Monday, May 25, 2009

Memorial day

It seems that I fell off the blogging wagon. On the other hand I had a very productive week. I wonder if there is a relationship between the two?
First of all I did not skip Mysore during the work week, which is lately unusual for me. Only on Sunday I made a mistake of deciding to "sleep another 20 minutes", waking up two hours later and realizing I overslept practice. It was funny, because in fact I woke up early, finished all my morning routines and had an extra 30 minutes before it was time to leave when I decided to take a nap. Well, maybe my body needed it or something.
Aliya was teaching the whole week. I am currently struggling with dwi pada transition into supta kurmasana (which is all-time bad because of my left leg injury), so I asked him what I can do at home to open up hips in this direction. He said that he bets $50 that if I come to practice 6 times a week, in 6 months I will do it without any problems. Which is a challenge I could not resist - that is why good Mysore attendance. The problem was that half way through the week he changed his mind and said that I could do it even now, just needed to overcome a psychological block. Hmmm.... The problem is that I can't throw my right leg behind my head using only my right hand, even if there is no left leg behind. But who am I to argue? Will keep trying my hardest.
At work things were going well, too. It was a slow beginning of the week, but then things picked up, and I managed to finish every single thing on my task list every day. What a nice feeling! Maybe I learned at last to make manageable lists? We also went for a short brisk walk every day after lunch, which bumped up my daily step average from 5K to 8K, with 3K of aerobic walk.
Sweet Rayna gave me a book about 80/10/10 diet, which I decided to try. It is a raw fruitarian diet, which attracted me because I loooove fruit. Before I tried to minimize fruit in my diet, because eating them made me fat in the first place, and it made me sad a little. According to 811, one is not supposed to eat more than 10% of fat, which means no fat added at all, because most of the fruit have around 10% fat in them. According to the author, Dr. Graham, this make a huge difference in the way body deals with sugars. Supposedly this diet is beneficial for diabetics, too, which is completely counter intuitive. So after a trip to Costco, I started the diet three days ago, and so far I am loving it! I remind myself a cow a little, because I am eating practically every hour, but my God this is easy! Wash and weigh the fruit, and this is all the cooking involved. I am not hungry, and feel pretty great. The greatest challenge is getting enough calories. Could not get enough iron, selenium, calcium and vitamins B12 and D, so I took supplements. Need to research more which plants will provide those. Morning glucose level is 95 average, which is better than before I started eating so much simple carbs. Even weight went down 2 lbs last week! So far I am very happy. My husband - not so much. He looks very sad, eating alone. But he ate much more fruit as a result, too, which is good for him.
And this is a Memorial day, combined with a Moon day! Time to be lazy, I think. Or not. :)
Happy Monday!

14 comments:

rayna said...

i'm so glad to hear you're enjoying 811rv!! the great thing about this lifestyle is that everyone seems to just ENJOY eating. don't forget to get plenty of sunshine too! xoxo

Arturo said...

hi Alfia
what an interesting experiment. thanks for sharing it. if you check out the blog of Erin (the vegan blog), there's a link in my blog, i think he has tried this diet before. actually his diet is pretty much like that, unless he's changed it. if you're interested in asking him, i can give you his email. i think you can also leave comments on his blog (the cron vegan weblog).

i forgot already, your teacher is trying te get you to do DwiPada without an assist? so far i usually need an assist myself. i have your same problem, except my stubborn leg is the opposite of yours.

hugs
Arturo
hugs
Arturo

alfia said...

Hi, Arturo:
Thank you for the link, I will definitely check it out.

Yes, I am trying to get into dwi pada on my own. It seems to be the only realistic way for my body to get into decent supta kurmasana on my own. I will get there. If not soon, then in 6 months for sure...

crankyhausfrau said...

Alfia, i bet you will get it sooner than 6 months. this pose was a big struggle for me, too!

nice to see you this morning!

xoxoxo

alfia said...

Thank you, Tova! You know how to cheer me up. :)
See you tomorrow?

crankyhausfrau said...

will be babysitting in the massage room tomorrow :)

Arturo said...

hi Alfia
Tova, i'm sort of addicted to a weekly massage over here. traditional chinese massage is a bit painful, but oil massage is not. both are therapeutic.
hugs
Arturo

Yoga Chickie said...

Why are you doing this crazy diet?

alfia said...

Hi, Lauren:

I am adventurous. I like fruit so much and was denying it to myself for so long that it felt like a miracle to find something that would allow me to eat a lot of it. So far I do not feel deprived or hungry. I feel happy, in fact, though occasional mishaps happen (like this morning, for example...)

Yoga Chickie said...

But why not just include fruit in a balanced diet that doesn't cause flatulence, wonky tummy, etc.? Eating a regular diet that you can keep up with for the long haul would be preferable...really!

alfia said...

I hear you, Lauren. However eating too many fruit made me fat in the first place (205 lbs). When I limited fruit in my diet, the weight went down. I did not know that if one eats too many carbs, one needs to limit fat intake. Now I know and so far it works for me (weight is down, blood sugar, too). If it stops working, I will change it back to "normal" (if there is such thing, that is)

Yoga Chickie said...

With all due respect to your body's cravings, the reality of weight is this: the amount of calories you consume determines what you weigh. PERIOD. If you eat more than you burn, you will put on weight. If you eat less, you will lose. If overall, what goes in matches what gets burned, you will stay the same. Fruit plus fat, blah blah blah...it all is just your perception. What really happened, and this is purely science, is that you were eating more when you weighed 205. You are eating less now, so you weigh less. You do not have to have special food rules of what goes with what in order to keep that weight down. You just have to eat enough calories to keep your body functioning, without eating more than that. Period. It could be a 100 percent Pop Tarts diet, just as easily as it could be all berries and fart food. Neither is good, and neither is better than the other. If you like the CRON method, then you should follow that: eat as nutritiously dense food as possible so that you get all of your nutritional needs in as few calories as possible

End of rant.

Can you tell I hate diets and think they are the root of all eating disorders - obesity included?

alfia said...

I can see that, Lauren! :)

I have to disagree, though. This is a very simplistic view of things. Unfortunately, just limiting calories does not necessarily work all the time. When we gain weight, we gain fat, when we lose weight, we often lose everything else, but fat. Fat is just not a preferable source of energy for body. So it is a tricky business of making the body to lose fat, not muscle or other tissues. It depends on many factors, including types of exercise and types of food one consumes. It is possible for a person to become skinny on a poptart diet. It is also possible for the same person to become skinny fat person (high %fat, low% muscle), if he or she has a metabolic syndrome (which so many of us have). So no, just limiting calories does not work all the time, just for healthy young people. The rest of us have to experiment and try different things, tricking the aging bodies into doing the right thing. CRON is great in this sense, and 811 is very complimentary to CRON.

Yoga Chickie said...

LOL...I totally have an aging body!! When I went into early menopause because of chemo, I packed on roughly 20 pounds...boom! I tried a lot of different ways to get it off. Eventually, the only thing that worked was eating less. That said, I could never eat only, say "pop tarts" because I would feel ill and shaky and hungry all the time. I eat very little, but of what I eat, a large percentage of calories are devoted to fats (avocado, peanut butter, almonds, goat cheese) and complex carbs (bananas, coconut, dried cranberries). This enables me to go without eating for long stretches of time, which seems to work for me, psychologically and physically. Ultimately, though, when my calories go up, my weight goes up too. For me, it's all about picking the foods that allow me to eat as little as possible, as few calories as possible, in other words.

We all have to figure out our own code though...

 

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