Friday, May 14, 2010

Sweating and Stretching

When I'm leaning over hanging my head 6" from my towel-covered yoga mat with my hands "scooping" up my heels, pulling with my biceps, straighting those hips, breathing in through my nose and out through my nose, watching sweat trickle down my legs, I feel ...great! I've been doing hot yoga for almost 7 weeks now and I'm totally hooked. When my 10-class pass ran out, I bought the unlimited 90 day package ($210- very reasonable since I go 3-4 times per week). For two weeks, I've even been going to the 5:30 am class on Thursdays and Fridays. I'm not crazy about losing sleep but at least my other obligations don't interfere at that hour. I can tell incremental improvements every single time I go. Last week my big thrill was finally being able to grap both ankles in bow pose on the floor. Progress! And I feel so good!

I took my 4 weeks of tennis lessons and loved it but the advanced beginner class is at terrible times for me. So I'm hitting up all my tennis playing friends to play with me. So far, several say they want to but actually getting from "sure, I'd love to play with you" to "let's play Thursday at 6 PM" is a big leap.

I'm barely drinking alcohol any more. I honestly don't want it after I've exercised. I just want to rehydrate myself with water. And I'm still being careful with eating. I'm not starving myself or even doing without food. I eat absolutely no sugar or sugar products, practice portion control, and only snack on veggies and fruits, homemade yogurt, or small amounts of nuts.

So far I've lost 16 lbs and gone from a size 14 to a size 12. The only problem with that is that I don't have many size 12 clothes and I sure don't want to spend a lot of money buying size 12s. I'm aiming for at least a 10, if not an 8. So I walk around in baggy-butt pants, looking awful. Tomorrow I may stop at a thrift store and see if I can pick up a few pairs to bridge the gap.

My blood sugar is now consistently in the 80s/90s. Of course, I'm still on the metformin from Dr. Pang. I hope he'll take me off of it when I go back in June. BTW, my thinning spine turned out to be in the osteoporosis stage, per Dr. McComb. We do so many spine building exercises in hot yoga that I'm still determined to stay off osteoporosis meds. I'm giving it a year to build on my own before I jump on the pharma wagon.

In short, I'm sweating and stretching and losing and loving it!