Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Figuring out the Exercise Thing

After a lot of consideration of exercise I enjoy, I settled on yoga and tennis. Because of my wacky schedule picking up our grandson Sean on alternating days I had to find a yoga facility with a schedule that worked for me. Turns out that Kernersville Hot Yoga has classes every evening plus Saturdays and Sundays. What is hot yoga? Also known as Bikram (pronounced bee-crum), it's yoga practiced in a room heated to 105 F with 43% humidity. It consists of 26 poses performed twice, the first set longer than the second set, over a 90 minute period. My first time going I was scared. I thought I might pass out from the heat. And it was tough. I felt like crap when I left. But the next morning was the first time my blood sugar reading broke 100. I was pysched. So I've been going there and sweating my a** off 2 or 3 times a week for 3 weeks. It gets better every time. And I think I've lost about 9 pounds between the yoga and eating right. The reason I say think is because I went to my Ob-Gyn today for a check-up and I weighed 9 lbs less than I did at my regular doctor 3 weeks ago. Hopefully their scales are both pretty accurate. And what's even better is that my blood sugar has been in the 80s most of the time and hasn't been above 100 sense my first session. It's hot, hard, and I enjoy it and feel good when I leave.

I had my bone density test today and it showed I'm losing bone in my spine, hips are stable. My doctor discussed one of those bone-building prescriptions but I told him I was going to try to handle it with exercise. There are some digestive issues with the meds that I'd just as soon avoid.


Tomorrow evening I start tennis lessons. I haven't played to amount to anything since I was a teenager. I loved the game back then. I hope I can hang with it now. I'm a little worried about my right ankle because it's still a little swollen and tender from a twist and fall I took a couple of weeks ago. I stopped to pick up an ankle brace and Target was out of them. Must be a lot of fat old women turning their ankles these days. I'll look somewhere else tomorrow. I hope tennis gives me aerobic exercise plus enough weight bearing exercise to improve my bone loss. Things were so much easier 20 years ago!