So...so... weak...

So it's been nearly a week since I've started going to the gym daily. Ok, really it's been five days, but that's close enough. Obviously I haven't noticed any life-altering changes. C'mon, it's been five days! BUT, I have noticed some subtle changes. I'm sleeping a bit better. I also have a bit more energy. I'm eating less (just a little) and don't really have the same sweet tooth I had before (I could eat two ice cream sandwiches and then drink and Iced Cappuccino in the same afternoon without batting an eye). I feel more satisfied, just overall satisfied. These are all good things, right? I think the biggest change is my stomach. When I lie flat on my back, or even when I'm standing first thing in the morning, I can hold my stomach pretty flat. It looks like there is no added fatty tissue there, it's just fairly flat. (That part's not new, I've always been able to do that). Where the difference lies, is that as the day progresses and I eat or drink my stomach slowly fills out. By noon, I typically look like I'm 4-5 months pregnant. I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people have questioned whether I'm pregnant or not at work. I'm at that awkward stage where you aren't sure if you should be keeping your mouth shut because I may just have a gut, or you should be shouting congratulations and asking me if it's a boy or a girl. Please don't do the former, I may cry. Lately, that hasn't been happening. I can still keep my stomach pretty flat all day. And I'm not talking engaging my muscles and sucking it all in as best I can to keep it flat. I stand naturally, hold my spine upright and my stomach is more or less flat-ish. Ok, so it's not perfect, but again, it's been five days. What I'm excited about is that I don't look 5 months pregnant by noon. I can lie on my back at bedtime and still hold my stomach mostly in check. This is exciting for me. I used to actually have abs, and my stomach was probably the part of my body I was the most happy with growing up. I had a perfectly flat stomach. Then I had two kids and a lot of junk food. Now I have stretch marks, and it'll never be what it once was, but maybe I'm on the road to getting it somewhat back to something I can be happy with.

I showed up this morning to the gym to find out, yet again, that the class I wanted was at capacity. (It didn't start for another 15 minutes, but already full).

I really need to plan better for this. It is a Holiday Monday... and the 8 am class was canceled... those could have an impact.

We could join the class if we owned our own equipment balls (the lacrosse balls and the alpha ball) but they had run out of supplies (you know the gym-owned ones you can borrow for the class). I was very tempted to run downstairs and buy the equipment on the spot so I could join up... but I left my wallet at home and they wouldn't charge the purchase directly to my account. Boo. (yes, I did try to buy them).

To be fair, I had been pricing out different yoga equipment so I could 1) bring my own and 2) have my own for at home so I could practice at home, and hopefully so I can continue doing yoga at home once I go back to school - because let's face it, I'm not going to be able to keep up my daily classes when they are all daytime classes and I am teaching somewhere out in the Dunrobin area.
The lacrosse balls I found online through Amazon, at nearly $50 for the pair. And the gym I am going to was selling them for $22 (the alpha ball was $20 - compared to the $18 on Amazon). Sounds like a deal to me.
So I gave up on making it to the first class - guess today won't be a two-class day, but I still wanted to get the Yoga balls because that's a pretty decent price. I say Lacrosse balls, but that's probably not what they are. It just gives you an idea of size. Plus they are very solid so they offer up a lot of resistance when you dig them into muscles. I think they may just be called Yoga Tune-Up balls. I headed home to grab my wallet and back again for the balls and the next class that started in an hour. I had already purchased a mat, some blocks, and a strap the night before (I had really gone for the mat, and to price-check the other stuff, but it was a combo pack that had all of the above for a decent price). Then I opened up the mat this morning and realized why it was so cheap... Apparently there is a difference in equipment quality. Who would've thunk it.??
The mat was so thin it was like doing yoga on a bed-sheet, but with grip. Except, as I discovered in the class today, this one didn't have much of that either. It flopped over on itself off of the floor repeatedly when I tried moving it or shifting positions. It also means that there is little padding between your knees and the floor if you have sore knees. (I do). So for many people, it wouldn't matter if you had a thick mat or a thin one, but I need a thicker one - as I also discovered today. Those run between $20-$180 depending on a whole bunch of factors. My youngest daughter had come shopping with me and insisted on getting her own yoga mat. She wants to do yoga at home, and we can;t share a mat. So I bought the cheap one and she got the pricier, thicker one. (we're still talking $20 vs $10). I'll just steal hers while she's at school.
Evil mommy.



I did a few sets of reps (repetitions) on the rowing machine to try and work my back muscles while I waited for the next class to start at 10:30. It felt OK, but I was so busy focusing on making sure I had my shoulders square and the right body position that I couldn't even tell you if it was working the right muscles, or which muscles it was working. It was supposed to work the ones around my shoulder blades. I was slowly drawing the bars back towards me like I was lifting 100 lbs and having difficulty, except it was more like 25 lbs and the difficulty came from struggling to make sure I had the right form. Practice makes perfect! Maybe I'll have this down by September... or Christmas would be good too...

Today was another Yoga Tune-Up class and it was super intense. This one was focused on the Core muscles. Perfect! Somewhere else I need to work on. I'm still realizing there are a lot of movements and/or stretches I just can't do because of my lack of arm strength and weak core muscles. Basically anything where I need to use my hands to hold myself up or balance part of my body weight. Can't do it. We had to balance on a roller while lying down - couldn't do it to save my life. Still gave it my best shot. And then the instructor said (to me, not the class) it looked too easy and I should move my foot closer inwards. WHAT? This looks easy? I thought I was dying.
Promptly moved foot inwards.
Promptly fell off the roller.
Fail.
I fell off the roller in two other exercises we were doing as well. I also dropped the blocks when we were doing this bizarre wrist rotation thing by balancing the blocks on our finger tips and rotating our wrists around while keeping the blocks on top of them. That was hard. But really cool. I lost my balance and nearly fell over repeatedly when we were balancing on one foot and tracing figure-8s in the air with our other toe. I figured out it's because I try to balance on my toes and have no idea how to drive my weight down through my heel. Same as on the roller; I have no idea how to drive my weight down through my lower back - it just keeps popping up off the floor, mat, roller, whatever.
We did some squat moves and some leg stretches, but with the goal of strengthening our core muscles.
There was quite a number of balancing movements.
I have no balance.
You can imagine how that went.
There were a number of exercises that I was surprisingly decent at. Yay! I don't totally suck at Yoga.
I think each class I go to is making me love Yoga just a little bit more. And none of them are what I pictured a yoga class being like. I don't think I've down "downward dog" or "Warrior pose" in a single class I've been to yet. Not that I have anything against either of those poses, I just happen to know their names as a comparison of what I haven't been doing in my Yoga classes.

I have been stretching and working groups of muscles I didn't know existed. It feels so good.

Overall, I think the class today was really good. I liked the instructor's outgoing attitude and how he circulated to make sure we were all doing the movements properly. You could hear him going around and tweaking the way different people were holding themselves, and making suggestions or modifications - all with a good sense of humour. There is nothing more off-putting than the expert telling you blatantly that you suck at whatever you are trying to learn how to do. He wasn't like that at all. I must've been doing something right because I only got corrected once or twice. It was the first time I'd broken a sweat doing Yoga: I sweat for most of the class. And, embarrassingly, also farted a couple of times. There is nothing like obviously being the one who has just broken wind in a silent room of yogis contemplating their navels while soft, nature sounds play dimly in the background. Yeah. That was me. It's not even like you can hide it. And do I say "excuse me" and break the silence even further? Or just pretend it never happened (which it clearly did)? That was my moral dilemma for the day.

Ah well, the class was really good. I broke a sweat, I tried to hold poses and stretch muscles I didn't know existed. Let me tell you, when I stood up at the end of the class, I felt sooo weak. You know that feeling when you forgot to eat in the morning and you try to stand up, and it just feels like all of your muscles (and your legs) are going to give out beneath you because there's no strength left so you drop back down to the floor? Yeah. That's the one. I had breakfast though. My usual banana and yogurt in a blender to make a smoothie. Simple, delicious, and very satisfying. I find that if I eat cereal in the morning then I'm weak with hunger and feeling faint by second period. No good. This has relatively the same amount of carbs, but far more nutrients, and for some reason tends to stick to my ribs a little more thoroughly so that I can make it through to lunch with no problem.

Walking out of there today though was one shaky step after the other trying to make it back to my car. (without looking too obvious)

And oh my goodness. The gym I'm at has the Yoga studio on the second floor.

STAIRS.

I felt my legs tremble with every step. I'm trying to walk calmly down the stairs without touching the railing because I know if I do I will probably grip onto it for dear life and look like one of those people learning how to use an escalator for the first time as I grip on for dear life and try to walk down the stairs. You know what I'm talking about; they look ridiculous because they're hanging on for dear life and trying to walk up the escalator like it's stairs, but still somewhat terrified that they're going to face plant with every shaky step. Yeah, no thanks.
So I'm trying to look cool and not give away that my legs are trembling and I'm afraid I'm going to fall down the stairs. I maybe pulled it off, who knows. At least I didn't run into any students.

Oh yeah, and before the class I ran into my personal trainer from Friday. I had emailed him about my weight loss goals. i.e. if the InBody reading says I have 77.9 lbs of body fat, is losing 65 lbs a realistic goal? He said that for the average person, 18-25% body fat is the ideal range. Ok. I can work with that. I'm at 39.1%, so I have a good 15-20% of my weight to lose. That's roughly 40 pounds, taking me to roughly 160. So how did I ever weigh 135 lbs before? Who knows. I think that also means I sort of have to use their scale (at $35 a pop) to figure out if I've hit my goals or not.

Or... I could just be a normal person and be satisfied with the overall way I look and feel without really caring too much what the scale says. I've never been a big fan of scales anyway. The thing is though, with my scale at home I can be mildly curious and step on to check myself once in a while. I don't own a fancy-smancy InBody scale. I have a feeling my curiosity is going to get the best of me at least a few times and I'm going to pay the damn fee to step onto that thing and get a reading. *Le sigh*. Maybe if I only do it once every few months when I feel like I've made progress it won't be so bad (says she, stepping onto the scale the very next week). I wonder if I can buy one for cheaper...

He said to email him if I needed anything. I'm not sure if that was serious or just a gym-engineered catch-phrase to make it seem like they'll be happy to help, even if I'm not paying for personal training. It's OK, he answered my question and pretended to be sincere that I could ask him questions. That's all I need.

After today's workout the shoulders are definitely sore. And I think I may have another evening of numbness up and down my arm again. It's the type of numbness that applying icy hot gel won't fix. I can only try to massage out the muscle and hope it regains feeling.
Tomorrow I think I want to try this combo class that looks like it's choreographed moves while using light weights. So aerobics? dance? with weights? Not sure. I'll let you know how it goes (or if I chicken out). I was tempted to try and go back to a second class this evening, but with the Holiday everything has been canceled.