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October 25, 2009
Pumpkin Day!
People who have heard of his Orangeness' orangeness are often disappointed that he's not, say, the color of a pumpkin, or of the little class schedule from Practice that I've taken to carrying around like a magical amulet. He's just a slight peach that I find lovely.
Well, after today, he may be more orange, because I have declared this lovely fall day to be Pumpkin Day!
Lunch: smokey curried pumpkin soup with cauliflower, pumpkin and ricotta parfait with Walden Farms chocolate sauce for dessert
Dinner: Pumpkin and shiitake stuffed eggplant, pumpkin apple bake for dessert
Recipes posted once I work them out...
Enjoy a happy fall!
Posted by april at 5:34 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 23, 2009
CR, Yoga and Immunity
When I was on serious CR, I could not get sick. No matter what bug went through the office, I would not get it. I could drink after someone with bronchitis and not get it. I was completely immune.
Below 108 lbs, I have never been sick. Above, I can get sick.
Then for about two years of doing "healthy eating, obesity avoidance" and holding a weight that is on the low end of the height and weight charts "healthy weight" for my height, I could get sick again. Two winters in a row I got really, really sick.
Since I began studying with Jonathan four weeks ago, I have lost four pounds, while at the same time I have built muscle I never had before. MR calls my calf muscles "astonishing." I must be burning visceral fat because I am only losing a small amount of weight but I look very different. My injuries are almost miraculously healed, including a tailbone injury that had plagued me since August of 2008.
I've been working very hard at my CR, keeping my calories between 1200 - 1400 almost every day (with a few exceptions last weekend when I went out with the guys!) I am still not at 108, but getting there, and I think this 108 will be very different from my previous, muscle-less inactive 108. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get back to my all time low, 99, which I held briefly during a time when I was completely sedentary. But that's okay... I'm not giving up my yoga or my yoga muscles.
I'm clearly not at the point in the balance where the absolute immunity kicks in, because I came down with a cold on Tuesday. Not swine flu! Just a run of the mill cold like I got last fall. But this time, something was different. The cold itself was much less severe, and while I started to get sick in earnest on Wednesday afternoon, it's Friday now and I am almost completely recovered. Last year I was sick for two weeks, then got sick again just before Christmas, and was sick for two more weeks. This year my calories are lower, my diet is healthier, and while my weight isn't as low as I'd like it to be, I'm carrying around a lot of heavy muscle. People keep commenting how I look different, and better. The kind of yoga I'm studying with Jonathan isn't cardio, so I'll have to get back to the treadmill (and Susie is back so we are going to the gym together) but it builds incredible muscle. Jonathan himself is probably the most physically perfect human being I've ever been in the same room with. Super skinny, but with absolutely beautifully defined muscles from years of yoga practice.
I'll never look like Jonathan... I mean, I'm a girl for starters. And I'm okay with that. :) But I can tell the changes in my body are headed in a direction I'm very pleased with. It's funny because I think a lot of people who do vinyasa style yoga (the flowy, dancy kind) would find Jonathan's class boring. After all, we learn the poses, step by step, and there's nothing dance-y about it. Sometimes we repeat sequences over and over and over again until we get them close to right. There's something incredibly freeing to the mind about repeating a challenging sequence until it becomes the background. There's something incredibly freeing to the mind about doing an asana *right* but enough about that... I save that for my yoga blog (if you want an invite, send me your email and I'll invite you. I left it private to keep out the crazies.)
But back to the physical. I am building a kind of muscle studying yoga with Jonathan that is both different and stronger from the kind of muscle I had doing vinyasa. I'm building core strength that has helped me sit properly, relieving pressure on my old tailbone injury. Extreme calf muscles from activating the back leg in standing poses are really just entertaining to play with. It's kinda embarassing how many of my close friends I've made feel my calves. And the muscle is heavy. I think I am dropping fat at a rather amazing rate, all the while building muscle. The proof is in the practitioners, and Jonathan and his fellow teachers of this sort of yoga are all quite incredible to look at.
Oh, and he can pick me up with one arm. And has done so. He is so strong that it's barely an effort to adjust me in various asanas.
But enough about yoga. Point being, I think something is happening in my body as a result of all this very powerful yoga that is helping my immune system, in conjunction with CR. At a higher total weight, but lower body fat percentage, my immunity seems improved. Of course I have kept my calories very, very low for the last couple of weeks for the most part, and that no doubt helps. Cause I really kicked this cold fast. By tomorrow it will be like it never happened. And I'll be back in class!
Posted by april at 11:46 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 21, 2009
Road Food Haiku
Sorry for the gap in writing... I've been super busy, between work and managing to fit in a class with Jonathan almost every day. I am amazed at the progress I'm making in yoga. More on that later...
Today I'm on the road, so no class. :( But I did get to have one of my favorite road food breakfasts, as you will see.
Roadfood Haiku:
Subway Club Salad
There is no better breakfast
Mustard on my nose.
Posted by april at 8:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 11, 2009
Wheat Grass Juice
Hi Shelia!
Great to hear from you!
MR says, "We are indifferent to wheat grass juice." It has a lot of nutrients, but no fiber. We don't drink it, but if you want to, it's fine, it won't hurt you.
I'm on day three of yoga teacher training... more when I resurface!
Posted by april at 8:19 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 6, 2009
Updates
Long day of running action team meetings at Temple... am exhausted and need bed but too wound up to sleep immediately.
In answer to the question of how many calories, I've blogged extensively about this but the short answer is figure out how much you're eating now by *honestly* logging your current food into a nutritional software program, then stop dropping 100 calories a day at a time. Go up if you lose more than a pound a week. Go down if you're not losing at all.
I had an okay day, food wise, for a day when I was out the whole time.
I need to go to bed... yoga with Jonathan tomorrow morning, and having some practices away from him have given me things to reflect upon and questions to ask. It is wonderful to have found a teacher who is so easy to understand. I just feel like he speaks my language, and he's so exacting in a way I find invigorating, not intimidating. And he's so careful to make sure we're okay... a few days ago I absolutely fell out of shoulder stand: it is such a healing pose for my tailbone injury, and doing it with proper form I was experiencing so much release of energy that I just couldn't hang on to it anymore, so I literally fell over and rolled up to sitting. He practically flew across the room (I suspect that Jonathan is an Elf, in the Lord of the Rings sort of way) the put me in a safe lying down posture to recover. And sure enough, by the time the rest of the class met me in the lying down posture, I was fine. He's so present with his classes, and so incredibly good at sensing where we are and how we can actually push to the next level with just a few adjustments. I am both humbled and inspired by taking classes with him. I want to be a teacher, but not until I can come somewhere much closer to knowing what he knows. I realize that when I've taken class many days in a row in the past, I've often sustained minor injuries, and ended up feeling a bit sore in some joints, especially my right knee, afterwards. Taking seven days in a row of class, most of them with Jonathan, I have no pain at all. Pain I had before is gone. And I still feel that zingy feeling in my body of building strength.
More important is the mental and spiritual angle. I realize that I was trying to do a kind of yoga that looks pretty, when what I should have been doing was yoga that quiets the mind. It's meditation in motion, and it seems to somehow release the stuff that I can't release any other way. I've tried so many other paths... nothing but yoga works. As with labor organizing, I'm here because I lack a better idea. And like labor organizing, nothing else feels so good.
So tomorrow morning I'll be taking the train and running nine blocks to take class with Jonathan. I hope to take class with one of his teachers soon too... that should be amazing.
I am thinking of starting a yoga blog, so the innocent people who come here for CR info can avoid long discussions of half moon balance and how much those blankets sure do help.
Major yoga geek out. I start teacher training in three days!
Posted by april at 8:52 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 5, 2009
It's A Long Hard Road That Leads To a Brighter Day
So there are a couple of developments in my life that remind me of the giant warm sun, shining his rays out along every one of our endeavors.
Or maybe there are three.
First, the nurses at our largest local, along with the techs and professionals whom we organized in 2006 at the same hospital, are squaring off with their management, about to go on the biggest strike anyone can remember in Pennsylvania health care history. Why? Because they're not willing to give up their pensions, their decent wages, their children's college tuition, their health insurance. Because if every union worker had taken the strong stand that these health care workers are taking, you probably wouldn't be paying for your health insurance. You might have a pension to look forward to when you retire. But no... corporate capitalism figured out how to defeat most of the working people of our county, and we are all paying the price. So now, in 2009, seemingly so late to the party, the Temple nurses, techs and professionals standing up to their management and fighting for what they, their patients, and all of us deserve, is a cause for much rejoicing indeed.
The second development is that I have found my teacher. My yoga teacher that is. Jonathan is his name. He looks like he could be anywhere from 18 to 30, but for all I know he is fifty and just looks amazing. He is such a brilliant teacher that after the first class I took with him, I thought, "This man could teach me to do yoga." My CR sister Lisa Walford, a pioneer in yoga instruction herself, checked him out, and sure enough, he has studied with excellent teachers. In many ways, he is the MR of yoga. There is a right way, and there is definitely a wrong way. I wish someone who knows MR from the CR list would come take Jonathan's class, just so we could giggle at how similar their teaching styles are. Here is the good news: you don't have to be naturally flexible or strong to do the poses right: you have to be willing to take instruction and use props as necessary, and to focus more on proper form than on looking fancy in yoga-inspired dance. Just as you can be a successful CR practitioner if you use the software, eat proper nutrition, and cut your calories (but not too much!) way before you get all skinny, you can be a successful yoga practitioner is you do the asanas right, even if you can't touch the floor in half moon balance and you're using the wall or he's holding you up. Last Thursday as he was holding me up in my first ever proper half moon balance pose, I felt 35 years of fear and lack of confidence melt away or burn off, and I thought, "This is amazing. I will be back."
Third, I am incredibly cheered by the appearance of a new CR blogger, my friend Sie, who is blogging over at http://www.paleocron.blogspot.com/. She is younger than I am, doing paleo, and tons of fun. So many CR bloggers have come and gone, and it makes me happy to welcome a new one. This life isn't easy... trust me, it's easier at first than it is a couple of years in. But it's so worthwhile. The recent connection with my sisters, both younger and older, has really revitalized me.
Speaking of sisters, my girl Susie has recently returned from maternity leave, and is now the proud parent of the cutest little girl in the world, whose blog name will be Sarah. Susie is already back to pre-pregnancy weight and looks like she'd fit in a lot better at a CR conference than I would: she is tall and skinny and gorgeous. But these days I have a wonderful man waiting at home for me who thinks (however he may be delusional) that I am the most beautiful woman in the world, and tomorrow my body will twist into odd positions that will bring me ever closer to a state that if not enlightenment, we can at least call a respite from the dark. 35 is a funny age... an age when people finally start to take you seriously, but (no matter what great shape you're in) construction workers whistle you 10% less often. It's a challenge to all of us, to figure out where we fit in the world. It's frightening to me to realize how much of my self-esteem I had previously depended on men to reinforce. I know that today being able to organize a hospital or properly execute half moon balance (even if I need block, wall, and Jonathan to do it) is more important to me than being considered cute. But would I love to be considered as cute as I was when I was 25? ABSOLUTELY!
Still, there is something about being older and a bit wiser and not quite as crazy that is about 100 times better. And the ability to rejoice in the achievements and beauty of my younger sisters is a gift in itself. I am grateful for the patience of all of those who suffered through the early thirties with me... and I hope to be just as patient and loving with my younger sisters as my grown-up women friends were with me.
More soon, about food, etc. In the meantime, grace and peace to you in the name of those whose battles are fought and whose wars are won (that's the last line of my play, which was in Fringe Fest!)
Namaste.
Posted by april at 5:52 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Fun With Pumpkin!
This weekend, everything was pumpkin!
Chipoltle Pumpkin Stew
1 turnip, diced
1 cup pumpkin, canned
1 cup veggie or chicken broth
300 g cauliflower
1 tsp olive oil
Chipoltle Tabasco
Chili powder
Garlic powder
Cook, season to taste, add oil after removing from heat
Soy Ginger Broccoli Eggplant
1 eggplant, cut in chunks and pre-cooked for 3 mins in the microwave
1 cup pumpkin
1 tbsp soy sauce, low sodium
lots of ginger and garlic powder
1 cup veggie broth
Mix it all up, serve. Add 1 tsp oil before serving.
Pumpkin stuffed eggplant:
Half eggplant
1 cup pumpkin (canned)
2 oz mozzarella, fat free
Curry and garlic powder
Steam half eggplant for three minutes, hollow out, reserve guts. Mix guts with pumpkin, season with curry and garlic. Top with mozza, microwave till cheese melts. After removing from heat, top with teaspoon oil.
Posted by april at 5:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 3, 2009
Curried Red Clam Chowder
Kinda a silly variation on an old favorite, but very warming on a crisp fall day!
1 bag fro veg, probably broccoli, cauliflower and carrot
2 cups veggie or chicken broth
1 can clams
1 can no salt added diced tomatoes
curry, chili powder, garlic, paprkia
Texas Pete
Heat, mix, season to taste. Enjoy the fall!
Posted by april at 10:24 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack