Wow! It's hard to believe that I am halfway through this year-long journey on the road to a healthy lifestyle with Cathy Zielske over at Big Picture Classes in her Move More Eat Well Workshop. This year is flying. Why is it the older you get the faster time goes?
It also seems older you get you seem to be more in tune with your body and are more mature to listen to what it is telling you. During the month of April, I found that I wasn't in the gym as often as in previous months. The first few days of May I tried to overcompensate and hit the gym hard with a lot of cardio on the treadmill. I didn't injure myself, but I did feel that my left knee was bothering me a bit. So I listened to my body and decided to scale back my gym time–2 gym days and 1 yoga day. Then we went to France and I didn't work out for 10+ days. Upon our return that is when I noticed something–more muscle tone and definition in my arms, legs and abs. I know. It's weird. How could that be?
I went to Lisa (my trainer) and asked her about this "phenomena." She said it could be for a few reasons:
- Working out causes inflammation, so maybe that is reduced.
- Walking so much is great for lower body.
- Maybe you lost a bit of weight? (um, no, that's not it)
- Maybe you are slightly dehydrated. (not that either drinking tons of water just because!)
So I am chalking up my new-found muscle tone to scaling back a bit at the gym, reducing any inflammation and all of that walking we did in Paris. So during the month of June, I am going to conduct my own little experiment. I'm going to stick with my plan of going to the gym twice a week (probably Mondays and Fridays) and attend my Wednesday morning yoga class. Combining that with my healthy diet, it will be interesting to see if my numbers go up, down or stay the same (FYI–I am perfectly happy maintaining my current weight. I'm happy to say that my numbers stayed right where they were from the month before).
This month Cathy wanted us to find a few photos of what represents "healthy" to us. You can see the ones I chose above. I'm loving the edamame pic. We can't get it here in Riga and I am craving it. It will be one of the first things I buy at the grocery store when I go back to the States!
Have a healthy June!