Great yoga for legs!

Just finished the fifth yoga sequence on the Yoga Journal 21 Day Challenge and I am sweating! This was a very challenging class but awesome for legs - lots of strengthening and stretching all in pursuit of getting ready to do Hanumanasana, better known as the splits! Of course I can't do the full splits although it was fun to try (and notice how one side of my body is able to get a lot closer than the other side). This one would definitely be one I would do again as I think it is an excellent complement to running.

Yoga Day 4

I really enjoyed today's yoga challenge sequence, a half hour with all standing poses! This is where one of my "shortcomings" - short legs - is a plus: I can always reach the floor with my hands and I feel pretty stable in most of the poses. Bring on the reverse triangle pose! I have done other videos with the teacher of this segment, Jason Crandall, and I feel like he explains what you are supposed to be doing very clearly. It was one of the first segments where I wasn't craning my neck trying to see on my laptop screen what I was supposed to be doing.

After three full days on the Cinch detox, I moved into the regular program today. I lost three pounds of weight (probably a lot of it water due to cutting out starchy carbs for three days) and I feel lighter and calmer. Limiting food choices for a few days helps to kind of shut off that mode we get in during the holidays of thinking we need to have a taste of everything around us and the constant grazing; but at the same time, I personally wouldn't do it for much longer than a few days because then I tend to get a rebound effect of getting so tired of eating the same thing that I start having strong cravings for junky food. And that's not good! So three days was the magic number for me.

The regular program is very similar to how I eat on a normal day. The four meals consist of a whole grain carb, a protein, a fruit or two veg, and a plant-based fat, which is how I tend to put my meals together as well. You are also supposed to eat a small serving of dark chocolate each day - love that! The big change for me is the very well defined small portions. I normally eat three "normal" sized meals and two small snacks each day; this plan calls for four small meals, period. So my three main meals feel smaller and my afternoon snack, which is now a "meal", feels huge! I am curious to see how this feels for the next few days. I do think that when I return to the gym next week and start working out with weights and having longer runs, I might need to add a small post-workout snack. But for right now it's fine.

Gentle Week

Still having some trouble sleeping at night! I just did the Yoga Challenge Day 3, which was a 20 minute gentle core routine. My entire week has been gentle when it comes to exercise - besides daily yoga I have also been getting a 30 minute walk every day, but not yet back to running or weight training. The reason for this is, besides still being jet lagged, I am also following the five day detox from the Cinch diet, a new book by Cynthia Sass that came out just after Christmas. And after a couple of weeks of yummy dinners, lots of Christmas cookies and umpteem glasses of good wine, it feels good to be eating very soberly and being gentle on my digestive system as well! The only drawback is that the five day diet doesn't really offer enough fuel for my usual workout routine, but since I knew I would be tired from the trip anyway and wouldn't be starting right up with heavy workouts, I figured it was the perfect time to do it.

The nice thing about this plan for me is that it uses whole foods and offers tons of vegetarian and vegan options. In fact, the author recommends that omnivores eat a minimum of 5 vegetarian meals a week, and that vegetarians go for at least 5 vegan meals a week!

After the first five days which are restricted to just five foods (spinach, raspberries, dairy or soy yogurt, almonds, eggs or tofu), you can move on to a month long plan that includes all kinds of healthy, whole foods, plus a daily dose of dark chocolate. Yum!

The first two days on the detox have been surprisingly easy. I did substitute pears and clementines for the raspberries, as they are not available fresh here right now and I find frozen way too sour. I am just taking it day by day and I am planning to follow the month long eating plan after these first five days.

Yoga Day 2: gentle breathing

Today's yoga practice was a 15 minute gentle breathing practice - it was very relaxing and easy for anyone - including someone completely new to yoga. Maybe they should have started the week out with this easy routine? In any case I enjoyed it, feel energized, and am going to make some lunch!

New Year, New Yoga

I recently signed up for the 21 day yoga challenge from Yoga Journal magazine, which starts today. For the next three weeks, I will get an email with a video yoga class - for free! The first session, Day 1: Fun Flow, was really good! It was a vigorous and sometimes challenging class, and I actually got sweaty doing it! Hopefully this will inspire me to get back into regular practice, a long standing aspiration of mine. Doing yoga on a regular basis simply makes me feel better in my skin.

Still feeling sluggish and tired and not sleeping well at night from the jet lag, but hopefully getting back into our normal routine will smooth this out by the end of the week. And doing yoga doesn't hurt either!

Happy New Year!

We're back! Since I last posted, we spent a long weekend in San Antonio (enjoying the beautiful lights on the Riverwalk - see picture) ... visited the Texas State Capitol in Austin ... did lots of shopping and one more boot camp with Mom (still sore from that) ... and celebrated the arrival of 2011!

We were lucky again to have safe and smooth travel back home and are now doing laundry, getting readjusted to the time change and just hanging out...school, work and normal life begin again on Monday ... slowly but surely I will be catching up on all of your blogs and posting again on mine!


Wishing all of you a very happy year in 2011!

Last Race of 2010!

Mom, Christy, Stefaan, Florian and I headed over to downtown Fort Worth yesterday afternoon to participate in the New Year's Eve 5K run along the Trinity River. We were all excited because not only would it be our last race of the year, it was also my oldest son Florian's first race ever!
Luckily Grandma is a seasoned racer and could help him with his bib!




It was a beautiful day, sunny and bright, but there was a lot of wind and it was getting cold while we waited for the race to start at 4:30. I was so glad when we could finally start running and get warmed up. Florian and Stefaan pulled ahead of me pretty quickly. The race was an out and back on a trail along the river, so pretty quickly we got to see the leaders coming back.

There was no chip timing. Stefaan came in in 25:xx, Florian in 26:xx, I finished in 30:11 on my Garmin (which froze up on me this morning and I had to reset and lost all my data so I can't show you a map of the run).

Mom ended up coming in 38:38 and winning first place in her age group and Christy came in in 42 minutes. We were all glad we did it - it was a fun, small race, and they had great snacks afterwards (even packaged Lotus sugar waffles from Belgium - they must have known we were coming)!