DANCING WITH MYSELF

A brief detour from our scheduled food post to say:

JONNY KEST.

Like whoa.

I was prepared for an awesome class. I even stepped out of my comfort zone and placed my mat at the front of the room instead of the back corner, ready to get as much as I could out of this experience, even if it meant butterflies in the belly because people could actually see me. It was hella worth the butterflies. I forgot my self-consciousness two minutes into class.

Jonny Kest runs the yoga program for Lifetime Fitness, the gym that Rick and I belong to. Kind of a huge job, as it's a national organization and Jonny also owns and operates the renowned Center for Yoga in Detroit among other commitments. I'd heard of him, of course, before his involvement with Lifetime. He has a pretty seriously devoted fan base and a much lauded teaching style. Possibly because during class he issues helpful reminders like "try not to fart" (good advice in any yoga class, there's always a secret flatulator), or possibly because when a class of 200 begins to sort of lose the pace of the flow he stops everyone and says "let's finish this warm up by dancing on your mats" and cranks Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself, beginning to end, getting even this girl's graceless body to move like a 9th grader at a slumber party.

Mostly, Jonny Kest is a rock star because he can get a room of 200 to focus their energy, to bring their full attention to a flow that moves with their own powerful breath, to connect to themselves, to him, to each other and to the miracle of having something as astonishing as a human body. 

And because he closed the practice with this.

Seriously, yoga doubters. Go. Do.

(Up next - I mean it this time - food challenges during the Whole Life Challenge! I have a few things to say about eggs...)

WHAT WERE YOU SO AFRAID OF, NADIA?

The Whole Life Challenge begins with a preliminary workout that is repeated at the end of the challenge. The logic is simple: if you consistently exercise every day for 8 weeks as required by the WLC, and change your diet to maximize energy and minimize sluggishness, you should see some measurable improvement in the workout at the end of the challenge. 

There is a "prescribed" WLC prelim workout:

In 11 minutes:

800m Run (1/2 mile)

50 Sit ups

75 Squats

100 Push ups

As many Burpees in remaining time as possible

...and several suggested alternates if the prescribed workout seems to be utter madness. 

Which it is. Seriously, WTF.

The virtual gym that Rick and I joined for the challenge chose an alternate workout (bless them), which was hard enough:

As many reps as possible in 12 minutes of:

5 Burpees

10 Sit ups

15 Squats

So... burpees. My cousin Eric, who is along for the WLC ride, said "I watched a video of a burpee and am shocked to see that it is not a sweet slushy drink that I imagined drinking repeatedly as part of the workout..." Well, me too. Having never tried one before, and having only ever seen it done by Rick during his first Whole Life Challenge, I wanted to be sure I got it right, so I also watched a few videos. This one cracked me up because of the Joan Jett song. Gotta laugh a little through all this, right? Despite the song choice, a good example of burpees (ignore the hanging on rings at the end, we didn't have to do that).

I do not look like that doing burpees. My first blog post noted the absence of coordination that will be my lifelong frenemy, and this sequence of movements definitely requires some coordination. Still, looking like an idiot doing burpees wasn't much of a concern as I could do the prelim workout at home, behind a closed door, and laugh/cry at my goofiness in private while preserving a little dignity (notice I didn't - and won't - post a video of myself doing the workout). 

I was, however, worried about the part of a burpee involving jumping back into a push-up position. It's a movement I've avoided in yoga for awhile (jumping back to chaturanga), always choosing to step back instead of jump. I made this choice based on the old Nadia fear of being a weakling. I told myself - without even trying the movement - that my arms, shoulders and core weren't strong enough, wouldn't hold me up as I jumped and I would land on my face. A few short years ago that was actually completely true. 

But I already decided I'm up for the challenge, no turning back - so I placed a pillow where my face could possibly hit the floor and tried burpees. And of course I managed them just fine. Awkwardly and unprettily, but I managed them because I'm not the weakling I used to be despite the lies anxiety likes to fill my head with. The next day I tried the jump back to chaturanga in my yoga class. Nailed it (and even managed a little grace and fluidity in the movement! Have I mentioned how kick-ass yoga is?), and now I'm feeling a kind of wonderful pain in all the expected under-utilized muscles. 

So... hooray! Small victory! Props to the Whole Life Challenge for forcing me to improve and advance my yoga practice.

One of Gustave Dore's illustrations of Dante's Inferno.
All these tortured souls have just finished sit-ups. Clearly.

The rest of the prelim was easy enough to execute, but can we all agree that sit-ups are complete arse? I mentioned to Rick that I think Dante wrote about sit-ups as a feature in one of the circles of hell. A reread of Inferno is sure to reveal that I'm right about this. If memory serves, sit-ups are referenced somewhere between the Fifth Circle (Anger), the Sixth Circle (Heresy) and the Seventh Circle (Violence). My head definitely goes to all three places during each and every sit-up.

Next up: FOOD! This challenge is, after all, mostly focused on diet change. Still wondering how to survive 8 weeks when I can't have any of the ingredients that make up a vanilla ice cream bourbon shake.

Mini-Blog: WATERWORLD

The Whole Life Challenge has a "Lifestyle" mini-challenge that changes every two weeks. The first two weeks: Water. Drink half your body weight in ounces every day (so, 1 lb weight = .5 oz water). Thassalottawater.

Coffee doesn't count, but tea does. Someone please tell me why? Coffee is an excellent source of enhanced and perfected water. Anyway, since my fluid intake consists of ONLY coffee unless I'm working out, the water challenge has so far been one of the biggest challenges for me. I have been trying to replace some of my coffee with tea, but unless I have a cold and am having tea with honey (not allowed honey right now), I'd be lying if I said I love tea. I kinda think anyone is lying if they say they love tea. So, this means I get to bedtime and chug water to reach my quota.

Bad idea.

Good thing the loo is right next to the bedroom.

Water Challenge Lessons: Pace Yourself. Learn to like tea. Conduct exhaustive Google searches for coffee-flavored tea.

CHECKING IN AT THE GYM

Here we go. I'm a few days into the Whole Life Challenge, and so far it hasn't killed me - possibly because I didn't pay much attention to the diet rules for the first couple of days. We were visiting friends and didn't want to turn them into Whole Life Hostages. 

The short version of what the WLC is: 8 weeks of a specific diet meant to change eating habits for good and for better. 8 weeks of not skipping a day of exercise. Honestly, its possible that 8 weeks with no sugar or pizza or spaghetti or bagels or cheese might kill me, but it's an important next step in something that for me has been a years-long life-change project. I've encountered a few bewildered looks and some honest curiosity from friends and family about this, so I'm taking a leaf from my husband's book (Rick has already done this once) and have decided to blog the experience.

I'm kicking off with the "Nadia and Fitness" background story. It's riveting, but it means this first blog post is a long one. The rest will be shorter, I promise. Bear with me...

On the Friday night before the Whole Life Challenge started, I checked in on Facebook at my gym, noting that I was getting in a 5k run before indulging in what would be my last Friday night pizza for 8 weeks. A short while later, one of my oldest and dearest friends posted a status that said she and her husband agreed to divorce if either of them ever checked into a gym. I giggled at the implied eye-roll and gentle ribbing for being the kind of loser who is a) at the gym on a Friday night - no, seriously, get a life Nadia! - and b) obnoxious enough to point out the moments when she is working out (there's always that implied "take that, couch potatoes!" whether you actually mean it or not) - and c) lame enough to think a gym workout is worth sharing, ever. You're sweating - so what, right?

And for a few moments I thought "Yeah, it is probably kind of annoying and/or probably boring for my FB friends to see mine and other friends' gym check-ins." Check-ins should be for fabulous places! New restaurants! At the very least, somewhere another person may want to check out, too. But two seconds later I changed my mind about checking in at the gym. Here's why:

For me, check-ins at the gym are not the gym-rat "I'm awesome for being here!" kind of check-ins. For me, they are self-motivating measures of triumphant success. Triumphant because I never, ever thought this would be me. Triumphant because I faced down one of my biggest lifelong fears - that I would try and fail at anything physically challenging - and bulldozed it.

As a kid, I was the Queen of Indoor Recess. Having two brothers, I certainly participated in the usual amount of bike-riding, tree-climbing, snow-covered-hill-sledding and games of tag. But gym class? Organized sports? Dance classes? Forget it. I'm hopelessly uncoordinated and demonstrated that in front of my peers with spectacular lack of grace over and over again. I can't catch anything other than a head cold. I can't throw a ball, or hit it with a bat, kick it, dribble it or even hold it for too long without dropping it. I took ballet for a month when I was eleven. I still have nightmares about pirouettes. So, to avoid repeated humiliation and failure, I developed a habit of opting out of physical activity whenever possible. Hey Nadia, want to [anything sporty]? No, but have fun, take pictures, tell me all about it!

This habit continued through my college years, early married and professional life and into the first decade of parenthood. Exercise was walking to the car from the back door, or carrying grocery bags into the house, or walking down a hallway at work. Then my youngest child turned ten, and a switch flipped. I'm not sure how or why... I suppose the milestone of the baby reaching double-digits made me realize that my kids were entering their young adult years, the point in their lives where their choices would begin to have a lasting impact. As one of the two adults they would look to most as an example, it was time for me to examine myself and my choices.  

That self-examination involved both mind and body. The mind part went well. School, marriage, professional choices - all felt happy to me. No regrets there. The body part sucked. I was still carrying "pregnancy weight" (again, my youngest baby was TEN YEARS OLD), my food habits were shit and I never had the energy or inclination to do much beyond what I saw as the overwhelming task of keeping up with a household of four people. So I had to admit to myself that I was not the adult I wanted my kids to turn into. I knew that "making gradual changes" in diet and exercise was a path to not actually doing anything - after all, I had been "making gradual changes" for a decade, which translated into no change at all. So I forced myself to make big changes overnight. No more snack foods or soft drinks, only good carbs, a lot more fruit and veggies and a daily fast walk or an indoor bike ride (mag trainers rock!) on rainy/freezing days. 

It was awful at first, a daily struggle, a daily conversation with myself about why the hour devoted to my walk was maybe more important than curling up with a book waiting for the laundry to dry (always my favorite "do nothing" excuse - there's laundry to be done! I can't go anywhere!). But it got easier when I saw and felt results. Within a few months I was back to pre-baby size and I had more energy than I can ever remember having, even as a child. The best part: my kids would come to the park with me and ride their bikes or scooters while I walked. Or they would walk with me. Or they would play at the park playground. The point is they were outside, playing, running, moving, simply because I was outside, moving.

And for the first time I started to think "maybe I can try more" instead of "that was enough, time to rest" so I started looking for things the hopelessly uncoordinated could do without injury (I am rather proficient when it comes to hurting myself in spectacular ways, its a family trait called "pulling a Vino"). I started running. No balls or bats, only minor chance of tripping, but the city keeps the park paths pretty clear of rocks and branches. I'm not very fast, and I haven't been able to run too far  - at least not yet (she says hopefully! optimistically!) but I like it. I actually miss running on the days I don't run! And I began to practice yoga. I prefer an athletic vinyasa practice, high energy, serious sweat. Hand stands/head stands continue to be a struggle but my strength improves daily and I'm way more flexible than I thought I was. Yoga rocks, try it.

Hiking Tremblant, Summer 2012

Today my youngest baby has just turned 14. My kids are runners. It came more naturally for my son, who has Rick's "runner's build." My daughter, who is as much a bookworm as her mama, has battled her own Indoor Recess Kid and joined the track team at school and sometimes comes to yoga classes with me. My kids have become people who like to snack on apples as much as cookies. Balance. They learned balance and I'm proud to say I've modeled that for them.

The truth is, in my heart of hearts, I will always be an Indoor Recess Kid. Finding a cozy place to sit with a stack of Sandman comics will always seem to me like a perfect way to spend an afternoon (or a whole day... or a whole week). But Indoor Recess Nadia gets along quite nicely with the new kid in town, a girl called Get Up Off Your Ass Nadia, and they give each other equal time in my headspace. Hey Nadia, want to go on a hike/kayak down a river/run a race? Yes! I'm in!

So... I'm going to keep checking in at the gym. I already told my friend I would just tag her every time I do it. ;-) She can't divorce me, I won't allow it, I love her gym-hating little self. And I won't be doing it because I think I'm better than someone else who isn't at the gym. Or because I think it's the most interesting thing I'll do that day or any day and is therefore worth a read by all my Facebook friends. I'll do it because I'm fucking proud of myself. This was hard as hell. Undoing a lifetime of sitting still was hard as bloody hell. Every time I walk into my gym is a victory for me. But don't worry... I haven't and still won't check in every single time I go to the gym. Just when there's something else to note, like taking a yoga class with Jonny Kest in a week. (Giddy like a teenager about to meet a rock star. Jonny Kest!). I'm going to check in at the gym as hard as I can that day.

Onward and upward! Whole Life Challenge! This 8 weeks could finally bring me to a breaking point (what kind of asshole commits to going 8 weeks without pizza when, truth be told, pizza is part of the workout motivation? This kind, apparently... sigh), but I've hit and pushed past a few breaking points along the way. I'm up for the challenge. I never thought I'd write those words. I'm up for the challenge.