P90X: Day Thirty Photos

Yesterday marked Day 30. Time for pictures (the program calls for photos at the start, Day 30, Day 60, and Day 90 to mark progress). Wow, time has flown. I can't believe it's already 1/3 of the way over! I felt that I was healthy to begin with, which made this program an excellent choice. There is a fit test at the beginning of it to determine readiness, or if a different program would be better suited before beginning this one.

Accomplishments this week:

• Stepped on the scale for the first time since I began the program - I've lost 7 pounds since we began. I had sworn that I wouldn't look at the scale because I was building muscle, and wasn't expecting to lose any weight, just rearrange it a little. Jason has lost 16 pounds in 30 days.
• Yoga this week - held the extended right angle pose (with the arm grab under and twisted thinga-ma-jiggy). I can normally do this, but what is difficult during Yoga X is that it comes at 40 minutes into the program when my legs are on FIRE and have already been shaking for awhile.
• Diet - I've taken Jason's advice and cut WAY back on my sodium. I didn't have a lot to begin with, but he was right - I had too much in my diet. It made a difference in the way I feel.

Privacy Settings To Change

What began as a photojournal for my children in January 2008 has evolved. In January of this year, I started blogging about health, nutrition, sleep, hydration, & balance. I blog on these topics for many reasons...but I never intended for the readership to grow as it has.

I purposefully didn't put a "Followers" button on this blog...yet it is now accessed hundreds of times weekly by people in the US and 9 other countries. The URL to this blog has been posted on several other websites. And so, the readership has grown exponentially, and I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with that. I want to continue documenting my children's progress, growth, and development with both photos and text. I want to continue blogging about health & nutrition, and why it's so important. I want to keep looking at the psychology behind food addictions and the mind/body connection. I'd like to continue to be candid about these things, but I don't know if I want people in 10 different countries reading it.

I've decided to establish some privacy settings, and in a couple of weeks I'll be changing the profile of the blog from public to private, and enabling password-protection. If you'd like to continue to have access, please email me.

P90X: Week Four

AWESOME week....loved the change-up in the routine. The week 4 is focused on Core, Yoga, and Cardio. Its not an easy week, by any means, just different. Core Synergistics was probably the hardest workout I've done in a long, long time....and its done twice during the week!! It focuses on everything and gets the job done in an hour. My favorites were the Plank-To-Chatarunga ISO's (Hold Plank for 10 seconds, then Chatarunga for 10 seconds....repeat for one minute) and the Sphynx Pushups (get on forearms & push up to Plank - max reps).

Accomplishments For The Week:

• Was able to do Upward Dog instead of Cobra for all of the vinyasas (somewhere between 12-15)
• Was able to do a push-up from Plank to Downward Dog for all of the vinyasas - I used to stop doing the push-ups about 40 minutes into it, was able to keep going
• Held the crane for 20-25 of the 60 seconds
• Didn't look like a total idiot this week during Kenpo - finally had some coordination...usually I worry about kicking a lamp over accidentally

Spark

Did you know that the more educated one is, the more likely they are to exercise.....or the more one exercises, the smarter they tend to be. Yep, actual statistics.

This book explains why. It talks about the biochemistry that occurs within the brain: the neurotransmitters, the gas exchange, everything that occurs that causes our brains and bodies to benefit from physical activity and nutrition. It also talks about why these things are so important for our children, citing scientific studies.

Fascinating.

..."It was already known that exercise increases levels of seratonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine - important neurotransmitters that traffic in thoughts & emotions. You've probably heard of seratonin, & maybe you know that a lack of it is associated with depression....most don't know that toxic levels of stress erode the connections between the billions of nerve cells in the brain or that chronic depression shrinks certain areas of the brain. Conversely, exercise unleashes a cascade of neurochemicals and growth factors that can reverse this process, physically bolstering the brain's infrastructure. In fact, the brain responds like the muscles do, growing with use, withering with inactivity. Neurons in the brain connect to one another through "leaves" on treelike branches, exercise causes those branches to grow and bloom with new buds, enhancing brain function."

Highly recommend. Many thanks to the friend who recommended the book to me.

It Starts And Ends With One Question

A few years ago, a very good friend of mine asked me one question. It was a simple question, one that I needed to ask myself.

"Don't you feel like you deserve more than this?"

The context was different...but the question remained in my mind and on my heart for a long, long time. It took time in isolation, time away from everyone and everything for me to ponder. It took hour-long bus rides home from the city streets of Houston to the suburb where I lived full of journaling, much involving streams of tears that I'd try to hide from business-suit clad onlookers. It took long walks on my lunchbreak and weekends playing with my children in quiet stillness. It took introspection, and moving from denial to acceptance.

Yes, I deserve much, much more...and so do they.

I deserve to be happy. I deserve my health. I deserve to walk into a boutique full of cute womens clothing and to be able to pick something out, try it on, and purchase it without feeling pangs of dread and shame over where it will or won't fit my body. I deserve to play with my children without running out of energy. I deserve an hour a day where I focus on no-one but myself so that I can spend the other 23 hours of my day focusing on others. I deserve to hold my head up with confidence, to feel that all the hours of my day are productive and will amount to something that has meaning, to sleep each night soundly and restfully. I deserve to feel sensual in the bedroom, to give my best time and energy to people who appreciate it, to live a long, healthy life with those I love, to work at a job that I enjoy going to where I feel my skills are best utilized.

We all deserve this.

Asking ourselves this question is imperative. We start to work backwards from there. When we're honest with ourselves about what we deserve, it makes it easy to give up all of those things that take our happiness away from us. It shows us that we're not depriving ourselves by staying away from unhealthy foods or an unproductive job or a day off at the gym, but that indulging in these things on a regular basis deprives us of those things in life that we deserve.

Thank you, dear friend, for asking me the question that nobody else would.