I’m struggling with my fitness program again. I’m doing it but I’m not loving it.

My new obsession, however, is my online food diary. And by obsession, I mean since yesterday morning. We’ll see if it lasts until Friday. I signed up at FitDay after seeing this article about how keeping a food diary aids weight loss.

I love having all the calorie calculations made for me, although FitDay seems to be telling me I have to give up half and half in my coffee which makes me :(. Maybe I should keep the half and half and give up the oatmeal cookies instead.

Then I started looking at the information on activities. An hour and fifteen minutes of hatha yoga burns just 211 calories? Dang. I need to step it up. Today is a DVD day. I’m suited up, I have the garage a/c cooling the room, now all that’s left is the showing up part.

For inspiration, I enjoy checking in on this blog, by a woman who lost 100 pounds and is still going. She’s a good, thoughtful writer and she looks great.

Speaking of yoga …

I hate it when my Tuesday night yoga teacher tells us to do a series at our own pace—especially when it’s the bow (we don’t include the tongue) to locust series.

Both poses are difficult and unfun for me. Usually, the first time through them, Marilyn tells us when to change poses and when to relax. But then she has us do them again at our own pace, telling us that when our bodies tire, we should rest.

Such a predicament! These poses make me tired almost immediately. I want to do each one for about two seconds and rest. But I am both too competitive and too determined for that and so I hold them as long as I can. But since my body doesn’t enjoy the poses (or is it my mind? These mind-body practices get me confused) it tells me to rest long before I think it truly needs rest and my mind and body end up in a power struggle.

When I finally give up and let myself down, I can’t resist sneaking a peek at my classmates to see who has out-locusted me. There’s always at least one. Damn.

I’ll never be a yogi. No, not because I can't keep up, but because I care that I can't. So un-Zen.

Labels: dieting, fitness, yoga

So you know that old head game, don’t think about a white bear?

No? Well, don’t think about a white bear...

...now, what are you thinking about?

I’m trying not to think of the poor little poochy, but damned if that image isn’t locked and loaded into my head. It. Just. Won’t. Go. Away.

It’s not like I’ve never seen roadkill before. And it’s not like I’ve never seen an animal die before—Tom and I have had to euthanize four pets over the years and we wouldn’t dream of not being right there with them. I was even with my friend Russell when they turned off the respirator. I saw my brother in his coffin (he looked handsome and just like himself) and my mother (not good).

Nothing has haunted me like this little pup.

It was partly the violence of the moment. I won’t say more about what exactly haunts me because I find the thoughts so painful …

But I've been thinking now about soldiers. How do they ever recover from the experience of war? I guess they don’t, not really or completely. They must carry the images forever, if they don’t manage to repress them. (Yes, it's possible.)

This interesting article from Stanford discusses how women’s memories of disturbing, emotional images is stronger than men’s—that women tend to store the emotion of a memory in the same place in the brain as the memory whereas in men, the emotion and the memory activate different parts of the brain.

So I guess that might mean women wouldn’t make good killing machines, eh? Is that a good thing or bad? Discuss.

I am distracting myself as much as possible from the memory of that miserable moment Tuesday night. Lunch with my client yesterday was a lot of fun and productive. I held it together just fine. It’s only at quiet times that the image pops back up. I started crying during the final relaxation in yoga class this morning.(In unrelated good news, my tree pose was fine today so I seem to have recovered some balance.) However, it was good mental exercise to tear my mind away from the bad thought and bring it back to the moment—the music, my own breath. By wrestling my mind back to the here and now instead from the there and then, I felt immediately better.

Maybe little pup’s last moment has a little lesson for me. One I’d really rather have skipped. And so would he, I’m sure. If he’d had a chance to think about it.

Labels: brain science, death, psychology, the meaning of life, yoga

Don't read this if you don't feel like getting bummed out. (Does anyone ever actually feel like getting bummed out?) But I have to write it because it's all I can think about. (Besides, according to a recent poll discussed in this article, people get therapeutic value from blogging.)

Yoga isn’t competitive and you’re supposed to let go of all self judgment and listen to your body and bla-bla-bla—but all that aside, I really sucked in my yoga class last night. I got out the door late because I was having trouble getting my VCR (if I may be so old school) set to tape Idol (which also sucked last night) and then traffic was stupid and erratic so I arrived to the rec center late and then got stuck behind a slow moving lady screwing with her cell phone as I tried to scurry to class… I was all kerfuffled by the time I got to the “studio.” (It’s actually a conference room.)

My Tuesday night teacher does a lot of balance moves which I’m ordinarily pretty good at but last night, I could barely balance on two feet much less one. I was wibbling and wobbling and although I never actually fell on my ass, I couldn’t hold any of the poses. And the more that happened, the more annoyed and stressed I got (so un-yogi of me). Plus, the room was freezing, as is often the case, which is not ideal for yoga. (My teachers says it’s often too hot for her early class but then when she requests an adjustment, the arctic chill sets in.) Maybe it was the barometric pressure or maybe I’d eaten too much sugar this week (recall the late lamented coffee cake) or maybe my mind was too unbalanced which set the rest of me off balance, but it was one lousy evening of yoga. The only thing I rocked was the wheel, which for some reason I’m really good at. (OK, look at that photo. TMI right?)

After class my evening went from bad to worse.

Since Tom wouldn’t be home for dinner and the cupboards are bare, I figured I’d punish my incorrigible bod with Whataburger. Happily, my timing was right and the food was piping hot (don’t you hate greasy fast food that’s been sitting under the lamps too long?) but on the way home…

…oh, here I go, choking up again…

… I saw a little fluffy white doggie—it looked a lot like ZsaZsa (RIP)--get hit and killed by a car. I saw the whole thing happen and screamed—the car just sped on. I pulled over to see if it was…well, it wasn’t. It was clearly someone’s pet, all fat and fluffy and groomed. I put it on the median and sobbed all the way halfway home, then turned around and went back to make extra sure I couldn’t save it. Then I cried all the way home again.

Of course, my food was cold by the time I got home. So I sat on the couch and ate cold food and watched crappy Idol and cried all evening.

I can’t seem to shake the sad. It’s dark and rainy today and I keep thinking about that little pup lying on the median in the rain. Maybe I should have taken it and buried it but I was so freaked out, and someone will be looking for it, I’m sure.

I have lunch with a client today. Sure hope I can stop crying long enough to get through it. Poor little doggie.

Labels: blogging, blues, bummer, dogs, psychology, yoga