This week

I totally forgot to post on Tuesday. I weighed myself - I was down from last week, back into my holding steady range - THANK GOODNESS!

I haven't been eating well. I have been eating a lot of popcorn - at work, at home, everywhere I go seems to have popcorn. There have been a couple of times that I haven't eaten at all until I get home and then I usually have a decent dinner - but not always. I am going back to keeping a food diary - not calorie counting, I gain weight when I do that - but just tracking that I AM eating, and hopefully eating something healthy.

My knees have been hurting lately. I think it is because I have been clenching up my legs at night because I am too cold. Last night I put on an extra blanket and today I am better. Although, yesterday at yoga my knees were mostly OK but my wrists were really hurting! Stan gave me a wedge to put under my hands to focus my weight off of my wrist and onto the ball of my hand - which helped a lot. I am proud of myself. I still hate downdog with a fiery passion - but I have noticed that first, my shoulders aren't tensing up as much when I do it (very hard - you are bent over at the waist, with your arms above your head and flat on the floor so you are forming a triangle with your feet, butt and hands being the three points - your shoulders are supposed to be held "relaxed" and away from your ears... kind of like you are standing with your arms hanging down, but reaching up instead - Stan calls it reaching with short arms.) ANYWAY so my shoulders are not scrunched up anymore. And second, I am noticing my heels are closer to the ground. In the ideal down dog your feet are flat on the floor - but most people can't do that when they first start out - unless they have had a reason for their calves to be nice and stretchy. I still don't have a lot of strength in my arms to hold me up for very long - but in most cases I can hold it the full time in class now. You are supposed to do 1 down dog for 3 minutes - or 3 for 1 minute each. He only had us do 2 yesterday, but the second one was REALLY long - so it may have been for 2 minutes. Supposedly when you are doing yoga regularly downward facing dog is the resting position. I don't buy it. You know the funny thing about yoga is most of the positions are things we do naturally as babies. Like downdog is exactly what toddlers do when they go from crawling to standing. Same with a lot of the twists we do. And there is a pose actually CALLED happy baby (it is what you would expect - lay on your back and grab your heels and pull your knees down to your ears-ish keeping your shins perpendicular to the floor).