Kill It With Yoga!

Back on track today with my routine.

It is a good thing I had the routine to fall back on, because my motivation sure wasn't going to get me there.  I have been feeling like I have been coming down with something for a couple of days.  Just a tickle on Sunday, then soreness and congestion yesterday.

This morning I was feeling pretty yucky (I say "yucky" because Facebook doesn't recognize "queasy" as a legitimate feeling), but opted to go to yoga regardless.  Taking a page from the Barney Stinson playbook, I decided to stop being sick and be awesome instead, slightly altering the mantra "kill it with fire" to "kill it with yoga."

In the morning class I did not feel particularly awesome, but I persevered.  A combination of the heat, humidity, and breathing did wonders for my sinuses.  After yoga I went and got some Airborne, came home, and proceeded to sleep for most of the day.

Afternoon yoga went exceptionally well, I was feeling great, I had energy, and my residual congestion was again wiped out.  Not that all of my symptoms are gone, I still have that tickle at the back of my throat, and I am sure the congestion will be back for another round in the morning, but I am excited that getting sick has not gotten in the way of my yoga practice.  Rather, I am excited that yoga has seemed to help so much in lessening the impact of getting sick.  As those that know me can attest, I can be a pretty big baby when it comes to getting sick.

Extra glad that the yoga made me feel so good this afternoon, because coming out of class I got a text from Alison, my cousin, saying she was in town, so I was able to go out for dinner and catch up with one of my very favorite people.

Living the day to day of weight loss, the change is so gradual that it can be hard to see the whole scope of the change that you have gone through.  Alison remarked that I looked great, and so much thinner.  I get a lot of the same compliments at the studio when somebody sees me that hasn't been in for a few days, or just draws comparison to what they thought when they first saw me.

The weight loss has become evident to me in a few ways.  I bought new shorts for practice at the very beginning of my challenge.  They are athletic shorts with a short inseam, like running shorts, and I thought they would work well because they had an elastic band down the side.  I was wrong.  They bind in all the standing postures, and from day one I have had to pull up the shorts to the tops of my thighs so that I can bend my legs how I need to without being restricted by the fabric.

When I lifted the legs of my shorts in the first few days of practice they were tight around my thighs, perhaps even stretched a little.  This had the benefit of holding them in place through the rest of the postures, which was nice.  As time went by they slowly became looser, so that they would occasionally fall down between sets, and I would have to hike them up again.  These days they just kind of billow down, which would not be an issue if they still didn't bind up my legs when I try to do most of the postures in the standing series, so I find myself pulling them up between almost every set.

There are worse problems to have, I know.

A couple of days ago I ordered myself a pair of yoga shorts online after scouring the internet for the style I was looking for in my size.  Turns out most retailers believe that men my size shouldn't be wearing spandex, and make that choice for me by not offering those styles in my size.  The ones I did find only offered my size in black, and not any of the other colors they offered in the same style for smaller sizes.

In determining what size shorts to get, I took the waistband of my size 40 waist jeans that I bought after losing 15 pounds in February, and crossed the waistband over itself around my waist about 4 inches.  You can imagine how baggy my four inch too large jeans are fitting me these days.  Again, there are worse problems to have.


I have not really talked much about a goal weight.  My goal was always just to finish the thirty days, and the weight loss was ancillary.  Ideally, I would like to get back under what I weighed coming out of basic training.  Not that I was a feather weight by any means, but that 230 pounds was the most hard fought shape of my life.

Speaking of hard fought, I am going to need more sleep if I am going to fight off this cold, so this is me signing off.

Namaste.