Fitness Awesomeness

Last week my motivation started to wane a bit, likely due to only losing 1.4 pounds over the past 3 weeks.  Though the lack of large losses are understandable given my eating (see the "frito" incident from last week), I was feeling a bit down in the dumps.  So I did as Ms. Bitchcakes preaches - I focused on celebrating my recent successes in fitness.  And I've actually made a lot of progress lately

• I can now do a real chaturanga in my yoga class - this means I lowered myself to the ground in a push-up position.  I've been working on this for some time and I usually have to put my knees down as my upper-arm strength is not good enough to do this properly.  Right now I can only do a real chaturanga 3 or 4 times a class before I get too tired and have to put my knees down, but this is still a HUGE improvement as I've been working on this for over 2 years.  Here's what it looks like:

I look just like this when I do this.  Except for the perfect form and the pink-ness and the blond-ness and the perky butt-ness.*

• Today, in yoga, I managed to do a real bind.  What I did was that while I was in a lunge with my left leg forward, I weaved my left arm arm under my left leg and grabbed my right hand which was wrapped behind my back.  Basically, I was a pretzel!  Okay, well maybe not a pretzel exactly, but pretty darn pretzel-like for me.  This yogic achievement was an even bigger deal than being able to do chaturanga because this is something I NEVER thought I could do.  My shoulders are pretty tight (especially my right one) and as I previously mentioned, there is a bit of junk in my trunk, so I never thought I'd be able to get my arms around my behind to do a bind (whew that rhymed (so did that!)).  This was really exciting.
• Other cool yoga achievements lately include doing a full wheel while standing on my tip-toes (a pose I previously found completely ridiculous and unachievable), and having it feel downright easy to flip the dog (my favorite yoga pose name).

Tomorrow's my weigh-in and I've had a pretty good week so I'm cautiously optimistic.  I think part of what helped me have a good week was focusing on the progress I have made when I was feeling bummed earlier in the week.  That's why I started this blog - to motivate myself by celebrating my successes, and I feel like that worked this week.

*Photo from Yoga Journal