Two pounds at a time

I've lost another two pounds for a total of four pounds. YAY!

This is all because I've been assisting and taking yoga classes like crazy. My little sister is on spring break, and she is watching my toddler while I take and assist. Somedays I take two to three yoga classes. It's marvelous. I wish I could take yoga classes every day. The teachers are so brilliant and fun.

When I was instructing at LA Fitness, I would teach about ten classes a week and I would take an additional four classes of yoga, zumba, or any other class I was interested in. I would also swim, and visit the sauna when I was done. Sometimes I miss that, especially after a day like today when I was able to swim for about fifteen minutes while my toddler slept. I have not had  a good swim in about a year. I've just done water aerobics with my baby. Taking that time was very fulfilling, but it's not the anaerobic exercise I get from swimming.

Well, I've finally kept up with my weight loss goal! I even cleaned up my pantry a little and got rid of a few magazines. I gave my magazines to my little sister, and I made hummus with the canned garbanzo beans I had in the pantry. The hummus was a fail, but, it was still good.

This is the recipe I used:

1 can of Garbanzo beans
1 tablespoon of Tahini
5 cloves of garlic
lemon
4 tablespoons of olive oil
 salt to taste.


I blended it in my nutri bullet and walla instant hummus.

This week I made some from scratch. I Just soaked the garbanzo beans over night and then cooked them for an hour with a few garlic cloves and salt. It's nothing complicated. I can't wait to learn how to make pani puri with them. Pani puri is an indian dish. It's so delicious. You buy these small orbs of fried flour and then place the garbanzo beans with flavoring inside and pour this delectable water inside and then pop them in. The taste is like nothing you can imagine. There are so many different textures and tastes that your instantly taken to heaven with just one bite.

Pani Puri

When I make it I'll type out the recipe as well. We will see how well it comes out. 

The big hike was planned for this weekend. I dont know if i'm ready for it, but i'll let you know how bad it goes on the next blog.

Body Composition Analysis

The receptionist at the clinic called my evaluator the human. She had to categorize Sergio, the physical therapist, for my chart and because he used an impedance machine called the Inbody they had to log him in as a human.

Standing on that machine and holding the handles felt a little odd. I only stood on the machine for about a minute. After that minute a printer released the data so that Sergio and I could discuss the results. 

My fat percentage is over the roof! I'm at 47.6% That is extreme. Women have to be within 18-28 percent. My muscle mass is also higher on my arms then on my legs.  

These numbers mean that I am obese. I did lose two pounds before going to the appointment. My plan to lose some weight before the evaluation was a success! If the cost was cheaper I would schedule one each week, to help with my weight loss. 

A deadline always causes urgency in the blood, mind and body.  Something like a wedding or any other special event catalyzes a major goal. If there was a way to harness that energy to reach your desired objective, there would be more content people in this world. Creating imaginary milestones might help, but that would be trickery. While tricking your mind into following a healthy habit can be a good thing, will it be permanent? Or will it just help you reach the top of the hill and then roll you back down to where you were originally? I think that's up to the individual. 

What do you need? What do I need? Planning and concocting ideas to help with weight loss have not helped at all. The only time I had a deadline for weight loss was today. This might be the reason why people sign up for marathons, bowling leagues, or baseball leagues. 

My husband and I were talking about our routine. The best way to accomplish anything is to set a good routine and follow it through.  We started to walk together nightly for less than thirty minutes. We just walk around our complex before or after dinner. Not too late. We no longer set weekend hiking trips, instead we visit family members or relax at home. 

I'm going to have my partner help me out with this obesity. Countless blogs have been written trying to help me attain my pre baby weight. This time I'm making sure I have a partner to help me be accountable. At the end of the month we will set up a hiking trip, throughout the month lunges, squats, yoga routines, and weight training will be scheduled to improve the outcome of the hike. 

Obesity causes many serious diseases. I definitely do not want to be another diabetic Mexican in my family. It's still early so at the end of this month we will hike up a small mountain and I'll make sure to take pictures. 

Completing this assessment has been the best thing I've done in a long while.   

Neck Hump

As I was searching through my Pinterest account for a good self massage, I realized that there was such a think as a neck hump. I've had this since I was in middle school. I thought it was a dowagers hump. My mom has one as well. She told me that her doctor said it was nerves.

Reading books and typing on a computer has caused this forward head posture to worsen. The pin I found sent me to this video. I also watched this video.  Now I follow the video daily. I have my husband doing the exercises as well. At first I used my yoga blanket, but that was much too high. Because I exercise and do yoga frequently, I started the practice at longer intervals and I will move to a pool tube next week.  

Let's hope it works.  

Here are my updates:

This week I've made sugar cookies. I've have loved to bake since I was a teenager. I would memorize recipes and repeat them as often as I could. Now I've memorized this sugar cookie recipe, thankfully I have not added the frosting!  Instead of replacing a meal with a smoothie i've been eating what I want. That whole sick week really ruined my schedule. 

The meal plans that have been hurting. Instead of planning out smoothies and salads, I've been planning burgers and pizza's. My husband and I used to order pizza every friday night and watch television. I make my own pop corn with non-gmo canola oil and organic non-gmo corn kernels. We watch a movie and snuggle as we eat our junk food. Now I just buy a frozen pizza and we eat that on friday's instead of spending those extra $25. 

This week I'm planning on making my own salads again, and I've also planned on making coctel de camaron, which is a mexican shrimp cocktail. It's not like your usual cocktail:

Instead it's like this:

Oh, yeah. No beer though. It's got veggies and avocado. It's so delicious. My mother is from Ensenada. Ensenada is in Baja California. There is a port there with a ton of seafood restaurants. They are lined up, so when you walk by them the owners and waiters try to lure you in with a towel letting you know they have the best cocktails. I'm sure they all have great cocktails. 

Breakfast has been quiche lately. This week I'm going to try to make overnight oatmeal, then have some coctel de camaron for lunch and a smoothie for dinner. I can probably pull that off until wednesday, then it'll have to be smoothies for breakfast, chicken beet salad, and some single bun turkey burgers for dinner. 

My husband got a chromecast for christmas, so I've been playing youtube video's on the big screen and I've been doing my zumba video's to help me workout. I've stopped running, which is a big mistake. I can feel my breathing become heavy again because of it. I'm also going to purchase a scale. I never thought I needed a scale because it's not about weight it's all about inches and muscle. But, nothing is working so far. 

My yoga mat is in the car, so it's easier to abandon that for the day. Because I donated a few mats to the YMCA I only have one. It's the heavy manduka one, so it's a pain to bring in and out because I'm also still carrying my toddler around and all of the other extra's I need. It's so easy to find excuses to keep this weight on. 

Today is my body composition meeting. I'm really excited! I have to fast for three hours before the appointment. Oh, well. 

I'm going to try to write daily for a while. Let's see how that works. 

Spring Cleaning

Erika Badu's song: "bag lady" is always on my mind when I feel that I've just got too many things stored in my closet, my purse, my car, and my head. It's always the same story: I need it all!

It's not true. I don't need all of those magazines. If I didn't make time to read them when I got them, why do I feel that I will, some how miraculously, read them when they are all in a stack stuffed onto my night stand? It's not going to happen. Giving up on those small things is not the end of the world. Especially, since it free's up my nightstand, car and life. It's always there in the back of my mind: " I have to read that magazine." I subscribe to amazing magazines by the way: wired, woman's health, fitness, psychology today, yoga journal to name a few. 

Now, I have to figure out what else i keep stacked away in my life that's creating a mess all over my world:

1. Facebook- Haha. I can waste thirty minutes on facebook without even trying. I love to read. I do, I am currently reading three books at the moment. I can't seem to finish them, because I find myself reading Time, or Daily dot articles when I'm scrolling down on my facebook. 
2. Battle Camp- It's a game my husband got me addicted to. It's very easy to play that game longer then I should.
3. Tea- I do not drink all of the tea I have. Now, I did find a box that I had useful during my sick period last week, but that was only one box. I own many. I definitely need to go through those boxes and clear out a ton of tea. 
4. Cans of beans- yes, i have a ton of these. I alway's wonder if i'll regret this during a natural disaster. I'll just pray this will never be the case. 
5. Old clothes- I still have my old high school clothes, and hair. That just needs to go. 
6. Negative thoughts- I don't need ice cream, i dont need candy, I am not fat. 

I know it's not yet spring, but I might as well start before the 20th. These few things are only the ones I can think of now. I will let go of my magazines someday. I will take the time to look through them and throw them before the 19th. It has to be done, it's a fire hazard. 

My yoga practice has been on a stand still since I fell ill a few weeks back. I'm missing it more than anything, and will return to it today. 

The resistance training is taking a while to find itself into my life again. Not that I don't love it. I just did a few exercises and my deltoids were killing me. I hate having shoulder pain. I have to remind myself that it's only a few minutes a day.

The Body composition meeting was pushed back to next week. I'll make sure to blog about that after I have my first evaluation. I'm really excited about it. Let's see what they say.