Monday, May 11, 2020

Losing Weight In Quarantine.

Today is exactly 8 months since I decided to start exercising every day.  I started on Sept 11, 2019 and I haven't let up since, so that makes 243 days in a row!  Which is pretty, pretty good, if I do say so myself.  You can read more about my motivations and my first 180 days here.

I'm not exactly sure what has kept me on track and motivated, when in previous times I've gone 3 days or so before finding an excuse to quit.  At this point, I feel like I've incorporated this exercise into my life, I know it's what I need to do, and I feel compelled to keep on going on, even when I don't want to.  oh my gosh, I have a habit!

Of course, diet is part of that (or really probably most of the weight loss).  I'm doing Intermittent Fasting (approximately 12 hours or more everyday from 9 pm to 9 am, I don't eat.)  When I do eat, I write everything down, and stay under the suggestion that LoseIt (the App) gives me.  And it's been working!

I didn't really take process photos along the way, but I managed to cobble together these three photographs in the same shirt  and pants (and now will continue to take these pictures once a month or so)


As you can see, I've lost approximately 73 lbs since I started 8 months ago in September.   That's 9 lbs per month! A little over 2 lbs a week.  Which means I'm right on track!

More importantly,  I've lost almost 20 lbs since March, (we locked down on March 13, so it's been 8 weeks in quarantine!)

Obviously, before quarantine, when I was swimming a mile twice a week, going to the gym to use their machines, and in general switching it up, I had much more variety in my exercise diet.  Now, I'm primarily doing a 30 minute + workout on my recumbent bike.  But because I want to get stronger and more flexible, about 35 days ago I started doing television yoga.

Yoga With Adriene is on Amazon Prime
I did yoga 30 years ago as part of my acting training, and have been doing it on and off (mostly off) for the last 20 years.  After trying a number of different practitioners, I settled on Yoga With Adriene's Amazon Prime Series True.  It's a 30 day series of approximately 25 minutes each day.  Sometimes longer, sometimes less. 

I like her style, which is a little quirky and a little goofy, but also heartfelt.  She went a little fast for me, which I think is better than too slow.

I stuck with it, and everything up until the 30th day was great.  On the last day, Adriene said something which was both great and terrible.  She was-- now that you have practiced for 30 days, you have, whether you like it or not,a yoga practice. Today, I'm going to let go of the mic and we will practice together.

Which sounds great as an idea, and certainly honors the people that know what they are doing, but that ain't me!  I had no idea what was next or what we should be doing.  I'm still at the point where I need somebody to tell me "Push into the knife point of your foot."  "Don't forget to breathe"  "Let go of your tension."  Not having a teacher was pretty difficult.

I'm not ready to be responsible for my own yoga practice!  I am now doing a 14 day spinal reset, and after that I think I will do Adriene's first 29 days.  Whether or not I do the 30th day remains to be seen.

And hopefully I'll be 8.3 lbs less next month!


1 comment:

Shaban said...

Must have taken a lot of power to lose weight during the quarantine. Personally i gained like 10 kilograms.

https://aab-edu.net/