Today was a really active day. I made it on my lunchtime walk, and managed to keep up a decent pace, in spite of some still icy places on my walking path. Most of our mess is melted, but there are still a few holdout areas in the shady places. Then I made it to Zumba tonight, too--the Wednesday night Zumba class is still by absolute favorite. I took over 5600 steps in one hour, and it was totally fun--you can't beat that!
It's interesting as I've gone along this whole fitness path how well I have gotten to know the teachers. I really love how supportive and helpful they all are, and how knowing them gives me a whole new level of accountability. One of the women who teaches Monday night yoga, Cathy, has started teaching a core class right before the Zumba class on Wednesday, so I see her there sometimes. Tonight, she came up to me and said that she had missed me on Monday and was glad to see that I wasn't sick. It's so nice that, by going to a class, there's a new person in the world who's suddenly looking out for me. I am so grateful to this posse of women I have acquired through taking classes, which is still my favorite way to work out. Cathy and Beth teach me yoga, Tracy and Joy motivate me to strength train, and Tiffany and Tameka make me MOVE! What's more, by going to these classes, I have met a whole herd of like-minded folks who are also creating this tremendous and somewhat unexpected social and support base. I am making friends on this path, which is a lovely consequence that I hadn't really thought about before I started. I am such a social person that it really, really helps me to stay motivated to be getting this unexpected social benefit.
And let's talk a minute about nutrition. I had this soup that I invented a few years ago for lunch today for which I had no idea how to calculate the calories. But I'll tell you, no matter how calorically dense it is, it is also a nutritional powerhouse. This soup has beans, greens, protein, and a huge concentration of vegetable-y goodness from earlier braised greens, summer tomatoes, and peppers and onions. It's one of those soups that's a little different every time, and always, always amazing. You can feel it giving you nutrients galore. My mother is trying to lose weight, and she is 100% focused on calorie counting to do it. I get it--it's very old school, and she's going on the research that was current when she was 35 years old. But it's so hard for me to watch her do it and not comment incessantly on the nutrition. She's eating everything "low fat," everything packaged. And I just want to go, NOOOOOO! I want to tell her that she doesn't have to starve herself, and that she should eat nutritionally, with a focus on making her body a healthy and well-fueled machine and STILL lose weight at the same time, that she can have nuts and not worry too much about how much fat they have, that cheese is not the devil, and that she needs to eat more vegetables and less refined carbs. But I don't say these things to her unless she asks. I am trying hard not to be an evangelistic nutrition know-it-all to my mama. But man--I am going to make her some of this soup next time I go home. She'll love it.
Log:
Exercise:
- Lunchtime walk: 2 miles
- Zumba with Tiffany at the Cary gym
- Day 11 of the 30-day Abs Challenge: 55 sit-ups, 33 leg raises, 65 crunches, 42 second plank
- Breakfast: steel cut oatmeal with slices almonds and dried cranberries, tea with milk and raw sugar
- Lunch: a bowl of homemade white bean, kale, and polish sausage soup, a big tangelo, a Gouda Babybel with a few crackers, and a 4-ounce container of Noosa blueberry yogurt for dessert
- Dinner: a turkey and avocado wrap with havarti on a multigrain tortilla, half an opal apple (which was awesome, by the way!)
- Snacks:no snacks
- Steps: 13,562
- Calories: 1447 consumed, 1012 burned
- Weight: 187
