Tuesday, March 5th

Megan is texting me that I haven't blogged yet...chill out, sister!  I realize my fans are chomping at the bit for new material, but I'm a busy woman.

This morning I successfully woke up early and made it to 7 AM Morning Momentum. It was a fitness class that combines tai chi and cardio movies.  It was a nice way to wake up the body.  Especially since I didn't sleep very well the night before.  I'm not sure if I was hungry, too hot, not used to the new surroundings, or what, but sleep didn't come easily last night.  So tonight I've had a snack, the room is cooler, and I was much more active today.  Hopefully I will have a good night's sleep.

After breakfast, us newbies (first weekers) went to a class about the Principles of Mindful Eating.  We were introduced to the three main steps of mindful eating: 1. Wait for Hunger; 2. Eat What You Want; and 3. Get Focused.  As you can imagine, item number 2 was a large topic of conversation.  All of us have many years of diet training under our belts and it is really hard for us to wrap our minds around the fact that we are supposed to eat what we want...salty, fatty, carby, sugary...all of it!  JUST probably not all at the same time and not in enormous proportions that we have come to do over the years.  AND the biggest part is to then not feel guilty about it.  We learned a lot about self hatred and how we have been talking down to ourselves for many years.  Also, to remember to give ourselves unconditional permission to have what we want.  Mind blowing.

My day then took a turn for the awesome when I went to my first Nia Body Dance class.  While the class has some new agey undertones, it was so much fun.  It was structured, but at times the instructor would say, "Okay, now take this movement and make it your own. Do what feels right.  How does your body want you to move?"  At times I imagined Megan and Ellie standing next to me, freeing themselves on the dance floor and the three of us just giggling like crazy girls.  (Then Dad appeared in my mind giving us the 'We are in church!' look to make us stop.)  At one point, we were told to just walk and dance around the room to the song.  I think I may have found some new dance moves for the dance offs Joe and I like to have in our living room.  (Leo is still number one as the best dancer in our apartment.)

For lunch, we had chicken quesadillas, salad, and cucumber salad, and we all ate in silence for the first 30 minutes so we could focus on our eating.  My focus stayed on the fact that the quesadilla was awesome but the cucumber salad was yucky.

The Emotional Eating class followed and it is so far my favorite class.  Our instructor Darla was great.  Here we mostly talked about self bullying and how we need to retrain the way our brains think.  Also, we need to look at the way our minds wander and worry about things that we may not need to be worrying about because we should be focusing on our eating or trying to figure out where we land on the hunger scale.  To stop both our wandering/worrying thoughts or our bad thoughts about ourselves we need to 1. STOP 2. Say, "It doesn't do me any good to think about this now and 3. Create a relaxing scene/happy place in our minds.  By doing this, we can check our emotions and create the right response.  In the past most of us would reach for food.  Now we need to look at if our emotions are telling us to be in motion or telling us to better nurture ourselves in another way.

My afternoon fitness was aquatics.  Yay!  I love the pool.  They asked us yesterday to say an activity that we enjoyed as a child and my answer was swimming.  So why aren't I doing it more often?  I plan to research some community centers in Denver while I am here.  Maybe I can find one with adult swim classes.  Anyway, we went to a local resort to use their indoor pool and it was a really intense workout.  Most of the moves I had done in previous aquatics classes over the years, but we had a really good group who were focused on keeping up the intensity.  It was awesome and I am REALLY feeling it tonight.

Our snack was then followed by a stress management class.  The main focus was on identifying that when your stress goes up, your self care go down.  Many of us listed indicators of how we knew we were stressed, like stomach ache, which was mine.  Darla pointed out that these are not indicators of stress, but indicators of being OVERstressed.  As in, it's too late!  You're past stressed.  So she told us to really take note next time and figure out our early indicators so we can nip it in the bud before it's too late.  (i.e. playing with your hair, nail biting, biting your cheek, etc.)

Dinner tonight was a lightly breaded tilapia, snow peas, and quiona.  I know I say this a lot...but it was delicious.  And guess what we had for dessert...a brownie!  A big one at that.  Awesome.

After dinner, Darla led us in two types of meditation; guided and concentration.  I didn't really take to either, but she had some ideas for many other types that I plan on trying.  I hope to find one I like that I could do for a few minutes everyday.  It's supposed to be really good for your body and for relieving stress.

Finally, I just got back from my evening snack, so I hope that helps me to sleep better tonight.  I'll report tomorrow.  :0)