The TFP Health Club

New yoga teacher tomorrow. He teaches flowing yoga, this will be different from what I'm doing now. Hope I can keep up with it.

 

I'm seriously thinking about yoga for stretching/loosening up purposes. I am tight as hell, particularly in the hamstrings. Any comments?

 

I've always found yoga to be very relaxing. That said, it's also quite challenging. It will loosen you up, build your core strength and it will hurt for the first little while.

 

I have my first Pilates class tomorrow evening. Irish wanted to try it and found a groupon-like deal with 4 classes for $50. I have an incredibly hard time with yoga because of my wrists do I have never enjoyed it. Plus, my brain doesn't turn off and it annoys me when people tell me to relax and breeeeeathe. I hope Pilates is entertaining at the least.

 

After having lost about 35-40 lbs the spring-summer before last, I managed to stack on 15 more in my last year of grad school. Now that that's done, and I'm getting more than 4-5 hours of sleep each night, I'm starting to keep track of what I eat. Also, the new job apparently has fitness classes each week and I started just in time for enrollment. Here's hoping for a trim, fit BVH.

 

Pilates is pretty intense; I take a class once in a while. It's a killer on your core muscles, stomach, back mostly. A lot of breathing also with pilates, but at a different pace.
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Try it out, I really like it for the stretching. Once I got over the up and down, then puk.

 

I took the 90 minute hot yoga class with the current girlfriend. Didn't do child's pose once. Still decided that stuff is pretty close to torture.

 

Definitely can be torture. "Child Pose" is interesting with a class full of people.
I really don't think I could handle the hot yoga class, much easier to get a massage to rid the body of toxins.

 

Was down to 230.8 the other morning. I have started BJJ two nights a week, and have purchased the family some bikes. Going to try to be more active overall.

 

Before and after pictures. Preferably involving that giant wheel.

 

Oh good grief... I'm going to do the 4 reformer pilates classes I purchased and then see if I'm still alive afterwards. Because right now, I am one worn-out, limp noodle. Holy crap.

 

Another 70 minutes of BJJ, which myfitnesspal app tells me is 1037 calories burnt. Woot. If I thought I could eat I have 730 calories left for today...

 

Oh yeah! My muscles were shaken like noddles in boiling water after flowing yoga. It really does feel great to be able to keep up with the class.
Have fun with it Noddle!

 

I hesitate to comment on yoga because there are so many different kinds and so many different instruction styles. I've been doing it for about 35 years (I was a mid teen when I took a class with my mom).
It will keep you flexible and limber. It will strengthen the muscles that you focus on. You don't have to do the meditation part of it. I do try to relax and focus on my breath and adjusting my postures so they are more precise.
That said, I do not like doing it in a class other than every few years as a tune-up. People--including me--are so freaking competitive and instead of really focusing, I'm sneaking peeks at other people.
It's not a 'whole' exercise regimen as you need a cardio-type regimen, too. I take two brisk walks every day. I bike & I swim. I take the stairs, don't park too close to my destination. Being in heart failure, I'm OK with that. I also hate to exercise on machines and the last time I was in a gym was when I was training for the Miss Connecticut pageant (no, of course, I didn't win. I wanted the damn scholarship and I'm utterly uncoordinated).

Cheers to everyone who is trying to maintain/improve your fitness level.

 

In the last two months I've made some pretty major changes to my diet and exercise patterns, and I can honestly say I've never felt better. I did it mainly to see what affect it would have on my mental health, and it really has made a huge difference.

At the moment, I make sure I get about 6 hours of exercise a week which is generally split between riding and walking. I recently took up racing in Cyclocross cycling events being held around the city. I thought I was fit before, I'm no where near where I need to be to even come close to competing against the lads that do this sport. So that's pushing my body even harder.

I think the most radical changes are definitely in my diet though. After doing a lot of reading and talking to a number of people who are well versed on the topic, I decided that I would try to eliminate processed food, salt, and refined sugar from my diet. It's been tough, but I'm doing quite well. I still have a lot of delicious food, but I will cook it myself from fresh ingredients I can trust. Saturated fat is OK within reason, and polyunsaturated fat is fine any time. One of the bigger changes I made that yielded the quickest results was making fruit the only food I eat before noon. It leaves me feeling way more energetic come the afternoon. Fruit before noon is the one golden rule I'm going to quite a lot of effort to stick to.

I'm not going totally overboard with it, I'll allow myself to have one or two meals a week I know are nasty. I don't feel bad about it or guilty because the rest of my diet is now very healthy and I'm doing enough exercise so that my body can effectively deal with the odd indulgence.

The main aim with the change in diet was to minimize, as much as I possibly can, the amount of refined sugar, artificial sugar, salt, and trans-fats entering my body. Unfortunately that meant cutting out basically all processed food and anything that comes out of a packet. Essentially it all came down to a lot of the things I was putting into my body and the lack of certain things all have strong links to causing depression. This hasn't been a silver bullet, nothing ever is, but it has given me the head space and stability I've needed to really start getting my shit together. And for the most part, it's working.

 

I am still maintaining a steady schedule of road cycling and running. I haven't been swimming for the past few weeks but plan on getting back into the pool next week when the rest of the family leaves town for 6 weeks.

I figure there will also be a lot less crappy food in the house as well.