The Glowing Edge

Tag: insulin

What I Learned from Hot Yoga (Since I Didn’t Die)

Let me just say how gratified I am that several people congratulated me on staying in the hot yoga room the entire 90 minutes without passing out or puking. It made me feel sincerely understood.

Damn, that hot yoga business is hardcore.

And I’m a boxer, telling you that. Yes, I want to go back and try again, you know, since I survived, but I will definitely do things differently next time. Here’s what I learned.

1. Drink a metric ton of water in advance.

I screwed this one up. Well, I screwed up a lot, but this one was my most wretched and dismal failure.

I had heard all the “you have to stay in there the whole 90 minutes; you can’t leave the room” warnings, and I very sensibly decided — just like I did before I sat through all 2 hours and 46 minutes, not counting previews, of The Hobbit — Hey, I won’t drink any water before it starts or I’ll have to pee, thus leaving the hot yoga room and being labeled an idiot and an annoyance (for the rest of my life).

What works for The Hobbit most emphatically does not work for hot yoga.

Here’s why. You pee through your skin during hot yoga. Buckets. Right there in front of everybody. Of course, they’re all peeing through their skin, too, so it’s all good, but my point remains. Drink PLENTY of water in advance, and don’t go in already dried out, and you’ll improve your chances of getting through the class without hurling.

(Btw, I lost 3 pounds of water weight in that 90 minutes.)

2. Take some plain water with you into class.

I was utterly dried out when I went in, but boy howdy I had my liter sized bottle of Ultima water mixed up and ready. Electrolytes! I thought.

What I didn’t count on was how feeling so nauseated would make me loathe to swallow even a mouthful of flavored water. This compounded my dehydration issue.

3. Boxers are puny weaklings.

So yes, I can punch you in the face and you will hurt. I can actually take some shots, too. But I can’t stand on one leg, cup the heel of my other foot in both hands, then extend that foot straight out in front of me. No indeedy I can’t.

I can get my Warrior pose on (and it’s side-angle relatives), thank God, and I did one curl-up-and-die pose called The Rabbit and the instructor said “Like you’ve been doing it all your life.” I wasn’t sure whether to be proud or humiliated.

But you can forget the Balancing Stick pose, the Bow pose, this lay-back-y thing, and many, many of the others that EVERYONE in the room except me did. Those people are insanely flexible, strong, and balanced.

I spent most of my time sitting on my towel, wringing wet, dizzy, and nauseated. At least I didn’t whine. I waited until I could blog my whines. I bet none of those guys can blog like me. Pansy-asses.

4. Set up your insulin levels in advance.

I’m not a diabetic, but I control my weight very closely and eat a clean diet with few processed foods or fast sugars. If I want to, I can go all morning without starting my body’s natural insulin drip with zero problems. Nothing happens (although eventually I start to feel hungry) if I don’t start the “machine.”

Since my hot yoga class was at 9 am, and I was going to be there by 8:30 am (leaving by 8 am), I figured I would wait until I got home to eat my first small meal. I didn’t want to risk eating before going and feeling ill in the heat.

Colossal mistake!

Low blood pressure (from not being hydrated) and low blood sugar made a terrible combination. Next time I’ll go ahead and have oatmeal and apples, or something similar, about an hour in advance. Nothing that seems even a little bit greasy (like eggs).

Next time.

5. You can do more than you think you can.

One thing the instructor (who was marvelous, by the way) did was constantly talk to us about taking our efforts just a touch farther. “One more centimeter,” she kept asking, and by Elvis I wanted to do it for her. I tried.

And even though I didn’t manage it during my yoga class her voice stayed with me during my regular workout the next day. “Can I do a little more, go a little further? One more centimeter?” I asked myself, over and over again. And I found I could.

You have reserves you don’t even know about, reserves you haven’t tapped. You just need someone to call it forth. And that someone can be you!

In the end…

Yes, I want to go again. I really liked the Open Door Yoga Studio and the instructor, and they have a unique “pay what you can” model that feels incredibly life-giving.

But before I go again, I want to improve my flexibility so that I have a fighting chance of accomplishing some of the poses. I’m thinking a beginner’s class, 60 minutes, room temperature. Or just practice the poses I can remember on my own some.

So if you Skype and I don’t answer, I’m probably Threading the Needle or something.

December 18, 2012
Getting Ready for the Next Fight: Cutting Weight and Mental Prep

Next fights are always iffy, partly because it’s boxing, and also because I’m in the Masters (over 35), and female. There just don’t seem to be that many of us out there.

I went to weigh-ins for a match a month or so ago and didn’t get an opponent, which is fairly standard in boxing. In fact, 12 of my team went, and only 6 got matches.

This time I am a bit more hopeful, but I’m keeping my expectations tamped down. I’ll be very pleased to get the match if it does come through, but it will not be a huge deal if it doesn’t.

My opponent weighs 125, which means I’ve been cutting weight, which is miserable, since I’m already on a clean diet and normally fairly light (142). But I’ve been managing, and I hope to weigh in at 136 if I possibly can this weekend. If she’s gained at least a few pounds we’ll be in range and the match will be on.

I was chatting with Amy Scheer about this and told her about the weird rule in boxing (not all jurisdictions follow it) that you can’t weight in 1. Unshaven — no beard or ‘stache, boys, or 2. In jeans or pants. I told her that I plan to weigh in in my lightest ever undies, shorts, and a tank.

To cut the weight, I’ve mostly chosen to eliminate sugars and processed carbs. No Cheetos (aaaaugh!). Goodbye to my periodic slice of whole grain toast. Tortilla chips reduced to 6 at any given time (I love hot salsa). No popcorn with the family (they have it all the time). No bread. No pasta. Bread and pasta were already nearly non-existent, anyway. Nothing processed or canned.

Even the sweeter fruits are gone — apples, oranges, and most bananas. Only raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and cherries remain right now.

I’m eating a ton of raw broccoli, almonds, bell peppers, fresh asparagus, lean meat, onion, spinach, egg whites, plain yogurt, cottage cheese with berries, almonds, smoothies…

And I’m adding more green tea and oolong tea. I drink at least 3 cups a day now.

I’m still fantasizing about what I want to eat after the fight. Hot fresh donuts are currently leading. (Hellllllooooo, fast carbs!)

And I learned something new from Amy as I described my eating plan and we discussed particular food choices. In addition to choosing the right foods and maintaining an excruciatingly careful timeline of eating every day (to avoid the insulin spikes), I told her about one cutback issue I’ve been aware of and successfully dealing with this time around.

There’s only a difference of degree between dieting and starving. When your leptin levels drop (because you’ve cut back calories, which I’m doing right now) so does your metabolism and fat-burning ability. It usually happens after a week of dieting. Leptin is doing it’s job to make sure you have enough fat and energy to survive. That’s not good when I want to cut weight.

So I have to increase leptin levels in order to convince my body I’m not actually starving.

Amazingly, this can be done with a whopper of a treat. It takes a week of cutting to drop leptin levels by half, but only one “overfeed” to bring them back up. So a hunk of greasy pizza, some mac n cheese, a coupla Reese’s PB cups — but only once a week, and not crazed. The point is to give your body a good dose of carbs and fat together and your leptin goes back up to normal levels.

Amy mentioned that this was called “Carb Cycling,” which I had heard of, but didn’t know what it was. I used my formidable Google skillz and discovered she was right.

The other thing I’ve been doing is following my normal mental prep plan.

This really only has three steps:

1. Envision all the women I see in the course of my day as a potential opponent.

I look at the women in the gym, in the grocery store, at the park and everywhere, and I size them up. Rarely do I immediately dismiss any of the women I see as potential opponents. If they are three times heavier than me, I think about how I will have to be fast in order to avoid their power hits. If they look small and quick, I run through my defenses against the inside game. If they have big biceps I go over my own strengths and brace myself for a slugfest.

This seems to really help with the shock of seeing your opponent for the very first time.

2. Work through a round or two of boxing in my mind as I go to sleep each night.

I imagine my opening moves, my defense, and my general energy level. I replay certain things over and over again, and make myself quick, strong, and mentally on my game. I try to go to sleep boxing well.

3. Radio silence at all other times.

It doesn’t help me to focus too much on the upcoming match. I just get worked up and have a hard time focusing on other things, like my full-time work, family, or the crazy eating plan I have to be on. So I maintain mental white noise on the boxing channel, which helps keep this whole event from draining energy.

And that’s it! That’s my plan, and it’s what I’m going with.

How do you get ready for a big event? Do you have a plan you follow, or do you just do everything on the fly?

Images by Peter Gordon and Ravensmagiclantern

November 7, 2011
How to Cheat on Your Diet (and do it well)

1. Don’t try to be Polly Pure.

It won’t work. Try for “sustainable” instead. Unless you are in training for a very specific period of time for a major goal (a marathon or a big fight), your diet should look and feel like something you can continue to do for the rest of your life.

2. Don’t go hungry, but if you do, snack better.

The number one secret (and it isn’t a secret, really) to eating right is to not starve yourself. This means you have to eat the kinds of foods in portion sizes that help you maintain better insulin levels all day long. This takes some planning.

One of the best ways to manage when you don’t have time to prepare a meal or can’t get to a place where you can, is to have good snacks on hand. I keep Zone bars and a bag of almonds in my desk, gym bag, and glove compartment. This curbs the impulse to swing through McDonald’s for a quick fix.

3. Change “cheat” to “treat”

I don’t actually think of my forays into the universe of junk food as cheating, as if I were trying to hide something. Instead, I know ahead of time that I’m not going to be Polly Pure, and I work it into the way I eat in as healthy a way as I possibly can. See below.

4. Treat yourself regularly.

I have a treat pretty much every day, and I exercise control with portions and frequency more than specific food items. Rather than eating a whole bag of M&M’s, I limit myself to 10. And I only do that maybe once a day, and that’s my treat for the day. I also love Cheetos, omg I LOVE Cheetos! So I limit the number I eat, and I only buy them about twice a month. Lucky for me I live in a house with four other Cheeto hounds, so the bag will be gone pretty soon anyway.

5. Your diet should include room for real splurges.

REAL splurges. A splurge isn’t something you do every single day. Think of it like a vacation. You don’t have a vacation every day, do you? But you do have them, and they’re part of what makes life lovely.

A splurge for me is a giant basket of onion rings, and you can bet your boots I’ll be having some at the State Fair this year. (Note: when you have a pretty clean diet, some splurges will make you feel a bit ill afterwards, which will cause you to limit it next time. Or not! I’ll have an o-ring hangover, but won’t care.)

6. Achieve balance with exercise.

Nobody’s diet is going to be in balance without exercise. When you splurge, add an extra two miles of sprints to your regular workout, or do 500 stairs. Just don’t try to make up a huge junk food orgy in a single workout, it isn’t sustainable. See above.

7. Prepare yourself for friendly (and not so friendly) commentary

Balancing your diet and including regular exercise in your life is such a difficult task that most people will never try it at all. Or they will, and they’ll abandon their efforts because they’ve tried something that isn’t working for them or it is just too hard. There is SO much bad advice out there, it’s no wonder people get discouraged. Plus it’s work, and we all have a ton of work in our lives already. So when people see you having treats, they’ll sometimes say, “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you supposed to be Ms Healthy?” This gives you the opportunity to

a) Enjoy it, play the “food porn” game, and brag a little: “Mm-hm, and tomorrow I’m going to eat baaaaacon! Cause my marathon is next week.”
b) Challenge them to match you in your extra exercise. “I hereby swear to an extra 15 minutes of jump rope sprints. Wanna join me?”
c) Ignore it and let your body speak for itself. If you’re looking great and feeling energetic and fit, it will show!

8. Recovering from a major screw-up or holiday season.

For this, you have to take the long view. You’re probably going to see a weight change and you may feel crappy, both mentally and physically. But honestly, big screw-ups happen, and the best thing to do is start with one good meal, one good workout, and one good day. Then add another and another. Set up your goals again and tape them to your computer. And know that in a couple of weeks (depending on the size and duration of your lapse), you’ll be back where you want to be.

Image credit: atomicjeep on Flickr

August 27, 2009