Day Fifty-Six: Adventures with Yoga

There's no sugar coating the facts. I hate exercise. Given a choice between binge watching multiple seasons of Bones or jogging on my treadmill, I'll pick binge watching every time. I'm just naturally lazy. It also doesn't help that my treadmill is loud and I live in an apartment complex with thin walls and a neighbor who sleeps most of the day because he works nights. That or he's a vampire.

Not my neighbor. Thank the gods.

This hasn't helped my weight loss journey in the least bit, but I've been trying, by golly, and by trying, I mean I've been roped into doing yoga with my sister. She joined a yoga studio about a month ago and has been nagging me to try it. At first, I wasn't too enthusiastic. From what I've seen on TV, it's just a lot of weird poses, trying to balance yourself on one foot, and a bunch spiritual mumbo jumbo that I'm just not into, but I was getting desperate to find a new routine that didn't bore me to death, so I tried Yoga Krewe's 30 for 30 package (for first timers only) where you can attend unlimited classes for thirty days at thirty dollars. I figured if I didn't like it or didn't get much of a workout from it, I wouldn't have wasted that much money. And really, how hard could it be?

Yeah, turns out Yoga is a lot harder than you would think. Since starting the class, I've discovered muscles I didn't know I had. It also strengthens your core muscles, which I apparently have. I learned this when they made their presence known by letting me know how unhappy they were that I've neglected them for so many years. I've also discovered that the only way to get me to a 6 AM class is to bribe myself with a donut. Guess what one of my cheats was this month?

Two of these. The other one was in my stomach before I could take the picture.

Two early morning classes and the only way I could force myself to make it to either one was to sleep in my workout clothes the night before and bribe myself with a plain cake donut. And the only reason there wasn't glaze on that thing was because I couldn't quite bring myself to waste all the effort it took to make the class in the first place.

In spite of my early morning donut slip ups, I've kept to my calorie limit (except for one day when I went way over, ironically, when there were no donut bribes to be had), and I do enjoy the classes. Getting to them is a pain, however, especially since the studio is all the way the hell over in Gretna. Because of this, I've decided not to renew my membership there. Instead, I've signed up for a membership at East Jefferson Wellness Center. The membership fee is only $60, which isn't too shabby compared to the $99 unlimited class fee at Yoga Krewe. Not that the Krewe hasn't been wonderful. The instructors there are really nice, know what they're doing, and are patient with less than agile members such as myself, but I'll be getting more out of it since the Wellness Center offers classes other than yoga, has workout equipment, a pool, and a sauna.

Not a donut, but it'll do.