Pilates: Session 7... and

Go me! I did Pilates again today. Tonight, I feel energized and motivated. I added one intermediate exercise today in the "powerhouse series."

I think part of why I feel good tonight is that I finally made a decision and plunked down my cold, hard credit for a new computer. This laptop is lagging badly. The screen is going red all the time, and it takes several seconds sometimes to even open a folder! So I'm building my own Shuttle XPC.

Pilates: Session 6... Bad Me

I skipped way too many days. I got sucked into another hole of waking up too late and procrastinating on all the things that needed doing. I don't know what's wrong with me. But I did it... and will hopefully do Session 7 tomorrow.

Pilates: Session 5... and.... The Switch

Getting on a roll here... Session 5 was identical to the ones before. Took my measurements today, since I don't have a scale at home to mark my progress. They're supposed to be a better indicator than weight, anyway.

Something seemingly remarkable has happened. For at least the last six months (maybe a year or more...? I'm not sure....), I have been miserable when I wasn't eating, because I was constantly thinking of food, and miserable when I was eating, because I knew I didn't need that much food, and it wasn't really satisfying. Or rather, I never reached a point where I was satisfied. The only time I didn't want to eat was when I was feeling disgusting and bloated because I'd already eaten too much. But then I was still reminded of food.

I wasn't sure how to cope with this problem and turn it around. I have been ruminating on the concepts of the Zone Diet which I did very succesfully, although following it only loosely, for several years in my teens. Basically, the ideas are this:

• Never eat a piece of meat bigger than the size of your palm.
• Always eat some protein when you eat carbs... the more carbs you eat, the more protein you need.
• Never eat more than 500 calories at one meal -- anything over that, and your body can't process it, and it'll end up as fat, or just wasted somehow... whatever it does, it makes for major inefficiencies.
• Never go more than five hours without eating (and also have frequent, small snacks every two to three hours between meals, to keep your metabolism going)
  
• (this is the clincher) If you feel full, stop eating.

I wasn't really able to follow any of these in this past period, for the fact that I never felt full (except for bloated), and therefore couldn't effectively tell myself to stop eating.

So.... the point? I feel like a switch has been turned off inside of me... the switch -- that one that made my appetite keep growing like a cancer. Suddenly, I don't feel like eating all the time. I eat and feel full, before I've finished my plate. And I'm okay with wrapping up the rest or throwing it out, 'cause my stomach just doesn't want it.

How did this happen? I'm not sure. I don't think that my thinking about it (and the Zone principles, etc.) did that much good, because I'd been thinking about it for quite a while. One possibility is that I've cut down on milk products, which I know I'm allergic/sensitive to. My mom says that if she eats milk products, afterwards she'll be ravenous and eat anything that isn't nailed down. So... maybe that's it. But I've still been eating some cheese, and... well... so that doesn't seem so sure an answer. What does seem more sure to me is Pilates. I've always felt like Pilates fixed a lot more than just my physical appearance, my strength, my weight, back pain, etc. In the past, it has even done away with some digestive problems I was having. It improves my whole feeling of well-being.

So here I am, on Session 5, with my appetite curbed, and I'm starting to feel a firm base of muscle beneath the flab. This is good. Very, very good.

Pilates: Sessions 3&4

Session 3 was on Thursday. I added the two one-leg teasers. Session 4 was just today, identical routine. On Thursday, after I worked out, I realized that Pilates makes the difference between me feeling tall, straight and lively and feeling sort of slumped and dragging. Obviously, a good thing.

Pilates: Session 2

Just completed Pilates Session 2. I missed a couple more days than I meant to, but my butt was pretty sore after the first one anyway. Routine: same as last time.

Pilates: Session 1

I haven't done Pilates in months. I am going to do my utter best to start doing it again, a minimum of every other day. It's the only thing which has ever given me the body I really wanted. I have to get back into my size 10's. The back of my Pilates book has a quote from Joseph Pilates which goes like this: "In ten sessions you will feel the difference, in twenty you will see the difference, and in thirty you'll have a whole new body." So, Mr. Pilates, I'm going to keep track, and hold you to your word. Here I am, I just did Session 1. I was feeling low before I did it, but now I feel great. Recordkeeping:

• regular matwork: beginner exercises only
• legs: beg. & intermediate
• arms: beg. & intermediate

In other news, I'm procrastinating on starting my take-home finals, due Monday and Tuesday, but at least I'm being mostly productive, working on Preview Gallery... and see, procrastination can even push me into exercising to avoid schoolwork. Hah!

Wait, it's cold out there...

Nevermind getting my music minor signed off on, on Thursday I got my whole degree signed off on. Which means I won't be in school until December like I thought, I'll be in school until August, when I'll be taking two six-week-long summer courses to finish up my last two requirements. This was completely unexpected. My advisor just handed me two requirements I didn't think I had completed, and then told me I should attend the departmental graduation in a few weeks.

The news left me feeling stunned and kind of numb, and like someone was pushing me out the door before I'd gotten my hat and coat. I walked around campus, realizing that this was the end of my last semester here. These are some of the last days I'll be walking around as a student here. The end of student discounts, the end of having a key to a practice room with a piano all my own in it, the end of being able to take a literature class, or a Russian class, or any class, just for the heck of it... So many things I have come to take for granted will just be disappearing in a few months' time, yet I won't have the advantages that other people have who have been living in the "real world" for a while now. It's kinda funny, since college seemed so much the "real world" after being cooped up in my parents' biosphere for so long, yet now I realize just how truly it was just a step towards the actual real world.

What will I be doing now? I'm going to have a period of a year and a half waiting for Isaac to finish his degree, before we can move out of this wretched place called Long Island. So I'm thinking, since I don't want to quit my lessons before I absolutely have to -- I've got too much personally invested in so many of my students, plus the fact that I love it, I'll try and get some part-time temp work for the mornings. That'll give me experience doing different things, and give me some much-needed padding for my bank account before I venture off to a new place to start grad school and/or make a new life. That is, unless my Preview Gallery work starts paying off more, and then maybe I can afford to just stay home and work on that.

In the meantime, I hope to rediscover the things that I once did to relax and express myself -- reading , composing and recording, exercising for fun... And maybe even start some new hobbies. I'm obsessed with getting a bike so I can ride around and feel the wind in my hair. I guess that's all I really need sometimes... the wind in my hair.

A-Rollin' Backwards

I was doing so well with my new "diet." It wasn't really a diet per se, but I was focusing on eating less and more healthfully. Well, I got home this afternoon, and like I usually do after a long week, I ate, ate, ate. I've still got the bag of dried pineapple next to me as I type. And now I feel lousy. My head is swimming from the sugar, and my stomach feels grumpy. But I still want to put stuff in my mouth. Argh! Maybe I should do some yoga or something....

At least I can say I went to the gym on two consecutive days this week. I just wish I could get back to those days when I could eat a little and feel satisfied. I used to have such great willpower.

Gym Log

Oh yeah, I've been going to the gym more frequently. I went today, and the equation of exercise = more energy still holds true. Apparently, though, I haven't raised my metabolism sufficiently enough yet to lose any weight. In fact, I gained about five pounds, bringing me up to 159.5, my highest weight ever, that I know of. Wearing clothes that fit at the beginning of the year makes me feel like a sausage about to pop and get one of those long splits down its side. But I shall persevere. Now that my piano lessons, chamber music and research project are done, the slots of "free time" occupied by those items are now actually "free time," as I originally thought they would be. Yay!

And for what it's worth, I have completely stopped buying croissants and muffins at school. Take that, hips.

The Celtic Knot

I'm not sure why I chose that title, but I was just musing on how a lot of our lives seem to be taken up by simply trying to fix what we messed up before. And when we're focusing on untangling one area, the areas we've turned our back to get all snarled up. Consequently, I have to wonder how much I'm just chasing after my own tail.

I hope one day to be an accomplished, distinguished old woman, with tons of experience and a little wisdom tacked on to boot. I want to exude so much confidence that I seem 6 feet tall, and always carry myself like a ballet dancer.

Who knows if I'll ever get there? I don't, but at least I can aim my ship in that direction, and if the wind is at my face, I might have to tack to get there, but I'll eventually reach port.