Prajantr, Thoughts and Wanderings

Still working on the slimming and toning to a healthier and better feeling me.  I’ve reduced my P90X workouts to about 2 times a week, for strength training and cardio rather than following the actual program.  Three other days a week I’ve been going to mixed martial arts class – for fun and for stress relief.

I’ve been holding pretty steady at my current weight for a few weeks but I hope to break the plateau again and start losing some more.

With the end of summer coming into sight I’ve had to admit some of my clothes just don’t fit anymore. (This is kind of cool. LOL) So I’ve been going through my drawers one at a time and ditching anything that hangs all loose and baggy with no hope for a decent fit with my new body shape. I’m realizing that most of these garments are several years old anyway and the only stuff that fits at all is even older.  I didn’t do much in the way of clothes shopping in the last couple of years and what I did buy was only for work!

Yesterday, Hel met up with me for lunch and a walk through the mall. With her coaxing and a pack of helpful store clerks, I ended up getting quite a few fashionable upgrades to my wardrobe. Not something I plan to do often, mind you, because that could be seriously dangerous to my budget. But this one time, it was worth it.

There’s something therapeutic about ditching the old, baggy clothes. It’s more than cleaning out your clothes drawers. A few lingering emotional cobwebs go with them.

I took two major steps this week, returning to two things I enjoy: Dance and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

Back to dance

Originally, I’d quit both because my ex had felt the money and time would be better spent on doing things together. Not a bad thought, but unfortunately, he didn’t really have a suggestion for what we were supposed to do together. So, I lost those two outlets and the benefits of the exercise without a real replacement for it and the original reasoning was also render non-applicable.

For dance, I decided to try out the Koresh School of Dance in Philly. It didn’t feel right to return to my old dance school, because their curriculum is continuous through a school year. You show up weekly and learn a full dance that’s presented in recitals at the end of the year. With my work and business travel schedule, it really wouldn’t have worked out. Koresh runs stand alone classes – you don’t have to show up every week. The open classes are walk in and learn a combination for the day. Instead of paying for a whole school year, I just pay per class or buy a batch of 10 classes at a time – applicable to any of the open classes available (Hip Hop, Ballet, Jazz, Modern…) Overall, it’s much more affordable for me and the classes are more advanced. The only killer is the cost of parking in the city. >_<

Tony Jaa - Muay Thai

For MMA, I decided to return to the Tri-State Martial Arts Academy.  It’s a good quality school teaching the disciplines I want to learn in MMA: Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Jun Fan/Jeet Kun Do, Kali/Silat and various conditioning classes. Again, due to my work and biz travel schedule – I needed a flexibility available in their schedule. Honestly, I needed to get back to this to work off stress, tension and whatnot. I haz rage.

Okay, okay, I admit it was a little insane to jump into both. It might have been wiser to start one, then add the other. That’s the beauty of it though – if I want, I can just go to Koresh once every other week. There’s no set schedule that I need to attend.

And honestly, I needed to get out and take action. I was driven. It was getting too comfortable hiding inside of the house.

There’s a fine line between being driven to work through the challenges life slams down on you and being driven to run away from them. We know I have drive, but have I stepped up to the line?

It has come, that evil plateau. Obviously, P90X can only do so much for me when I can’t follow the program every single day. I do the best I can but hey.

In any case, I need more cardio in my life and I can only take the P90X workouts to a certain degree and then I get very annoyed at the instructor’s voice. So it’s time to change it up just a tiny bit to kill the plateau and to save me from getting too annoyed.

Alexd00 uses DDR for exercise. My game consoles are gathering dust and it’s been so long since I’ve played any game that I’m in danger of losing my geek status. That being the case, I’m going to start trying to play once a week as a weird cardio routine. And of course, have a little fun.

The ballet barre, that is.

Dance was an almost daily part of my life for 25 years. I had good feet, perfect arches. I needed a better turn out and it became clear as soon as I hit puberty that I had the wrong body type to pursue dance in a serious way. That didn’t matter. I loved it. I still took classes and participated in productions.

Six years ago I had surgery. I quit dance classes. I got fat, fatter than I’d ever been.

Since January, I’ve established a better exercise routine. I’ve cut back my eating portions. I’ve lost 5% body fat and over 15 lbs gross body weight. I’m still not satisfied with the way I look in the mirror, but I’m a work in progress and I’m getting there.

There’s a quote from Center Stage:

The unwise dancers blame them. He didn’t like me… she was unfair… I should have had that part. The smart ones know where to look when things get rough. It isn’t there. (Walks to the barre) It’s HERE. No matter what happened in class, performance, last week, 5 minutes ago… if you come back here… you’ll be home.

I’m not going to blame my ex for the way I let myself get fat. I’m not going to blame him for the decision to stop going to classes. (Okay, I want to, but I shouldn’t. Thus the quote.) I’m not going to blame anyone for how much I miss dance.

I have a sturdy ballet barre and music. That’s all I need. In addition to my exercise routine, I’ve added some time at the barre every morning and night. Not long, just 5 to 15 min.

Barre exercises are excellent for stretching and toning muscle. A lithe dancer’s body is very much due to the barre exercises that are part of routine practice. The added little sessions will help keep the muscle I’m building long and lean. I’ll keep my range of motion at the fullest and maintain maximum flexibility. (I’m told guys like that )

I will never be lithe, I’m just not built that way – but I get more out of the barre than just the stretching and the toning.

I get a little peace, a little happiness.  With every stretch, I relax. I find my balance and my center.

I’m not big on meditation. But this, this brings me back to where I need to be.

I think too much and too hard. We know this. It can be damaging, depressing and really doesn’t do me any good.  It becomes a destructive mental loop and I’ve been working on how to break that.

There’s an article on “5 Keys to Treating Depression through Exercise” from BeachBody.com.  It’s not half bad.

It confirms what I do – I start to think hard and I make sure to work out at the first opportunity I get. Granted, it might take a bit to clear the day job tasks off my plate, but when I’m done, I head straight for the punching bag. Or I cue up a P90X workout. Or I pop in an anime episode and hop on the treadmill. Or I take the dogs for a walk.

Honestly, the punching bag is the most therapeutic for me.

But for those with less of a violent streak than me, cardio works well. Strength training is good for redirecting focus. Hell, even playing games like DDR or Wii Fit would work nicely.

I’m sure others have their own ways to deal with the evil moods and depression. But me? I’m a tomboy, a former jock. I work out.

If I could, I’d train perpetually – a bit like Natsume Maya. I just feel driven, right now, to improve and move forward. I NEED to.

I won’t go back to who I was before and I won’t get lost in the the wake of being left alone.

I’m broken, damaged…but I’m on the mend.

A couple of months ago I started the P90X program. Stuck to it for month 1, business travel started to shake me off in month 2 and random shenanigans had me completely off track by month 3. Doh.

But seriously, in those 3 months I still lost about 17 lbs of net body weight and reduce a couple of % in body fat. Clothes fit a bit better. Not bad. Obviously results were in the works and probably would have been pretty darned good if I’d stuck to it.

Realistically, I probably can’t stick to the letter of the program. It’s also a reality that I can’t ever find time to make it to the gym – so I’m cancelling my membership there. I’d gotten it to spend quality time with the ex anyway, not because I needed access to the facilities to do my work outs.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t keep working out. I’ve got a bench and a full set of free weights suitable to me (obviously not the hefty weights guys use), a high performance treadmill, full size punching bag, a barre for my dance stretches and plenty of space to do P90X or other fitness workouts in front of the main tv. Plus, if I want unconventional cardio, I can always play DDR. Besides, the dogs will never turn down walkies/jogging.

The key will be keeping up my workouts on travel. Looks like I’m going to be traveling quite a bit in the next couple of months, especially to LA, at least as much as I have been since the turn of the year. Hotel room workouts have to be much more effective. P90X is suitable for that and I do always pack my resistance bands. I just need to squeeze in the workout between the day at the client site and any client dinners or whatever work I’m doing at night. A lot of people ask me why I don’t use hotel gyms. I tried last week and it’s the same issue – they feel small and squished. Because there’s often strangers there, I can’t keep my focus because we’re all jostling around trying not to get in each other’s way and surreptitiously checking out each other’s work out technique. It’s just distracting.

So. Back to working out every day I can manage, at least a cardio if not a strength training session. Regardless of the weight loss – I need the endorphin high. Call it self-medication

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ll be up in Boston this weekend with my sister and her sorority team for the Fifth Annual Walk for Change. I’ve made my donation already, but if anyone would like to contribute to the fundraising, feel free:

http://www.firstgiving.com/teamaxo

I think it’s a good cause and a great way to spend a day.