Sunday, January 31, 2010

Days 2-4

Day 2
I love it when the lite plate in the school cafeteria is enchiladas, rice, and beans. :) SCORE! Had an orange with my coffee this morning. I've been trying to buy more fruit, and it's easy to grab one on my way out the door.

I tried yoga at home today, setting my timer for 20 minutes, thinking I'd get bored, and I ended up doing 60 minutes. It went well, and I'm surprised that I remember that much from the studio classes.

My husband, Todd, made dinner - yummy chicken bruschetta and corn on the cob, and he even made it a little extra healthy by using egg substitutes.

No meditation...I just can't even get myself to sit still for it.

Day 3
Let me just say that I'm so glad the counselors put coffee on every morning. Some days, their coffee pot is like a beacon of heaven. Ok, today had another orange for breakfast. I started peeling it right when kids were walking into my room, and so many of them commented on how good the room smelled because of it. So does the room smell bad otherwise? Too bad candles are a fire hazard. And plug-ins. I need one of those oil & stick thingys.

So we always go out for lunch on Friday's, and even though it was crazy cold out (supposed to snow!), we headed for La Madeleine. I had the regular chicken caesar, 1/2 of tomato basil soup, and 2 pieces of 7 grain bread with blackberry preserves. And a water. Trying to drink more of it. :)

Todd and I planned a fun date night around what we wanted to eat. We both felt like sushi, so we looked online to find the most awesome thing! Abacus (a favorite special occasion place of ours) does 1/2 price sushi after 9pm on Fridays! So here's what we did: Happy hour at Mi Cocina - chips and queso and margaritas, followed by martinis and sushi at Abacus. It was scrumptious. I mean, YUM. We are building it into our weekend events from now on. A couple of our friends met us there, and we ended the night with some Band Hero at our place. Who doesn't love a Friday night like that. And IT SNOWED! :)

Day 4
Saturday morning, I went to the 10:30 yoga class. Whew! I'm already feeling it.

Todd needed to stop by Sprint to fix his phone, so I did a little Mockinbird Station shopping and found a pretty cable-knit pillow cover for our couch at West Elm. Great sale!

Then Todd and I went to Northpark for some La Duni brunch. I gave in to the bread budding with bananas and berries. Holy cow, it was s o  g o o d. It came with bacon, which I tried to sub for eggs, but they were going to charge me $3, so I stuck with the bacon. I hardly ever eat bacon, so I enjoyed every bite! and I had 2 servings of salsa with chips. Their bowls are tiny...it was more like 1/3 a bowl anywhere else. No regrets!

We saw The Book of Eli-- what a good movie! Everyone should see it. I want to get my Bible out and read it all the time now. Seriously. Go see it.

No meditation thus far. How do you do this? I think I need the book Angela recommended - Three Minute Meditations. I can't even do 1 minute. What's up? I need the secret to this part of the yoga practice. Tell me, someone!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Day 1, really :)

Yea! Day 1. Sorry for the multiple posts...I should have started 2 days ago. (and here I am giving reasons...let's change that, shall we?) Which brings me to why I'm doing this 40 Days Program. I have been working out consistently since my last year in college (1998), and I've tried yoga before, here and there, to decide that it wasn't enough for me. I needed to move around a lot, breathe really hard, and sweat a ton. So I stuck with kickboxing class. I still love it, but now it's not enough.

I teach 6th grade, so as all teachers or spouses or friends of teachers know, I am "on" all day. I get to school at 8 (that's goal #1 out of this, actually), put my teacher face on at 8:10 when kids start flooding my classroom, get a conference period that many days is actually used for parent or teacher conferences, and then stay on until they leave. Then I have some quiet time to work at school. I generally leave the building between 5:45 and 6:30. That's a big time frame, but sometimes I'm there until 7 (not that I'm happy about that).

So when I work out, I want an efficient use of my time (ie-calorie burn/enjoyment). I will run with my nifty Nike iPOD gadget on nice (read: warm) days, go to a class, or go to yoga. Yoga gets a gold star for catering to another of my needs. I need to turn "off." It is a time where I get to have calm (while my heart is beating 170 beats per minute) and I get to have peace (while I ignore the sweat dripping upward, into my nose.) It's the most efficient work out, among the tier of efficient work outs. For those of you who want to lose weight, yoga will do it. Want to tone? Yoga...so fast too! Want a challenge? Holy cow, yoga. Need to turn "off?" I didn't need it in my 20s. Now I'm 34, and suddenly I crave it.


So, since it's the end of the day, I'll log my "numbers." These are meant to be non-judgemental. (How do I do that? Isn't that why I'm doing this? To gauge how "well" I'm doing?)

Yoga Practice: 0 minutes
Meditation: 0 minutes (I will do 5 before bedtime though-that way I can post 10 minutes tomorrow)

Nutrition:

Breakfast- coffee (usually I eat SOMEthing - judging, am I? shoot.)

Snack- almonds
Lunch- turkey sandwich, water, strawberries, 1/2 bag baked lays, sugar cookie
Snack- cutie orange, dark chocolate

Dinner- 2 black bean tacos from Taco Cabana, some bread, green tea, snickers (fun size)



Ugh - I'm still hungry and I didn't go to yoga on Day 1. And there goes the non-judgmental thing. Today in writing looks sad. Zero?! And it looks like I'm on a diet. ...[insert non-judgmental comment here].

Day 1, I think.

OK, I thought yesterday was Day 1. I got up IN THE MORNING and went to yoga. 6 (SIX) am! The last time I got up this early was to catch a flight to Spain, so I was motivated for that. Seriously. I am nooooo morning person. But I wanted to start the first day right, and I had meetings booked from 4-7, so I'd miss the 6:30 pm (my regular time, when I go twice a week) practice. Anyway, I learned a few things:
1. Many people get up that early.
2. Yoga is something I can do in the morning! Yea!
3. I did not crash in the afternoon. A few yawns, nothing different than, say, Mexican food for lunch. Double yea!

So at 8pm, my FINAL meeting of the day, I went back to the studio for the first meeting, where we met each other (about 25 of us) and our leader, Angela, who is the owner of Yogasport and an amazing yoga teacher. The meeting went like this:
Introductions
Overview of the program - yoga practice (4-5 in the studio/1-2 at home), nutrition (log my meals), meditation (5 minutes per day), and journaling
Small group share
Weekly accountability statement (Mine is: Be more present when I'm at home.)
Go home and be ready to begin day 1 - aka- the NEXT day! Wha? (oh well...the morning yoga was still a good idea, and I'm going to try again on Friday)

We all pledge confidentiality to the group, which is great. It's a safe place to share, and I like the small group situation so far. Kickboxing in a gym class is pretty anonymous, so it'll be a change to work out "with people," if that makes sense. I left feeling energized and excited and ready to start the real Day 1!

40 Days of Yoga

I've just started practicing yoga in the last year or so. I've always been a kickboxing class sort of girl (sometimes spin or hip hop or the barbell class...basically, I love the gym class set-up), where working out consists of:
1. Enter gym
2. Attend class
3. Leave gym
Very little prep work is done, with just the add-on drive to and from the gym. It was great. 60 minutes, 3 days a week. Super. Well, yoga has finally crept into my life, and the best way to put it is that it's a match for me right now. Maybe I'll divulge more on that later.

So there's this cool yoga studio above Gloria's in Uptown that has seriously had me since $15 for one week. I have since joined and am signed up for a 40 Days to Personal Revolution (book by Baron Baptiste). I hope you enjoy reading my daily entries of this journey!