross right now: flabby, slack, and not even toned as I thought I would be this far into the journey. Is this what I have to look forward to in my 30’s? Like I said, I probably look great, but my stupid perception is getting screwed up somehow.

My shoes are at home, I hope. Need to dance some more to feel better. Even though I ate more than I should yesterday (all clean). Still should have done at least something to get my steps up to 10k. Oh well, two hours of dancing tonight should take care of that.  Still, McKayla is disappointed in my performance:

 

Day Twenty-Two

Get it together. Skipped gym time again, but really not feeling so bad about it, considering this article. I already knew that considering this article that came out three years ago. I have no good reason for pussing out on my class, and I never do. Despite being basically worthless for weight loss, the fitness industry would have you believe differently, it makes you feel better for sure, and I like feeling good, so where was the disconnect. Well, for starters, I had a lovely bought of nausea toward mid-afternoon. Seemed really strange considering that I ate super clean, but I didn’t hydrate enough, so there might have been the problem, plus according to Dr. Google, some of the effects of not getting enough food is nausea, so having a few pieces of fruit really helped. Truth is, I could have gone last night, but I just didn’t feel like it. Plus, I knew that I would be going to yoga this morning. And yes,  SMASHED IT, BRO!!

Earth is becoming more of a favorite now, there are more downward dog poses and a few chataranga sequences to really get those triceps screaming, and I dig that. Plus with the Fire, the heat is really just so intense that if you skip eating or something, you can really be in trouble. I like the variation of not going every day like I had been, this way, I am taking all the five different course offerings. Tried to schedule it so that I was doing something every day, like cardio one day, and then yoga the next because as I mentioned weight lifting is booooring to me, and even if it is cardio-overload, IT MAKES ME FEEL GOOOOD! Besides this chick doesn’t lift weights and she looks pretty good! So yeah, not gonna give up on the BodyRock workouts, but for some reason the fact that they are on a video gives me a license to really slack off, and I just can’t afford a personal trainer right now (so many excuses), if I could I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog right now, heyoooo.

Okay, that is just the carb spike from the sweet potatoes talking, back to business. One week of w30 down, 3 to go! They are absolutely right in that I feel a lot better, the energy that I am putting in my body feels cleaner, even if that is just some nutritional wizardry that the diet industry uses to sell books, I really feel like the food I am eating is infinitely better than the Standard American Diet.  So far, I have been introducing myself to “Chef Mike” ..yes yes, as non-primal/paleo as it is to use radiation to cook your meals, in the interest of time, I blasted my eggs this morning for 90 seconds and produced this:

Not too shabby, eh? For today’s lunch and last night’s supper, I used the microwave for sweet potatoes. You really can’t screw up a potato, they are supposed to get mushy! As you can see, I was not totally class-less, and  prepared my un-taco chicken on the stove, like a real 31 year old:

Adding cinnamon is key to making sweet potatoes taste interesting without having to add gobs of butter – sigh – oh butter. At any rate, I am feeling pretty energetic today. Hopefully, yesterday’s nausea will not make a reappearance today and I can get my butt moving at some point.