A case of the Mondays

Never has a yoga class felt like such a treat as it did on Friday. Friday was a loooooooong and stressful day at work. Thankfully I'm doing a 30 day challenge and I HAD to go to yoga. Can't fail now! I was almost giddy in class because I was so thankful to be out of the office.

Well now I'm back. I'm sure my class today will feel like a wonderful treat. I'm expecting another busy day.

Day 24!

Today in yoga I did this pose

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And then I made this face

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Ok. I only held this pose for a few seconds, but that’s a few seconds longer than I ever held it before. Day 24 was a success. Less than a week left now!

Day 94786590394521

Ok it's actually only day 21, but it sure feels like more.

Last I left you, I promised to try to work harder and you know what? I think I am. I’m feeling things in class that I’ve never felt before. Different muscles are sore after class. I’m listening to the teacher and I’m SUCKING in my abs. (Turns out, those muscles are actually really useful.) I’m even learning to love the poses that I hate.

Like this one

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Or this one, except that mine looks NOTHING like this

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I still don’t love this one yet and I’m not sure that I ever will, but hey, I’m trying it at least.

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The funny thing that I’m learning is that you never really will get all of it perfectly, and that’s ok. For some reason, going into yoga I thought that I would do yoga, become flexible, and everything would just stay that way and be wonderful. That doesn’t happen. Our bodies are not perfect. We will never be able to do everything perfectly. But I think that’s ok. So for my last week and a half of my 30 day challenge, I’m going to keep working hard, but I’ll try to remember it’s ok to not be perfect.

30 day Update

I somehow got super busy today, but I’d like to take 2 minutes to update you on my 30 day challenge.

We will not speak of day 15. I don’t know what happened, but I really wasn’t “there” that day. Day 16 was a little better. Then something happened half way through my Day 17 class. I realized I was kind of coasting, just doing what I knew I could do, and not trying to do anything extra. The second half of the class was amazing. I tried and because I tried, and REALLY tried not just half tried, I felt things I hadn’t really felt before. Like there are a lot more muscles in my stomach than I thought, and I wasn’t using most of them in my sit up. And my calf reached a whole new level of stretchiness. Here’s to day working hard on day 18!

Also here’s a picture of Jack McBrayer (aka Kenneth from “30 Rock”). He was at the Apple store learning all about iCloud.

Day 14!

I’ve realized something. Now, this may sound shocking, but I think too much. I know. How can I think too much? In class, the teacher gave me a correction on one of my postures. I started laughing because I realized that EVERY teacher gives me that same exact correction. After class I asked about it. I asked how to do it. I was really hoping for some top secret tip. Nope. He said to stop thinking about it and just do it. *Sigh* The problem with thinking is usually your brain just gets in the way. It tells you things like “This is too hard” or “It’s too hot in here” or “I’ll do this tomorrow.” Sometimes your brain even says things like “I look pretty good doing this” or “I think I’m doing this right” but even those thoughts get in the way. If we’re thinking about it too much, we’re not really feeling it.

Now, how do you stop thinking? It’s easy to shut off my brain when I’m browsing Facebook or when I’m watching reality TV. But it’s hard to not think when you’re thinking about not thinking. But I’m trying. Today, I focused on just listening to the teacher, without adding my own thoughts. It helped but it wasn’t easy. I guess that’s what I’m going to be working on for the last half of my 30 day challenge. Not thinking. Who woulda thought?

Well, I went for the work from home route. Today will be day 10 and I gotta say, I'm having a rough time. Every time I have a strong and amazing class, it's followed by a class where I feel like I'm going to die and all I can think about is running from the room. I think it happens to keep my ego in check.

I'm about to head over to the lunch time class soon. Here's to hoping I don't feel like dying.

Yoga Dilemma

I’m a week in and my 30 day challenge and I know that this is the part where it starts to get hard and you start thinking “Is this EVER going to end?” But so far, I think it’s going really well. I’m learning lots of interesting things about my body. You would think that doing the same poses over and over again would get really stale and boring, but it doesn’t. Each time it feels different. During my pilates adventures, I discovered a whole bunch of core muscles that I literally didn’t know existed. You know what? Using those muscles really helps! Things that seemed totally impossible are now just nearly impossible just by using those muscles. And I also don’t distribute my weight evenly. My left leg doesn’t do as much work as my right. Who knew?

I now have a dilemma. This Thursday, my friends and I are going to see Wicked. I literally haven’t seen a Broadway show in FOREVER, so this should be pretty exciting. BUT if I go to the show after work, I can’t go to yoga and I can’t fail the 30 day challenge! So here are my options:

1. Get up at 5:30am and go to the early morning class, then to work, then to the show. But that sounds EXHAUSTING.
2. Skip it. I know that they’ll let you make up one of your classes another day by doing two classes in one day. I could do that, but that feels like cheating.
3. If I could find some reason to work from home for the day, I could take a long lunch and go then. But what would my reason be?

So which one do I go with?

Yum!

Breakfast: Pumpkin bread with almond butter and half a grapefruit. Yum!

Sometimes you feel like a nut butter

I’ve completed 5 days of my 30 day challenge, but I’ve already started losing track. I’m already feeling really great and loose, except for this darn cold. The strange thing is I feel cruddy most of the day, until I get into what we affectionately call the “hot room.” I think the humidity does something to really clear out my head. That plus all the sweat going up my nose. If that sounds unappealing, it kind of is, but trust me, it works. I’m not really looking forward to day 6. I gotta admit that I may have gone out last night and I may have had a few too many drinks do I might be moving a little slow today.

In other and, in my opinion, more exciting news, I’ve been playing with my new food processor and today I made my own almond butter. I’ve always loved peanut butter, but Josh is allergic and since he’s moved in, my breakfast has been nut butter-less. I always look at the almond butter and say, I’m going to get that, but I can never justify spending $8 on the tiniest bit of butter. As I was perusing the food processor instruction book I cam across a section on how to make your own nut butters and I was sold. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is. You literally put the nuts in the food processor (they can be raw or roasted, up to you) and turn it on. I stopped it every 5 minutes or so to scrape the sides. All in all it took about 20 minutes of running it to create a nice thick almond butter.

You can run it longer if you like it creamier. A quick internet search also recommended adding flavors to your nut butter, like cinnamon, cocoa, orange zest- almost anything really.

Now I have fresh almond butter sitting in my fridge and it didn’t cost me an arm and a leg. I can’t wait to spread some on my pumpkin bread for breakfast!

Bikram Yoga-versary

A week or two ago I celebrated my 2 year Bikram yogaversary. How do you celebrate this? By doing more yoga! Last year, I did a 30 day challenge, where you do 30 consecutive days of yoga. It really deepened my practice and my understanding of my body, so I decided to do it again!

In all fairness I started on Jan 3rd, but after the first day I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. I felt like I was coming down with a bit of a cold and really didn’t want to continue. I feel better now and can safely say, I’m totally doing this! Today, will be day three. A thirty day challenge is a bit like running a marathon. You can’t go all out on the first day and burn out so for now, I feel pretty good, but ask me again around day 15. And speaking of marathons, registration for the Chicago marathon is Wed Feb 1st at 12 CST. I’ve set about 10 reminders. I’m not going to miss the sign up.

So far, 2012 is off to a pretty good start!

New Year's News Flash!

You know how I just talked about my resolutions? And you know how I said I would try to avoid the free food just because it's free? I've encountered my first test. At this very moment, there are free pastries and bagels (inevitably left over from some morning meeting) in the kitchen. So far, I've resisted the urge. I hope someone takes them soon. It's really just that I HATE seeing food wasted. I would hate to see perfectly good bagels thrown away so I don't feel the need to take them.

Resolutions, give me strength!

Happy New Year!

I hope you all enjoyed your New Year (and your time off). I certainly have. Here’s a run down of my epic New Year’s adventures.

I got off of work early on Friday. (Always a treat)

Saturday I went to yoga, ate some strawberry pancakes, then went to a party at my friends’ apartment. Aren’t we pretty?

The best part was this party was about 10 blocks from my apartment, so I didn’t have to ride the subway with drunken idiots. The worst part was I decided to wear my new heels and my feet were killing me. We couldn’t find a cab at the end of the night and I ended up walking home 10 blocks in my stockings. Not ashamed to admit that at all. (Ok, maybe a little)

Sunday afternoon was brunch with my friends. I made a super tasty egg strata with asparagus, mushrooms and red pepper and homemade salsa (made with my snazzy new food processor). We also had our very own New Year’s baby.

New Year's baby looks sleepy :)

On Monday, I watched the Rose Parade and did my laundry in the morning. In the afternoon, Josh and I went to sushi lunch and the Sherlock Holmes movie. All in all, I say it was a pretty good weekend.

Now to the important stuff- the New Year’s resolutions. I treat my resolutions different than other people. I don’t like to make resolutions that you can fail at, like no more chocolate. I like resolutions like eat less chocolate. Sometimes you might fall off the wagon, but then you don’t have to feel like a total failure. So here’s my (kind of long) list of things that I’d like to work on in 2012.

• Pay off my credit cards. Just one more to go!
• Become a legitimate staff member at work.
• Run Chicago marathon in under 5 hours. I’d also like to actually train properly and push myself a little harder. As much as I hate it, weight training (and having muscles) is pretty important to marathon running.
• Eat smaller portions at meal time and SLOW DOWN.
• Just because food is free, doesn’t mean I NEED to eat it.
• Eat less meat and certainly less “mystery” meat. If I’m going to eat meat, it should be something quality and organic.
• Play piano once a week. I always liked playing the piano, and now I can barely read music. Not cool.
• Blog more. I know you’re all DYING to know what I’m up to :)
• Set up blog analytics.

Seems like a tall order, but I think I'm up to the task in 2012. Here's to an amazing year!