Hungry

Yesterday, I decided to exercise twice despite the two hour bike ride on Sunday. I hamstered for a while on the elliptical trainer at lunchtime, and after work I went to my normal weights class. But it wasn't the regular instructor, and the substitue is someone known at my gym for teaching really difficult classes. Yesterday was no exception; there was some stuff I couldn't do because of my leg (the 1-10-1 jumping jacks/pushups pyramid was done all on my left leg) and a lot of stuff that was really, really hard. I was quite knackered after the workout was over and called OF while I walked home, and didn't realize until I'd been home about 10 minutes and hung up the phone with her exactly how spacey and out-of-it I really was. Then I kind of fell over. Then I ate a handful of walnut pieces and some turkey, flopped on the couch, and asked Dan if he could get me some juice, because hoo boy that was some low blood sugar. Last night before bed, Dan got this worried look on his face and confronted me about the incident, and I reassured him that I'd eaten enough food (I had! just should have eaten sooner after that second workout).

Today during the breathing part of my yoga class, the instrutor (as always) said something about focusing on the reasons you come to your mat, giving thanks for those intentions, and I decided to give thanks for the ability to do yoga again. I am really, really sore from all the crazy pushups and other stuff I did yesterday, but I was still able to do most of the yoga poses and flow from one to the next without too much difficulty. I have plans to go swimming for the first time in ages after work at a local pool. But I didn't count on the hunger. Today I brought with me string cheese, an orange, some baby carrots and grape tomatoes, and some leftover black bean/corn salad. It wsn't enough. I am really, really hungry now, and in a few minutes it'll be time to go home. If I eat right when I get home, I'll have a lead belly while I'm trying to swim. So I'm not sure what I'll do. I burned a lot of calories the past few days, because my leg is finally up for extended exercise (and I'm sure swimming will be good for it, too), and I *want* to be burning calories. But I also don't want another low-blood-sugar incident, so I'm not sure what to do.

This black bean and corn salad is the only good thing to come out of my first full-time job in Colorado (meaning, not a temp job) - I worked at the state Medicaid agency and they paid me to do things like sort/count paper clips and hanging file tabs. I'm not even kidding. It was the worst working environment I'd ever been in (even worse than the publishing company in the Bay Area with the misogynistic boss who only hired women he thought would be subservient) and morale was terribly low for the whole five months I worked there. But one time, there was a potluck, and a lady who worked there brought this black bean/corn salad. And it was SO GOOD. I made it last week to go with a meal of turkey brats and grilled zucchini/asparagus.

Black bean/corn salad (scaled down to serve 2 with some leftovers)

1 14.5 oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 small can (9 oz?) corn (or you could use a cup of fresh off the cob or frozen), drained
1/3 chopped red bell pepper
1/3 chopped medium size red onion
handful chopped cilantro
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp chili powder
juice of 1/2 lime
1 tsp olive oil
few dashes rice wine vinegar
optional: 1/2 finely diced jalapeno

Mix everything up in a bowl and let it sit for an hour or so in the fridge to let the flavors meld together. Eat. SO GOOD.

Friday fitness 1: Back in the saddle

You know how people say that when you want to lose weight, you should eat better and exercise more? Well, what if you already do that?

My exercise habit became pretty much ingrained at the age of 3, when I started ballet classes. I was one of the few people for whom ballet came easily and naturally, and ended up being put en pointe (that means I got to wear toe shoes) at age 11, significantly younger than usual. I took ballet classes several times a week for my entire childhood, punctuated by about a year or so where I didn't take ballet after I burnt out a bit. I started right back up again and was taking classes 4 days a week all through high school, usually 90 minutes at a time of great aerobic workout and a lot of stretching. At night, I'd do 100 crunches and 100 leg lifts before bed. Summers I spent on the town's swim team, sprinting my way through freestyle and breast stroke races at swim meets and spending hours in the pool every day. After the Great Hip Debacle of 1996, I quit ballet in college and started looking for other ways to move my body. Walking around campus, while good exercise, just wasn't enough for me. I swam and used the campus rec center a few days a week. I took a taekwondo class my senior year. Anything to keep my body moving, keep the blood flowing, get that exercise high that I'd had regularly for my entire life within memory.

I'd never liked running much before, but after I'd had a few years away from the ballet that had permanently changed my hip sockets, I decided to try again. I started running once in a while at a dirt track near campus, way up a hill. As with swimming, my style was definitely sprinting rather than long distances, but eventually I figured out how to run a whole mile, and then two, and then I was running almost every day after work at the Berkeley High School track. I even trained for a 5K and ran the Race For the Cure through Golden Gate Park in something like 22 minutes. I didn't have much body fat anymore, but I wasn't paying attention to that because the running seemed to keep me feeling good. I met Dan in 2001 while I was still running all the time, and I switched jobs in January of 2002 - I didn't have time to do much running anymore because of my commute, but I did join a posh gym through work for pretty cheap and went almost every day. Then every day. Then sometimes twice a day. I was in the best shape of my life, taking Pilates and lifting weights and running on treadmills.

Throughout my life, whenever I've had a gap in physical exercise, I start to feel cranky and sluggish, and then I have bad mood swings, and then my clothes stop fitting. When I moved to Colorado in January of 2003, I didn't have any means of regular outdoor exercise (it was too cold!) and I started going stir crazy so I invested in some Pilates videos and did them a few times a week. Then we started marathon training later that year, so I was running all the time (and also gaining weight, but that was from a prescription gone bad). After the marathon, I needed a break from running so eventually I joined the gym where I've been going ever since.

I took a few classes at first, tried their cardio salsa and a pilates class or two. The classes I was really interested in trying were taught by people I didn't like, so I gave up on classes and spent a couple of years doing a regular weight circuit, increasing weight and reps as my routine got easier, and using the same treadmill, elliptical, and recumbent bike in various combinations. Even working out 4 or 5 days a week, I still did more maintain fitness than lose weight unless I really restricted calories. A couple of months ago, despite my regular routine, hiking nearly every weekend, and eating healthily and seasonally all summer, I started noticing tight clothes again.

This is a scary thing for me. I don't like gaining weight. My body image is fragile as is, and I've got a wedding coming up where people will be looking at me in a fitted dress all day (and there will also be photos, lots of photos). I don't know if I can severely restrict calories through another snowy Colorado winter, and I don't know if I can handle working out two hours a day rather than one or one and a half. The time is about to change and I'm about to pretty much never see the sun; I've got to do something to stave off seasonal depression and also to ensure my dress still fits when I get to visit it in December.

So what could I do? I decided to take a new look at the class list offered by my gym, and noticed there were a lot of things that hadn't been offered before. New people were teaching classes. I'd have to start scheduling my gym time during peak hours (when all the classes are), but it's a small price to pay to help me break out of the fitness rut I'm in. So far, in the last month I've taken a few different yoga classes, something called Power Pump, and Qi Gong. A couple of weeks ago, I took my fisrt ever spinning class, and it made my butt sore for several days, but for the most part I was able to keep up with the class, and I even liked it. Yesterday I took my first Pilates class in three years, and you know something? Today I'm sore in spots, but I didn't lose much flexibility and the soreness feels good. The one difficulty I'm having with Pilates and yoga is my shoulder that got messed up in the car accident I had last summer (it's still not all the way better) so I just have to modify sometimes when there's a lot of downward dog. But it was a great class, and I intend to go back in two weeks when I'll be back in the office and not out of town during class.

My intention is to try a new class every week this month, and start regularly attending the ones I like. I like the Thursday afternoon spin instructor, and I like the Power Pump. I like this Pilates class I took yesterday. I bet there are more good classes to be taken, and in the meantime I'll continue with the cardio and weights, with walking/hiking on the weekends that the weather is good. Dan and I are both committed to health and fitness this winter, so I need to get some waterproof boots so we can go snowshoeing when it starts to be really snowy. I've heard that's good exercise, and I'm looking forward to it. Fridays this month I'll write about my progress in clothes-fitting-better and write a review of the new class I took.
Next week is my last travel week, so the only day I'll be able to take a new class is Wednesday. Here's the schedule (warning: pdf). Any suggestions? (and any classes offered before 8 AM, I won't be attending. I like sleep too much.)