Building On Good Routines

A little over a month ago, I wrote about how I was turning over a new leaf. Since then, I’ve been doing the basics of what FlyLady.net talks about. I’m not doing anything fancy, I’m just doing the basics. However, I have been trying to build on the basics and expand ever so slowly in all aspects of my life. I may not be catching up on everything that I’m behind on as fast as I would like, but I’m building good habits and replacing bad ones. In the past, I would throw myself into a project to catch up and let everything else slide, thus I would be done with something I was behind on, but there’d be even more to do after the one fire was put out. These baby steps are tough to abide by, but I’m starting to see results, so I’m sticking to my guns. One baby step that feels like a huge step starts tomorrow – Holly and I are going to get healthy.

This idea all started with an episode of Rock Bodies on VH1 called From Flab To Fab. In a nutshell, they took 4 normal women and did a 3 month makeover by giving them a team of people to help them lose weight. They had a trainer, chef, the works. At the end they all had lost a ton of weight and I was quite impressed! The regimen had them working out twice a day for 5 days a week. They were restricted to 1350 calories a day and they burned 1000 a day. Given that I’m a bit extreme by nature, that type of grueling workout touched a nerve and I wanted to do the same thing.

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Getting Back On The Wagon

I don’t know how it happened, but I have not been doing much in the way of exercise at all for the past few months. Well, with all the progress that I’ve been making in getting caught up with work and life in general, it was time to get back in the gym.

Holly and I had choir rehearsal at 7:00pm, so when we got out at 8:00pm we headed straight to the Harding Place Family YMCA. We had never been to this location, so it took a little orienting to figure out what we could do. All in all, it’s a very nice facility albeit a little smaller than the Maryland Farms location.

I did 20 minutes on the treadmill and then a series of weight machines for my legs. When I said I was ready to go, Holly tried to delay me by asking me to do some sit ups. It was on an incline bench and without even thinking about it, I just jumped on it and did 10. I was dying at the high elevation it was set at, so I lowered it down to a very small incline and did 10 more.

Overall it felt pretty good considering that it has been over 2 months since I’ve been in the gym. I’m guessing that it’s been all the manual labor that I’ve been doing on the weekends.

Yoga And My State Of Zzzzzzzzzen

Yesterday I was quite adventurous and decided to ride my bicycle to the gym. 11 miles later I arrived at the Maryland Farms YMCA feeling pretty good about the ride and in high spirits that my cycling is improving. I was there to attend the 6:30 Gentle Yoga class taught by Bliss Wood. It’s a great class and Bliss is really good about giving alternative poses for those of us that are as limber as Frankenstein. She’s even beginning to push us just a little bit by giving us some more challenging asanas.

I arrived there feeling all loose and ready to tackle the class having cycled for the last hour and a half. Of course that’s not the ideal state of your “body mind” when you enter a yoga class , but I was still breathing a little heavy and cruising on the adrenaline of accomplishment. The class is an hour long and as the class progressed, I was feeling more and more relaxed, but still getting a good workout from all the poses. Towards the end of the class, she leads us in a bit of guided meditation. It’s one of the best parts of the class because you really feel open and relaxed and mellow. At the end of the meditation, she rings a little bell and then has us sit up as she closes the class.

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