Water Aerobics Win!

 

I don't want to brag, but I have the best water aerobics teacher ever.  Had, I guess, since my Waltham Y membership expired and I'm moving across the country tomorrow, but still.  Her name is Kristen, and she's always upbeat, encouraging, pushes us with fantastic and challenging muscle workouts, and in each class, she tells us an awesome cheesy joke like this one:

Q: What is the nosiest pepper?
A: Jalepeño business!

(Say it out loud.  With sass.  Go on, I'll wait.)

She's also just inspiringly positive and optimistic.  One time, she said, "this exercise is my favorite!"  Then a pause.  "I guess when you're a happy person you get to have LOTS of favorite things!"

 I thought about trying water aerobics a few years ago, when I was a member of the Y near my parents' house.  I love being in the pool, but for some reason I've never been very driven to swim laps.  But my parents dissuaded me, saying water aerobics is for little old ladies.  In their defense, there was a lot of that contingent in my class...

...but I don't know how!  Because the workouts were not only fun, but also challenging, and I usually left feeling just as accomplished as after a Zumba class.  The class is broken into 3 sections:

1. Body only exercises - Using your body and the water resistance to do things like jumping jacks, jogging in place, hopping backwards, etc.

2. Weights - Using floaty dumbbells (more floaty means more difficult) to provide even greater water resistance and do awesome arm workouts, or using the dumbbells to provide balance while doing other exercises like ab workouts.

3. Water Noodles - Yep, those things you used to float on and have sword fights with when you were a kid (or was that just me?).  Using the resistance of the noodle, we do a lot of different exercises, mostly around leg muscles.

My class is unusual in that there are a lot of people around my age.  It's probably Kristen's energy that keeps them coming back, but it's also an excellent workout!

At some point, when I'm once again gainfully employed beyond my handful of private practice clients, I'll probably join a gym with a pool in Los Angeles, and I'll check out their classes.  If there are ways to get exercise and enjoy myself while doing so, count me in!

Overdue update

Whoa, it's been over two weeks since I've updated... sorry to keep you guys hanging!  I've been in crazy super duper packing mode, getting ready for my move to Los Angeles. The movers get here in 20 minutes, and I hit the road on Saturday, so as you can imagine, things have been a little bit on the frenzied side.

A quick note on the photo above...  I've almost gotten rid of that shirt so many times because I was certain it would never fit me again.  But check it out... it fits!  I was so excited that I wore it for the whole day on Tuesday in spite of the blistering cold in Massachusetts.  (I packed all day, so I was indoors and moving.)  This makes me think... I have a box in my closet at my parents' house (had?  Did I get rid of it?) labeled 117 pounds.  These are all clothes from the summer before college, and I expected never to be able to wear them again.  If that box still exists, is it possible I may actually get to that point if I continue eating paleo and exercising regularly?

Sitting in a car for four 11-hour days is going to be rough, especially since I've been so active lately. 

My size 10 pants that I bought are starting to feel just a tad too big.  It's weird - I haven't lost any more weight, really, but my clothing continues to feel looser.  Maybe all that weight lifting I'm doing is paying off.

Speaking of weight lifting, my gym membership expired on the 15th.  I miss my water aerobics and Zumba classes, and also access to barbells.  I'd built up from 12 to 30 pound bars for deadlifts, barbell rows, and other stuff... and from 45 to 55 pounds on the bench press.  But it seems I'm taking a break from that routine due to, you know, relocating my whole life.  I've shifted my 3x weekly strength training workout to a body weight routine.  This is a rotation of two different series of exercises, and I'm finding routine A much easier than routine B.  A involves jumping jacks, planks, squats, and pushups.  B involves... whoa. 

So I just went to look at the cheat sheet to tell you what the different workouts involve, and I realized that I'd been doing half of workout A as A and the other half as B... In reality, I'm supposed to do (obviously) both halves of A and then a completely different workout for B.  Guess I'm starting from square 1 tomorrow.  :)

Anyway, the body weight stuff is challenging, so I may wait (weight?  Ha.)  a few weeks before joining a gym in LA.  There's a pretty decent track I can do some jogging on since the area around my parents' house, where I'll be living for a few months, is crazy hilly.  I haven't jogged since my 5k, so I'm feeling a bit out of practice, but this will be a great opportunity to try out my new Vibram Fivefinger shoes:




I've been walking in them, but it's time to give them a jog.  They feel really different than walking in normal shoes, not just because of the toes, but because the soles are more moveable.  They also use different muscles, especially in my calves, than regular shoes... so maybe I'll take it slow at first.

Anyway, I'm all over the place.  Hopefully you enjoyed this pretty scattered post!

This salad wins at everything.

Piggybacking on this morning's post, I am having salad for lunch. This concoction is my new favorite healthy thing. It consists of a handful of strawberries, a handful of cucumber, about a cup of romaine lettuce, and a bunch of sunflower seeds.

Even more epic is the salad dressing, which I made on my own in bulk, and am using on everything. It's a raspberry vinaigrette with a ratio of half a cup of raspberry vinegar, a tablespoon of honey, and a tablespoon of fresh mint.

I highly recommend you give it a try, cause yum.

(If weird things happened with formatting, it's because this is my first attempt at using the blogger app.)

The Celebration Trap

This was a rough week for paleo eating and general health mindedness, and my Monday weigh-in reflects that.  Last week I was down to 142.5, which is my lowest ever, and this week I'm back up to 145.  Ugh, it's so much easier to gain weight than to lose it!  And I definitely can't look quizzically at the scale and rationalize that maybe it's muscle this week...

It all started Thursday, Halloween.  I came in to work to see a beautiful display of home baked brownies, cupcakes, cakes, breads, cookies, etc... I think I blogged about this then.  And I binged pretty badly on that stuff - I really do have a true weakness when it comes to sugary things.  I told myself that was all I was going to do, but then there was a going away party for me/ retirement party for a lovely colleague named Carole...

...and I so I sort of felt obligated to have some cake.  But the cake was really amazing and moist and delicious, so then I had more cake, and more cake - I probably had about 4 slices.

The thing is, I had mindfully anticipated this trap.  I knew Halloween would be a rough day to get through without resorting to sweets, so I bought ingredients to make paleo chocolate chip cookies so that if I saw sweets at work, I could say, "No, I'm going to not eat that, because I have paleo compliant cookies waiting to be baked at home." 

Here's the thing, though - compiled with this trap, I've been feeling really anxious about my upcoming move.  And pretty much anyone can tell you that if you're feeling stressed out, it chips away at willpower.  So that's what happened - I felt really jittery about all the wonderful people I'm leaving behind in Massachusetts (and to a lesser but still potent degree, still do), I got to work and saw all those delicious things, and I ate my feelings.  It was pretty mindless, and perhaps indicates a need for supplementing my diet and workout routines with a daily meditation regimen...

Oh, but that's not all.

On Friday, I went out with some colleagues to dinner and karaoke.  At dinner, I ordered the only grass-fed beef on the menu, which was a burger, and had them hold the bun and the cheese, and substitute the fries with steamed veggies.  I was ready to be a good paleo human (after all, the burger came with avocado and hot sauce so... yum!) but they messed up and brought the fries instead of the veggies, and then when I asked for veggies instead, they just brought them on the side, leaving the fries.  To my credit, I only ate about half the fries, but still... arg.

And then we went to the karaoke bar...

...and I drank a lot.  Mind you, alcohol isn't paleo, so I haven't had more than about half a glass of red wine since going paleo 2 1/2 months ago.  And I also made some further bad eating choices due to my state of insobriety.  Among other things, I ate buffalo chicken wings off a friend's plate.  Then I went home and threw up, and thanked my body for the reminder of why alcohol isn't my friend.

That's the thing, too...  People on various diets often talk about what the "best" alcohol is for weight loss.  And the real answer is none, because regardless of calorie count, at the end of the day, if you're drunk and someone offers you something really fattening, your judgment is impaired and you're more likely to accept it.  There's a reason that after parties and bar hopping, people frequently end up at Denny's or Waffle House or IHOP!

Saturday, I was quite good.  I skipped my workout because I felt lousy from Friday night (I'm telling you - this alcohol stuff is poison!) but I ate paleo and made a delicious Meatza.  (I made the Italian one... I'd love to try the Greek one, but reasonably priced ground lamb is hard to find!)

Then yesterday, Sunday, was the WORST!  To be fair, I planned it, which made it my fault.  But a group of us got together to celebrate an event in a friend's life, and we tackled the VERMONSTER.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure to hear about or sample this amazing concoction, it's Ben and Jerry's magnum opus, consisting of 20 scoops of ice cream, a thick layer of about 5 or 10 different toppings, and then a layer of homemade whipped cream.

In other words, it starts off looking like this...

...and with all these people....

...diligently working on it, at the end it looks more like this:

It's a lot of ice cream!  And as we established at the beginning of this blog post, I'm not much with the self-control.  So I have no idea how much ice cream I ate, but it was A LOT.

And as of last night's dinner (a sensible cobb salad without all the non-paleo stuff and with olive oil and vinegar instead of whatever dressing they usually use), I'm back on track.  I learned a lot of lessons this week.  I have one more party coming up - a "goodbye Massachusetts friends" party that's happening next Saturday - and I'm hoping I can apply some new rules to that event.

1. Just because it's a party doesn't mean it doesn't count.  If I'm making exceptions to eating paleo, they still have to be controlled exceptions.

2. Easy on the alcohol.  Obviously.

3. Easy on the sugar.  And if I can't eat sugary things in moderation, maybe I should avoid eating them at all.

The thing about the other paleo blogs I read is that they're all very affirmative of the fact that people aren't perfect.  They talk about making "mindful deviations from paleo" rather than "cheating," since the latter is a shame-soaked word that ultimately does more harm than good psychologically.  And they talk about how it's ok if you slip up, and the importance of getting rid of an all-or-nothing mindset so that all you have to do is get right back on track.  One of the sayings Nerd Fitness uses is "never two in a row."  In other words, never two meals in a row where you're not eating paleo.  And never two days in a row skipping exercise.  Those are much better because they're not shaming, so it's a mentality I can buy into.

I guess, as much as this blog entry has been all about self-reporting my week of "oops"es, it's more than that too.  It's about having the willpower to get back on track.  Today I'm going to have bacon, eggs, and spinach for breakfast, leftover Meatza and salad for lunch, and a sensible dinner after going to water aerobics.  In spite of my anxiety and this past week's various moments of weakness, ultimately I know that I am strong enough to get back on track.