Working out, having fun - and my boots feel looser

Posted: May 26, 2010 at 9:30 AM [May 26, 2010]


When I was younger, I never thought that the phrase, “Wow, my boots feel a little looser” would be a cause for celebration. Apparently the younger me had a different definition of victory.

From where I’m sitting - I mean standing of course, got to remain active - it’s a noteworthy benchmark when my leather-ish boots almost actually pull up over my calves. Admittedly, when I wore them before, the seal formed by plugging my bountiful and stocky leg into the just-too-small opening in the boot was enough to send me flailing off the sofa with a “pop!” as I wrenched them off my feet at the end of the day. Eventually, I believe that this insistence on wearing ill-fitting boots was what caused my feet some extreme pain and may have curtailed some of the blood flow to the bottommost parts of my understructure over the last couple of months. Not the case today. Today, my boots still don’t completely fit over my calves, but I have some room in the calf area for my leg to move within it and not be stuck in the same position for the entire day. This, for me, is new.

Thanks to the bellydance DVD reawakening that I’ve been experiencing lately, it’s something that I can count as an achievement. I’ve had fleeting thoughts about standing outside at the corner of Fifth and Liberty, working my lungs to shout over the din of construction and yelling, “Hey everybody! The circumferences of my calves are shrinking! How do you like me now? Yeah. That’s what I thought.” And then I would proceed to nod my head up and down emphatically to accompany the wild gleam in my eyes.

This week, I tried to mix it up by throwing the Belly Twins Neena and Veena’s Bollywood Blast and Indy Hop DVDs into the rotation. And though I swear it is just the same twin Photo-shopped twice on to the cover of the Bollywood Blast, it does not diminish the quality of the cardio workout held therein. Sure, I’m awkward with the bouncing and skipping movements, the whole coordinating my arms and legs thing. I also can’t deny that when I don’t move the rug in the living room I see my life flash before my eyes each time one of my feet hits the floor and makes the rug slip, but all in all, the routines are still fun.

Myrtle (my best friend), who reads all of the girly magazines so that I don’t have to, told me about a feature recently published in one of them. The piece paired five women with five different personal trainers in a comparison of how much weight and what percentage of body fat they lost under each different regimen. Apparently the winner in terms of body fat lost followed a regimen of 1,200 calories a day and intensive power yoga five days a week. Now, let me start by saying that at 1,200 calories a day most people would be reduced to the size of a toothpick. What Myrtle and I found interesting though was the percentage of body fat lost, i.e., the healthier the body became, not just skinnier.

The woman who followed this regimen dropped more than 15 pounds and 12 percent of her body fat in 6 weeks. Personally, I know that yoga in general has always made my body feel infinitely better when I keep it up, so that sounds like an additional bonus to me. She loses 15 pounds in 6 weeks. Meanwhile, I continue to slap the underside of my neck in a somewhat vain effort to keep the skin taut.

I know that it will take much longer than I think to really get things in shape, but I’m thinking that slender ankles and more slender calves are, in my case, nothing to sneeze at. I am also continuing to have fun working out, and this past Sunday my bellydance class was awesome. Up on our toes, twisting, shimmying - it was great. I left with my muscles feeling loose but strong and lovely.

For me, whether I work out in the morning or the evening makes a difference. In the morning, if I’ve had to get up before my body wants to, the workout is a stiff and unbalanced performance. To put it another way, in the morning, I’m doing the “modified” version. At night, once I’ve been awake and moving all day (unless I’ve been wearing really uncomfortable shoes), my body is more prepped for a workout. This, however, presents its own challenges:

Generally, evenings are when other people you live with may just want to sit and watch TV without you indy hopping all over the living room. In fact, you may be tempted as well to watching something other than the calories evaporating from your ample gluteus maximus.

The cat may attack you while you are wearing your short pants … ouch.

The cat may interpret your workout as some sort of non-verbal declaration of battle and proceed to bounce off the walls and loll about by your feet while you are trying to perfect your “bolly lift.”

Others in your presence may taunt you and your musical choices by dancing around the room while playing the pennywhistle. You know who you are.

You could reveal to the person you live with that you are, in fact, a head sweater.

Bearing all these things in mind, it’s still worth it. I could go work out in the basement, but it’s just lonely down there with the unpacked boxes of yet more pots and pans and the aromatic hockey equipment.

In order to stay motivated, if I find something that works, I have to just keep doing it. Gaps in performance or doing anything that makes it lose its luster is a no-no. I just ordered a power yoga DVD to add to the rotation, so we’ll see how that goes. Until next week, here’s to more pennywhistle accompaniments (you know I love them) and more cat attacks. Oh, the trials.