Yoga Tingles

Public and Private:

So, I’ve always considered making a facebook fan page.  Just because it’s the kind of thing that might make me giggle.  The dozen or so people who read this blog could…uh…read another place where I update even less than I do here?  Yeah, so I’ve never had a reason to set one up.  If you can’t get enough of me here on this bloggity blog, well, now, it’s too bad.

Just this week, I felt I had to remove all reference to my real name here, and I even decided to remove all past job references as well.   I shall be, henceforth known only as Quix (or Quixotique, or crazy-person, or whatnot).

Because… this week, I addressed my community of millions for the first time with my real name and job title. I got my first fan invite on facebook to my RL profile page and it hit me: I need to once again make a distinction between my public and private life.  I’m going to need to set up a facebook fan page to communicate with some people who I don’t necessarily want to see my regular day-to-day updates.  If I slip and check in somewhere on yelp or gowalla and post it to facebook, I don’t want to get stalked.  It’s a bizarre, but familiar circumstance.  It was nice for a 3 year break but I so so so so missed it.

Also, adding my real identity to my RL job, I feel the need now to remove it from this blog.  There was a time when I thought this blog might be my only chance at having a soapbox.  A way to reconnect with old friends, and find new ones.  A way to have a platform to communicate with the world at large.  I knew it was in PLACE of the opportunity I had before, although it ended up being so much more.

However, now I go from thousands (old job) to tens (here) to millions (new job).  It’s awe inspiring and cool and humbling and powerful feeling, but with great power comes great responsibility.

I hope all that has to happen is to take my name off the bio.  I’ve always been hesitant to link to my game, but it’s definitely not happening now.  The health and fitness part will continue on, the life stuff will continue on, but I think I’m going to put a kiebash on any work talk.   Which I rarely do, but still.

Results of the No Weigh Experiment:

After approximately 2 months I returned to the scale yesterday.  It was actually dusty.  I hopped on and the scale rewarded me with a number of…drumroll please…

164.0

Yeah.  Let’s call this one a FAIL.  3 lbs gained in 2 months.  My food tracker has said that I should be losing between 3-5 lbs per month.  I’m going to weigh in every morning for a while to see if I’m just unreasonably bloated for some reason (I was down to 163.2 this morning), but something’s gotta give here.  I’m now 8-9 lbs over my maintenance range which is so far beyond unacceptable it’s not even funny.

Giving up sugar was a good thing to do, which I might not have done if I had to weigh (the first two weeks, I’m pretty sure I was eating a little more non-sugar stuff to compensate).  Hopefully giving up fried foods will be another step to unlocking the way to take off weight.  In the queue of things I’m thinking of trying is a month off any “diet” food (anything light or diet) and a month eating LARGE breakfasts and smaller lunches and dinners.  Taking suggestions below.  Eliminating carbs or alcohol altogether is out of the question.  I was down at 150 consuming both of them, not willing to give them up thxuverymuch.

I would like to eventually return to weighing either once a week or a month, but for now, I need to go back to daily weighing and work on taking the emotion out of it.  164.0 doesn’t make me any less of a person or an athlete, but it sure has made me short tempered the last 2 days.  To be fair, it has also made my pants a little tighter, so it’s not JUST the number, but still.  It’s a measure.  It’s like getting upset that my hair is 13.2 inches long.  If I don’t like it that length, I need to be patient and grow it out.  Or make plans to cut it.

Getting smacked in the face with a 3 lb gain after 2 months off though – no bueno.

New Gym:

So I tweeted this about my new gym: “I’d date him again because he’s intriguing, but I’m definitely not ready to go steady.”

Day One was just full of fail.  Their cardio equipment is older than I am.  I could only do 9 miles on the bike before my ass was about to fall off, and the treadmill, I could only handle 2 miles because I was already in a horrible mood, my ass hurt, and the stupid thing felt like I was going uphill the whole way (and the note on it said the incline was broken that way).  Um, yeah.  Please, let me quit my 10$/mo gym with nice new cardio equipment for this piece of shit at 50$ per month.  Not happening.

PLUS – you reserve your machine in 30 minute segments.  Cool if you’re heading there after work and want to make sure you have a treadmill or lap lane.  Bad because it is in 30 minute segments, and I was given a sideways look when I said, “hey, sometimes I have a 10k run on my training schedule and need a machine for an hour” and they were like…”um, well, if it’s really dead I *guess* you could do that but we don’t normally”.  And I watched.  People only did 30 mins on their machine.  Folks, the shortest workouts I EVER do are 5ks.  And that’s more than 30 mins with warmup and cooldown.  Especially on a shitty treadmill going uphill the whole way.

Day Two was much better.  I dropped in for a power hour type full body strength workout and dang – it was fun, it went way quick, and I felt WORKED.  My bod is totally sore today.  THIS is the kind of thing I need to keep up with weight training.  And they have a couple different ones.

Then, I swam laps for 30 mins and besides the fact that apparently my gigantic head needs a larger swim cap, it was great.  The pool lanes are super small and it was kinda crowded with 3 people, but it was totally doable.  And probably good training for tris since I’ll have people all up in my bidness anyway.  I’m thinking I’m going to stick with breaststroke this season since I’m way more comfortable with it, and eff em all if they make fun of me.

Then, I felt nice and cool from swimming so I changed and ran the mile home.

Day 3 was great.  I got there about 35 mins before class and burned some mellow calories on the arc trainer (not as nice as the one at the cheap gym, but adequate… to keep going with the dateable analogy – I wouldn’t kick it out of bed, heh), and then went in for my first yoga class ever.

I’ve never been a yoga fan.  I force myself to do it through half training so I don’t get injured or too tight, but the people who do it all the time and love it?  Sorry, but I thought y’all were crazypants.  Maybe I need to rethink that.

Being in a dark room with a mellow dude telling us what to do at first was kinda getting on my nerves and for the first 20 mins, I kept staring at the clock.  Then…I got into it.  I relaxed.  I shook off my horrible mood and stress and mind going a mile a minute and just got into the movements.  All of a sudden, I started getting tingles.  And then some time passed, and it was over.

60 mins of yoga is a decadent thing.  If we continue this gym, I will definitely have to indulge that every once in a while.  250-ish calories for an hour is not the kind of thing I can really count as a workout, but as an activity (and something I bet I can get Zliten to join me doing as well), it was well worth an hour of my time spent.

Tonight?  I embark on my very first SPINNING class.  Hopefully I will not have ladybit problems…

So the plan right now (since Zliten really loves the gym so far)?  Keep the 10$/mo gym for bike and run days that I can’t do it outside, and use this gym primarily for swimming and classes.  I hate to pay for two gyms, but they are just both 2 halves of a whole.  And it’s cheaper than the super nice expensive gym still.

That’s about it for the happs this week.  I’m just trying to make it through to Friday catching as many classes as possible and stay sane.  Question of the week: have you (or would you) pay for 2 gyms?  Avoiding, hating, or loving the scale lately?   Ever have to deal with fans that stalk you?  Of course, I’d love to hear yoga or spinning or other fabulous stories as well…