As much as I love healthy food, I do get a lot of entertainment out of teasing the health food fanatics. My roommate at championships in LA gave me a hard time the whole weekend about the box of Cheezits that I carried around everywher. "J!! Where's your fiber?!" I was like, "What? They're cheap and delicious! I have some trail mix and Gatorade, too." "Gatorade?! J!!" Etc. We are rooming together again for advanced seminar and I'm bringing a couple Costco sized boxes of Cheezits (you know, the 3 lb. ones) to see if I can give her a stroke. Because this is my idea of HILARITY.
And I'm definitely not worrying about burning calories. After I did back-to-back classes yesterday morning (8am - ouch and 10am - fabulous), a friend of mine told me that according to her heart rate monitor she had just burned 500+ calories in the 10am class. I've heard this plenty of times before (ahem... Missus...), but at that moment I was taken aback by the idea that I could have burned 1000+ calories before even having breakfast. I was so struck by this observation that I immediately had a peanut butter smoothie, followed it with 2 slices of cheesy pizza, and then took a long nap.
The thing is, my attitude used to be SO completely different. I lived in a constant state of "I think I should really lose 5 or 10 pounds" from age 12 until maybe.... 20 or 21? With a few exceptions, but just a few. And when it came to counting calories, ones burned and ones consumed, I could be scientific and ruthless. At one point there were food journals with Excel spreadsheets involved. Oh yes.
My traditional New Year's resolution for years was to eliminate junk food. I'm sure you can imagine how well THAT worked, since I made it every year. Then one year - and I honestly can't tell you why this happened - instead of resolving to lose 5 (totally healthy) pounds, I resolved to stop calling myself fat. And holy shit! That turned out to be the first New Year's Resolution I actually did a decent job at sticking with, and I LOVED it. It was a total paradigm shift. It felt good.
Shortly after that, I got seriously into Bikram yoga, and that was the thing that finally made me fall truly in love with my body. Not for how it looks or what size pants it fits into, but for what it can do for me, how it functions, how it moves, how it is flexible and capable and strong. Bikram got me to look myself in the mirror every single day and just see myself instead of judging. That was, and still is, the most important thing that I've gotten from the yoga, especially because after I learned to look at myself this way, I started looking at the whole world that way, which is another serious paradigm shift.
My posts have been getting away from me lately! This is the second time in a row that I've started off writing about one thing, and ended up on a different (and much more personal) topic! What's up with that?!
All I wanted to say here was, I love food, and I am a huge believer in just following your cravings. If you eat what you like and move your body every day, you'll probably be healthy. And HAPPY. And that's what matters.
10 comments:
LOL! How funny! I just Tweeted that I need to wear my heart rate monitor tomorrow to see how many calories I burn in the Toronto studio!
In Boston, I burned 650 to 800, depending on the class.
800?! Then I would need to eat, like THREE slices of pizza! Haha...
According to the online calorie calculator I've seen, at my weight I burn appx 1500 calories in a 90 min Bikram class.
But for me, rationalizing that I can therefore have a 1000 calorie Mc Donald's breakfast is the reason that I still haven't broken the 200 lb mark.
Like it or not, I am one of those people who has to work out really hard *and* watch what I put into my mouth in order to get to the size I feel more comfortable at.
Ellen - totally hear you! Substantial weight loss is really REALLY hard work. Tons of respect to you! I am fortunate that my situation has always been completely different.
I hope very much that you can get to a comfortable weight and then BE comfortable there. The goal is always BALANCE, I think. Can't be a junk food junkie, but can't go through all of life being completely obsessive, either. Well actually, you CAN, and many people do, but I don't think it's much fun.
Hope you can sort of see what I'm trying to say here! :)
You know, this is a topic I've long wanted to post about on my blog. I've hinted at it here and there---how Bikram helped my "body image," similar to you---but I've never *really* dug deep and explored the myriad ways and shared them. This post gives me inspiration!
Funny that you mentioned salt-n-vinegar chips. They are my absolute favorite! I wish I could get past the body image issues I've had my entire life. They come and go and are never extreme - just bothersome. Bikram helps, though seeing the same ole thing in the mirror gets bothersome also. I think I'm capable of better 'physique,' which I guess is a healthy perspective. I'm trying South Beach Diet at the moment and it's working...and I'm still able to eat quite a bit. Sad that it's come to that, I know...but nothing else worked. Not even the 30-day. So - I applaud you - thanks for posting about this!!!
-L
Great post. Bravo.
I am overweight and really have to watch what I eat but still a great post!
Look - now they are saying lard is good for you!
http://www.slate.com/id/2219314/
Yes! The paradigm shift from how the body looks for fits into pants to how it works, functions, etc. I find that when I miss a day or two of yoga, I revert back to feeling "fat" and "unhappy" with my body. Do some yoga, and I love my body (even with 20 extra pounds of junk in the trunk!)
What a blessing this yoga is!
Michelle - Yay! :) That's totally what I'm getting at - that we can figure out how to love our bodies EVEN WITH their "imperfections."
And of course, even those imperfections will diminish with enough yoga. As one of my teachers said, when helping a more heavyset woman with padahastasana - "Just keep working it that way, and then over time there will be a little less ham in the sandwich and then it will be easier." I love that - "little less ham in the sandwich..." - cracks me up every time.
"little less ham in the sandwich..."
Hahahaha - That's what I call humor!!!
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