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.

Clearing out the clutter

Second day of Squatober, and boy are my hammies screaming. Surprisingly my glutes are not very sore at all, perhaps they are as lifted as they are going to get from all the stairs and the dancing. Insomnia struck again this morning, not sure what time, but it was still dark out, so it probably was around 4:30 or 5 am. This is for the birds, it is keeping me from getting to my 7:30 class, really just considering of cancelling the membership if I can’t make it to the class, on the weekdays or weekends, but I don’t want to feel like a quitter either. 4 weeks or 28 days until Halloween, if I put my efforts towards attending class from tomorrow onward, I can get an orange focus bracelet from Sunstone, because I really need to get past the vagina chakra (what? I am not making this up!) Urrrgah, legs are really sure, not sure how I am going to dance tonight, but I will certainly try. Want to find the best mix of hard music and rhythm so that I am not just flailing around, but I am simply better than Gangham style.

Last night, I got rid of a slue of books/magazines and sold (if you really want to call it that) them to Half Priced Books for $6. On the bright side, they were kinda just taking up space in the office, but man, I was really hoping for at least $10, come on, no one wants to buy a Flash 8 book? Yeah, pretty much all outdated software, and some fitness books. I imagine by how many copies of some of their fitness books, that they are highly devalued,  just economics, baby.  But, hey, after a few days of clean-ish eating I was able to get back to 120.8 this morning. Freaking sodium, I knew I did consume a lot with the foods this weekend, but I didn’t think I would retain 3 pounds of water. My belly even looked bloated, really sure that was actual fat, and some of it is, but my clothes do feel a bit loser today than they did on Sunday. No more Chinese takeout for me, well unless I want to freak out for a few days about my weight, and who really needs that?  One bit of complaint is that my arms feel way too soft, like I feel like if I wagged them really hard I could use them as propellers and take them to Japan without having to worry about airfare! (it is one of my goals this birth year to go to another continent) Perhaps, a Curlvember?

I do eat a lot of stir-fry when I cook.  Because I try to stick with mostly paleo at least at home, I don’t make the yummy yummmmy fried rice that we get from the takeout. Even with the effort of having to get the groceries and cook for yourself, there is a bit of advantage when you have the control of cooking it by yourself. I have not gotten the trick of sauce yet, however with clean ingredients. For example, I tried to get a beef/broccoli base with ingredients such as coconut aminos, coconut flower, olive oil, and coconut oil. I think if I would have actually started cooking the broccoli sooner, the sauce would have not burned and I would have a better consistency, so yes the sauce became a little bit clumped (probably should have not added the almond meal, either), however the taste was good and that is really what matters, right?:

Squatober, bitches!

Mixed it up a little and decided to poach fish instead of chicken last night, and danced danced danced to some trance music including Antiloop and Mubali (name dropping time: the latter is actually a friend of mine from my psy-trance raving days, good times.  So, I am not sure what is going on with me, but I cannot go to bed before 11 and thus cannot get up before 7 to actually make it into my class, and it really bothers me. Something stupid keeps happening like waking up at 4:30 in the morning, so I will end up going back to sleep but be too exhausted to actually make it awake, and I don’t want to sacrifice something as essential as sleep, so no go on the hot yoga this morning, yet again. Man, I am getting sick of typing that, well there is a simple solution for that.

Small successes though, as mentioned, I did get about 45 minutes of dancing done last night, and I have completed two of the eight rounds of 25 per day for my 6000 squats in 30 day challenge. I have to say it is almost not enough of a challenge, even making full squats with just body weight. I hope it is enough to actually get some physical change in my posterior. Fitspo is great inspiration, but admittedly I was skeptical that the ones that have perfectly round asses with a pithy caption such as “squats” really meant that the chick in question did squats, but rather it was a genetic blessing that gave her such a bountiful booty, so I am going to conduct my own experiment and see if doing 6000 squats in one month will give me the results I need, and it really isn’t just squats either. Hopefully, there will be some insanity, some dancing, some hooping, and some weight lifting incorporated. Those are my goals anyway. I probably won’t hit the 110 mark by November, but maybe by 11/11, sucks that I couldn’t hit 111 by 11/11/11 but I didn’t even have access to an oven at that time!

I am not even concerned that doing so many different things at the same time will confound the results of my experiment. I get too bored with one thing, I may not be consistent with one thing, but as long as I am somewhat consistent with a bunch of different things, it will show similar results if I stay active. Plus, muscle confusion, brah! hah, anyway, have not been doing the Whole 30 as anticipated, for one, the cheaper broth for the poached fish had sugar as one of its ingredients. For two, I kinda like the hot cocoa keurig cups in the office plus I do actually like creamer in my coffee and I gave it up for a month, didn’t see that much harm in my digestive system when I added it back to my diet.  Yeah, sure I gained 7 pounds in September (but most of that was due to the sodium from this past weekends Chinese delivery) okay, I can’t blame that on going off paleo, I can, however blame that on just completely falling off the wagon diet-wise, mmmm  Torchy’s Tacos but even labeling certain foods as verboten is a bit silly, unless you are diagnosed with gluten intolerance. If you do have a legitimate condition such as Celiac, just from reading about this disease, even a bit of gluten will make you have digestive woes. However, my gut is just fine and really I think that the 80/20 might be applicable when it comes to clean eating. I have heard that one before but it always felt like either I wanted to starve myself or binge, maybe I do have a bit of an eating disorder.

Alas, I must get back to my day job, as much as I would like to pontificate about fitness and healthy eating, it is time for me to depart. Stay sweaty, mothertruckers.