God, I love Saturdays! The weather is beautiful, the Spring is finally here. My cat is feeling better, she actually ate something today. She still wobbles while walking and needs a rest after 5 meters of walk, but still, this is progress. For me - ladies holiday. I decided to test whether the hormonal surge during this time increases flexibility. It seems to be true. I worked on the hip openings with a chair and after that was able to easily bind my legs and to touch my fingers in yoga nidrasana. I hope this will translate into a better Supta Kurmasana somehow. I also realized that I am as stiff as a board in my backbends. Not because of the ladies holidays, but in general. I attempted to do a kapotasana and was listening carefully to what was holding me back. Turns out there is something in my lower belly that feels tight (not abs, but deeper inside). I might have a subconscious fear that something will snap there and I will start bleeding inside, and that makes my backbends very cautious and uninspired. Since every tightness can be stretched, I will work on it. We will see if it can be overcome.
I am having a lot of fun with a Cron-o-meter program (http://spaz.ca/cronometer/) that tracks nutrition (thank you, Arturo!). Never before I looked so closely at what and how I eat, where do I get my vitamins and minerals. So interesting! So far I discovered (three days of observation) that by midday I eat only a third of my calories, and most of them come from carbs and protein. Like yesterday, at 4 pm I ended up with my daily allowance on carbs and proteins depleted, but only half of necessary calories consumed. What was I supposed to do, drink pure olive oil to get those calories and fat? I ended up eating lots of walnuts, which satisfied my fat requirements, but put the carbs over the limit. In spite of eating lots of fresh vegetables, I only consume roughly half of the vitamins needed, so I think I should start taking a multivitamin more regularly. In general, it is a very eye-opening exercise.
9 comments:
Oooh I could never track my food like that!
Back bends - you might try working on poses that stretch your hip flexors in personal practice. There's not much in primary series that does it, and open hip flexors REALLY help in back bending.
I got my "holiday" as well.
But you look like you do not have any body fat! No need to track food, I guess.
Whick poses would you recommend? UD and Ustrasana come to mind, royal pigeon, too. Anything else?
My psoas is tight, true. But the tightness feels in the soft tissues, like ovaries or intestines. I might be mistaken, though
Anjaneyasana!! That's a good topic for a post. I'll write that one this week. Hip flexors...
Might be muscle fascia tightness you've got. I've got a bit of that on the right side, underneath rib cage.
Oh the fat - I've got a little, but not much it's true.
Oh, Anjaneyasana! That is a good one, true.
I am looking forward to your hip-flexor-opening post! :)
I have 29% body fat. A third of me is fat. 53 pounds of fat. I need to go and throw up now. :O
Oooh run away from the calipers!!! I haven't known my actual weight in years & I've resisted attempts to measure my body fat!
Hi Alfia
Isn't it amazing what you learn with the software? Of course you're joking about the throwing up. Yes, I think it's important to supplement what you might be short on. I'm vegetarian, so I have to supplement with B12, iron, zinc, cal/mag and some others from time to time. You can enter the information in the software once a day. I do it at the beginning of the day, estimating what I'm going to eat, later changing it if I varied the diet. Some people do it at the end of the day. It's just like brushing your teeth - you get used to doing it.
Cheers,
Arturo
Hi, Arturo:
Throwing up is not something I do! Was kidding.
Arturo, I am puzzled now. I ate 144% of my daily protein, 128 % of carbs and 113% of fat. And I still need to get 16% of my calories. Did it ever happen to you?
CRON-o-meter is a great tool! When I first started using it, I found that I wasn't getting my full RDAs from the food I was eating and supplemented accordingly. With gradual changes to my diet, I now get all of my nutrients from food.
This has really changed how I look at food - I think about nutrients more now, as in "What's in it for me!" ;-)
Like Arturo, I log all of my food in CoM at the beginning of the day and modify it at night to reflect any changes. Often, I eat the same sorts of things from day to day. There's a little button near the top of the window in CoM (right hand side, looks like two papers, on atop the other). If you click this, it will copy everything from the previous day. This saves a lot of time!
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