3 REASONS TO KEEP WORKING OUT ON VACATION

As I was packing my bags for St. Lucia, I did what a lot of people never would:  I double checked to make sure I had my P90X3 workout routines, and plenty of workout clothes. Entering into Phase 3 of X3 had me feeling motivated, and I didn't want to mess with the momentum I had gained over the last two months.

Vacation seems to carry with it this feeling that we are able to have complete abandonment when it comes to our seemingly regular daily routines, and this includes our diet and exercise.  What I want to give you here are 3 reasons why staying on track with your diet and exercise for at least 80% of your vacation, will keep you motivated and help you feel like you're making the most of your time.

1. Your Metabolism Will Work with You

I would be lying if I said I jumped out of bed every morning and went straight to the gym.  There will be days that a workout just isn't going to happen.  When boarding a boat at 8 a.m. I really wasn't too concerned about making sure I was up at six in order to get my workout in before the excursion. However, making sure you fit your workouts in on most of your days allows you a little leeway when it comes to your diet.

When you are working out on a regular basis, and you have built a solid amount of muscle mass, you gain a bit of a "free pass" when it comes to your buffets. That is not to say that you should wake up and stuff your face every day, but if you're making pretty solid food choices throughout the day, having one dessert every night is not going to completely derail your weight loss.

I will not forget the shock in Chad's voice when we got home and he weighed himself and he had not gained any weight.  This doesn't shock me because I know how active we were, and more importantly, I knew that after two months of solid workouts, his body had built enough muscle, and his body's metabolism had gained enough momentum that a few bad food choices and couple lazy days were not going to cause a five pound weight gain.

My point is this: if you stay mostly active, and make mostly good food choices, the other 20% of the time is not going to destroy your weight loss.  It certainly won't progress you forward, but it's not going to kill your momentum.  However, if you choose not to be at all active, drink all day, eat as much as you possibly can, and haven't been active for weeks or months, you're going to feel weighed down, and you're going to gain weight.  Set yourself up for success, and continue on that path for as much as your vacation as you can.

2. Believe It or Not, You Will Enjoy Your Vacation More

To quote Elle Woods: "Exercise give you endorphines. Endorphines make you happy.  Happy people just don't shoot their husbands. They just don't."

Want to be happier?  Want to fully enjoy your vacation with your loved ones? Want to have more energy and feel better? Work out!  It's not just about feeling accomplished, but also about your body producing endorphines. A solid 30-minute workout will provide you with extra energy, as well as help you make better food choices.

You will start to feel the difference in your body on the days that you fuel your body right, and the days you choose to eat crap. After working with several PT clients, I have found that most people make better food choices when they have worked out compared to sedentary days.  I'm not sure why there is a correlation between these two things (the lack of exercise with the lack of good food choices), but there seems to be one, and we can curb this by merely getting a workout in on as many days as possible.

3. Returning to Your Regular Schedule is Easier

Skip a whole week of workouts and the results can be far more devastating than you think, especially if you haven't been on a regular routine for more than three months.  You'll start to make excuses for missing workouts, and you'll start feeling lethargic from not moving regularly.  One week becomes two, two becomes three, and all of a sudden any gains you have made start to decline.  By making your workouts a regular part of your day, it won't be nearly as difficult to hop right back into your schedule when you return home.

Vacation helps us to decompress, but sometimes it can make us feel a tad bit depressed when we return to reality.  By keeping your workouts a regular part of your routine, it's one less thing for you to resent when you return home.  And, again, it increases our endorphines, which helps us feel happy.

WHAT TO EAT WHEN YOU ARE EATING OUT

WHAT TO EAT WHEN YOU ARE EATING OUT

Why does the general restaurant industry have to make it so confusing to make healthy food choices when you are dining out with family and friends?  It seems to me, that any good restaurant not only has options for those guests who would like a healthy meal, but also has servers who are trained in how to modify current dish options in order to accommodate those guests who are looking to stay on track with their clean eating.  What I would like to do here, is offer my advice to ordering your food exactly how you want it, so you’re not questioning your caloric intake every single time you dine out.

I have worked in the restaurant industry for 13 years, and I have seen food prepared in ways that would terrify you; ribs dipped in bacon fat, chickens rubbed in butter, sticks of butter in rice, salmon cooked in butter, bacon bits in green beans, whole cream in mashed potatoes.  Although most ‘high-end’ restaurants create a very farm-to-fork menu, providing a much fresher, healthier version of dishes to offer, the reality is fat tastes good,  and it’s usually in every meal whether you recognize it or not. 

The advice that I am going to offer here is addressing a restaurant that is offering a wide array of choices, and restaurant menus that can be modified to fit your current nutritional needs.  What I am not addressing, is how to eat healthy at your favorite burger joint, or the English Pub down the street.  Ending up in one of those restaurants will drastically limit your healthy food choices (although not eliminate them), and ending up there is only going to increase your likelihood of making bad food choices.

WHERE TO START

Protein

When you enter any restaurant, sit down, receive your menu, this is your opportunity to start your search for your healthy meal options.  Start with your protein.  What are you going to eat for protein?  The obvious choices come to mind: chicken, turkey, salmon, halibut, shrimp, beef.   What are the protein options that your restaurant is offering?  Now pick one.  I don’t care if it’s a composite dish already put together, or it’s a topping on a pizza.  If it’s offered somewhere on the menu, they can usually accommodate you if you ask for it to be prepared differently.

Now, let’s talk preparation.  I’ll share a restaurant secret with you: almost EVERYTHING is cooked in some kind of fat.  Whether it is butter or olive oil, it’s most likely being cooked in excess calories.  The upside is that with the amount of allergies we see in the industry today, almost every restaurant has been forced to cook everything from scratch, so you can usually modify the cooking prep no matter what the protein is. 

If you want any protein healthier, ask your server if it can be prepared baked, broiled, or grilled.  Let them know that you do not want excess fat in your cooking process, and they will most likely be able to oblige.  

One preparation to be VERY aware of is any protein that is already in a marinade.  A larger amount of restaurants pre-marinade their chicken and steak, and I’m going to share another secret with you: those marinades typically have excess sugar in them.  Just ask your server if you can order them without the marinade, and if you can’t, either make a new protein choice, or recognize that you are choosing to include refined sugars in your diet.

Your Sides

The next place on the menu you want to look is your Side Dish options.  I’m not just talking about the sides that are listed in that one spot, but the sides that might be offered with composite dishes that are not offered under your side options.  Most of the time, if it’s on the menu and you ask for it, they’ll get it for you. 

Again, almost every side is going to be prepared with some type of fat, whether it’s butter, olive oil, bacon fat, or cream.  Choose your sides wisely, and then ask for them to be steamed.  Yes, your vegetables will come without seasoning, however you can add salt and pepper at the table, and you also get to control just how much sodium you ingest.  You can always choose to have your sides prepped in olive oil, but keep in mind that even if you ask for it with just a tablespoon of olive oil, you have no idea how much the chef behind the line is actually putting on your vegetable. 

A go-to for most people is a baked Idaho or sweet potato, and I think it’s important to address the prep here.  Most restaurants dip or roll their potatoes in butter or margarine.  WHAT?  Yup, that’s what makes it so fluffy and moist.  So if you’re going to order one, ask how it is prepared, and if you feel it’s a must regardless, avoid eating the skin.

So You Chose a Salad…Aren’t You Healthy

Or not. Most chain restaurants offer salads that are far too large, and they are topped with items that should not appear in a healthy salad.  If your go-to restaurant item is a salad, make sure you’re getting all veggies (cucumber, tomato, carrots, etc.,) and you’re ordering your dressing on the side.  It’s always important to add that you would like no croutons, no cheese, and dressing on the side.  I will always tell people to go with oil and vinegar, however, any vinaigrette is better than a cream based dressing (ranch, blue cheese, parmesan peppercorn), but they often have sugars in them.  Be aware of what your dressing options are, ask for it on the side, and dip your tines in the dressing and then in the salad.  You’ll be surprised how little dressing you really need when you’re not dumping it all over your salad.

If Worse Comes to Worse

I hate to be an advocate for this because there is nothing more annoying than the guest with an allergy, but if you’re concerned about the preparation of your food, or it’s easier for you, then tell your server you have a food allergy.  Break it down very simply: “I want the (chicken, steak, shrimp, etc.) grilled without marinade and my vegetables steamed. I am allergic to butter and (whatever else you’re trying to avoid), so could you please make sure that this is a possibility?”

Be warned, that in a restaurant today this is most likely going to elicit a visit from the manager, so be prepared for a little attention.  It’s typically company policy to ensure the safety of the guest, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself talking about your “allergy” with the manager on duty. 

Portion Control

My last words of wisdom are to be aware of your portion sizes.  Most proteins are somewhere between 6-8 ounces, whether it’s chicken or salmon.  Steak will usually be marked in ounces as well, although there tend to be larger sizes with this protein choice.  For the most part, it is unnecessary to eat more than 3-4 ounces of protein at any meal, so be prepared to take half of what you order home.  When your meal arrives, ask for a take home box right away, and place half of your meal in the box.  Americans have become accustomed to extremely large portion sizes, so don’t fall into the trap of eating your whole meal just because you have made the effort of modifying your dish to its healthiest version.   

All the Frills

In regards to appetizers, bread baskets and desserts, you don’t need them.  Ask that they not bring bread to the table, and when you’re done eating ask for the check before they offer dessert.  A lot of places will place dessert options on table tents so you’re forced to look at them while you’re waiting for your dinner.  Move them aside, and don’t even browse them.  If you are someone who has a sweet tooth like myself, keep fruit at home in your fridge.  A couple of strawberries and some pineapple will be enough sugars to help you feel like you are getting a bit of dessert at the end of your meal.  Typically your brain doesn’t care what kind of sugar you ingest; it just wants you to satiate that sweet tooth. 

Dining out is meant to be an experience.  From the atmosphere to the menu choices, you are probably not finding yourself eating out alone.  You should be able to enjoy the company you are with, without compromising your diet.  Often times we are going out for a celebration, or to spend time with loved ones, so remember why you are really there.  It usually has very little to do with the actual meal, and more to do with spending quality time with the people we care about, so enjoy!

Easy Guidelines for Choosing your Macro Nutrients

Although I am neither a dietitian nor a nutritionist, I have done some serious reading when it comes to Clean Eating and Superfoods.  I often find myself confused as to why people have such a difficult time simply choosing healthy foods over fatty, unhealthy foods and I have to remind myself of two things.

One, most people are not going to take the time to do the research themselves. The amount of time it took me to read the 12 books that educated me on the whys and hows of eating clean, is not the amount of time that the average person working 40-60 hour weeks is going to have to educate themselves about their food choices.

Two, as a Beachbody Coach I have had the opportunity to thoroughly read through multiple program Nutritional Guides, which has armed me with the knowledge of portion sizes, and appropriate healthy food choices.  Order any program, and Beachbody provides you with an arsenal of information on which foods land at the top of Michi's Ladder, and which ones fall short on providing the most nutritional value to your daily diet.

*circle = carb, triangle = fat, square = protein

That being said, one program that breaks down good macro nutrient food choices particularly well is Hip Hop Abs Nutritional Guide.  Although I know I am stealing this information from the book, I think it's important to share here, so that others can benefit from how easy it can be to make the right food choices. So, here are some guidelines when choosing your macro nutrients.

PROTEINS:

• Choose lean meats (turkey, chicken, pork) over fatty red meats.
• The portion of meat in a meal should be no larger than the palm of your hand (around 3-4 oz.)
• Broil, grill or bake--never fry!
• Avoid cream sauces and gravies.
• If you don't eat meat, substitute tempeh, tofu, low-fat dairy products, and legumes.

VEGETABLES:

• A large salad is great, but try to limit the amount of dressing to one or two tablespoons; using too much can blow the whole reason for eating salad in the first place.  Clear dressings like vinaigrette tend to be less fatty than creamier, cheesier ones.  Also, try dipping your fork tines in dressing to get flavor without pouring on too many calories.
• Steamed or raw veggies have so few calories, you can pretty much eat them until you're no longer hungry.  A plateful of raw veggies has about 100 calories. Indulge!
• Avoid butter or cream-based sauces. Lemon juice, soy sauce, and mustard are good options for adding flavor to your veggies without adding fat calories.

BREADS, PASTAS, RICE, AND FRUITS:

• Be sure to eat whole grains and brown rice instead of refined grains and white rice.  Remember, fiber slows down sugar absorption, helping your body to better process those sugars instead of just storing them as fat. 
• Always eat whole fruits over fruit juices.
• Foods in this category are calorie-dense, so limit your intake to three small servings per day.

FATS:

• Avoid saturated and trans fats in red meats, full-fat dairy, and processed foods.
• Avocados, raw nuts, flaxseeds, and olive oil are great sources of essential fatty acids--just keep the portions very small, since fat is extremely dense and has more than twice the calories per gram as protein and carbs.

Using a food tracker like MyFitnessPal will help you track your caloric intake, and also provide you with a chart on the ratios of your macro nutrients.  I cannot express how important it is to utilize free sites like this one when learning to control your caloric intake, and balance your macro nutrients.  

When I saw Jillian Michaels live at Lowell Auditorium she kept reiterating the importance of tracking your food when making a lifestyle change to eating healthy and clean.  The importance of doing so for at least 30-days helps one to identify their food habits, and make modifications in those habits, while at the same time creating a new habit: food awareness. As she states, most people eat the same 50 things over and over again.  We are creatures of habit. Tracking your food for a 30-day period allows you to see what those foods are, and creates a general outline of what foods will be in your diet on a daily basis.  After 30-days. you should have a pretty good idea of what foods you like and dislike, as well as the caloric base of each meal should you chose it to be in your diet on any given day. 

If you have never tracked your foods, I highly suggest starting here.  It will be startling to see how much you're over eating, and where your lacking not only in your macro nutrients, but also your vitamins and minerals.  Always be honest with yourself when it comes to portions sizes.  Lying to your food diary does not hurt anyone but yourself.  Don't cheat yourself!

One last suggestion I'll give here is to find yourself a good meal replacement shake.  Something that provides you with all the superfoods that you would NEVER be able to get in your daily diet, even if you ate all day long.  If you haven't checked out Shakeology, you absolutely MUST.  There is no other product on the shelf that does what this does, not as a whole anyway.  Putting your health and fitness first should be a life priority, and you're worth the investment, so why not make sure you're doing everything you can to ensure the most well-rounded healthy lifestyle that you can? 

As always, I would love to hear any questions, comments, or concerns, so feel free to contact me at any time!

Be super...like your food!  Hehehehe!

<3 Maria

THE FIRST STEPS IN EATING CLEAN

At least 80% of how we look is what we eat.  For those people who spend thousands of dollars a year on a personal trainer, this may be one of the single most depressing realities EVER.  It's not unusual for a client or customer to tell me that they've been working out, but they can't seem to stay on track with their nutrition, and therefore, they see absolutely no changes in their body.

I myself have been one of those people.  No matter how many push-ups, pull-ups, or crunches you do, if you eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's at end of the day, you're not going to lose a single pound.  In my own journey, I started with a set Nutrition Guide that accompanied my P90X program.  This was the catalyst for learning how to manage my macro-nutrients in the right proportions, and also introduced me to health foods that I could eat on a regular basis that didn't taste like cardboard.

That was all great, and menu plans can be AWESOME, but at some point, we progress beyond them, and have to learn how to eat healthy on our own.  So, where does one start???

The first step in learning what to eat, is to EDUCATE YOURSELF about food.  Scare tactics work fantastically.  Find out where your food comes from, how it's cooked, and what it does to your body.

3 of my favorites:

In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto by Michael Pollan
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser

Even if you only skim these reads, which is not what I'm suggesting, you will learn enough about today's food, that you'll at least probably never eat at McDonald's again.  This should be your starting point, and this is where you will learn about all your food basics.

NOW that you know what's happening to your food before it gets to you, learn what it does for you by learning what foods actually help your body. I suggest the book series by Dr. Steven Pratt:

SuperFoods Rx: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life
The Superfoods Rx Diet: Lose Weight with the Power of SuperNutrients
SuperHealth: 6 Simple Steps, 6 Easy Weeks, 1 Longer, Healthier Life
SuperFoods HealthStyle: Proven Strategies for Lifelong Health

After you've read these four books, you'll know what foods are best for your diet, hopefully have incorporated them into your day to day life, and know how to put together a meal plan.  These books not only teach you about Super Foods, but how to put your food together from week to week.

So here you are, full of knowledge about what not to eat, what to eat the most of, and how to organize your food on a daily basis. But, there are only so many recipes in those books, so where do you find new recipes?

I'm a HUGE Tosca Reno fan, however I do find the Eat Clean Diet can sometimes seem a bit overwhelming when it comes to the seemingly obscure ingredients that some of the recipes have.  For that reason, I always direct people to The Best of Clean Eating 1, 2, and 3.  All three of these recipe books have easy to make recipes, and the ingredient lists tend to be pretty general and familiar.  You'll find yourself excited to try new foods in new ways, and you will be able to finish your meal without feeling guilty about the choices that you've made.

There is a wealth of information out now about how to "diet" and lose weight.  The most common problem that I see is people wanting to get a quick fix and lose weight easy, and fast.  Well, I'm here to tell you the same thing that you've read one thousand times, in dozens of different magazines:  there is no quick fix to being healthy and looking fit.  If you eat right, and workout hard, you'll lose weight...PERIOD.

Hey Combat Warriors,

So you'll see, if you follow me on Facebook, that I've taken on the new Beachbody workout Les Mills Combat, and started a new Challenge Group.  Tomorrow I will be blogging about the clean foods that this particular program menu plan offers, but right now, I want to provide for you a video on how to make the transition from week one's 7-Day Metabolic Jump-Start Plan, to setting up your day-to-day, and week-to-week meal plan with what is outlined in the Nutrition Guide.

Many people can get lost in where the substitutions should occur, how much should be substituted, and what is considered one (1) count of a specific fat, protein, legume, fruit, vegetable, or starch.  Hopefully, this video will help you see how to use the Nutrition Guide for the remainder of the program, and will also help with your overall menu planning from here on out. I am not a nutritionist, this is just meant to be a helpful guide to those using the program, and making the necessary dietary changes that go along with the program. Again, if anyone has any questions, always feel free to contact me at any time!

KEEP MOVING. KEEP STRONG. KEEP PUSHING PLAY...AND...STAY WITH THE FIGHT!!!

3 Rules for Staying on Track

"We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." ~Aristotle 

Today, for the most part, I would say that I have a harder time not working out, than I do working out, so I had to ask myself, "Where, and when, did this shift happen?"  I have been overweight for the majority of my life, and I was never any good with nutrition.  It certainly was not over night that this shift happened, but instead, it happened gradually as my lifestyle change became habit, and those habits began to turn into natural behaviors.  However, for the newbie, who's looking to stay on track, who needs some place to start, and needs some guidance, it's impossible to say, "Here you go.  Just do it regularly, and eventually it will happen for you too!"  It would be nice to think that we all have that focus and motivation, but it's just not the case.  For this reason, I'm going to boil it down to three factors that helped (and still help) me stay on track day after day, month after month, until one day I woke up and the idea of eating crap and not working out was just an absolute turn-off.

1.  Have a Plan and Show Up

I don't care if it's hiring a personal trainer and coming up with a schedule, or ordering a program that tells you what DVD to put in that day, you absolutely have to have a plan in order to succeed in your fitness goals.  Actually let me reword that; you absolutely must have a plan in order to succeed with any goals in your life.  Period. End of story.  Need some help with this?  Look into Chalene Johnson's 30-Day Push Program, it has the potential to change your life.  Putting your wishes and dreams out there into the great abyss doesn't accomplish anything. Write down your fitness goals, the steps you are going to have to take to achieve them, and then SHOW UP!  Oh my goodness people, just show up.  Don't feel like working out?  Show up.  Long day and you're tired? Show up.  Favorite show is DVR'd and you really want to watch it?  Show up.  You'll have good workouts, and bad workouts, but either way both of these are better than no workouts.

2.  Nutrition

At least 80% of how we look is determined by what we put in our bodies.  Wouldn't it be delightful if all we had to do was workout five days a week for 30 minutes on the treadmill and then we could get a Big Mac and a large fry and stuff our faces, and still lose weight???  Well, we can't.  Much like working out, you absolutely must have a plan. Know what you're eating, and when you're eating it.  And, don't tell me you don't have time to eat.  Lame. Lame. Lame.  And, total excuse.  Learn how to plan your meals, and learn how to plan your days.  A lot of programs come with nutrition guides.  There are apps for almost everything in the nutrition world.  Educate yourself about how your body works, even if it's on the most basic, elementary level.  Google why hydrogenated oil is bad for you, and what it does to your body.  Once you find out, you'll rethink stuffing your face with fried food.  Utilize your resources and stop making excuses.  One last thing I want to address here is the alignment of diet and exercise.  I've run into this myself, and had friends discuss it with me also.  Why is it that when we work out, we are super conscious of what we eat, but if we skip our workout we'll have no problem eating crap?  Don't let this happen.  Weight loss and maintenance comes down to one thing: calories in vs. calories out.  Pretty simple.

3.  Accountability

Shout it from the roof tops!  When I finally decided that I was going to become a personal trainer, worked on my goals, and created the steps that were going to get me there, I didn't just sit on these pieces of paper.  I posted notes everywhere in my house.  When people used my bathroom, they saw notes on my mirror that said,  "People who succeed have goals, and people who have goals succeed."  I told my mother, husband, friends, co-workers, and of course launched all my new goals and dreams into the Facebook world. When we are accountable to someone other than ourselves, when we have put ourselves out there and there are other people watching if we fail, it makes succeeding a much larger priority.  Plan your weight loss journey with a spouse, family member, or group of friends. Create an accountability group.  In the Beachbody community we create private Facebook Challenge Groups where we share our successes, failures, nutrition tips, etc.  Whatever your avenue, be accountable to someone other than yourself.  This is part of the reason most people want to hire a personal trainer.  Yes, they want someone who knows what exercises to do, in what order, and when, but for the most part, it's that someone is checking in on them to make sure they're staying on track.  When other people are watching us, we feel the need to perform at our best, and we desire to succeed.  

If you do these three activities daily, I promise you that one day, you'll wake up and they'll be second nature.  It won't be something you think about, or struggle with.  You'll wonder how you ever lived any other way.  That slouched, slow-moving, snail-paced life that you once lived will seem like a different person in an alternate universe.  We must first create habits and then turn those habits into a lifestyle.  It can, and will happen.

Keep Strong.  Keep Moving.  KEEP PUSHING PLAY!

Maria

How to Choose Your Yoga Wear: Bikram or Vinyasa

I was recently having a conversation with a friend about yoga, and the different types of yoga there are.  This then led into what to wear while practicing yoga, and I thought it would be amusing to share with you the different things that I have learned.  Being a Beachbody Coach, I have done a few different types of yoga through their programs: Yoga X, X2 Yoga, and One on One's: Fountain of Youth Yoga.  I've also attended a couple Power Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga classes at private studios.  My most recent obsession (by recent I mean a regular practice at least once a week over the last year) is Bikram Yoga.  I was introduced to this yoga by a Groupon deal, visited the Westboro studio, and so began my obsession with all things Bikram, and my yoga crush on my 60-something yoga instructor Ron (he's AMAZING, by the way, so if you're in that area, and want to drop-in on a class, definitely do!).

So, you ask, what does this have to do with what I wear???  Oh, let me start here.  With Vinyasa yoga, especially in your house, you can wear whatever is comfortable, and doesn't interfere with the flow of movements from posture to posture.  As long as you have support (I'm referring to the ladies here), you can wear shorts, long fitted pants, or 3/4 length leggings.  Although a little hotter in a studio, you really don't have to worry too much about varying your out fit from practice in the home, to practice in the studio.  For that reason, a lot of people like the very popular LuLu Lemon.  Cute, light-weight, comfortable, moderate coverage,  and somewhat affordable.  Likewise, sometimes you'll find yourself desiring a yoga chalk bag, or slip-resistant gloves or socks to keep yourself from sliding.

So how does this vary from the required yoga outfit for Bikram?  Let me tell you a story of the first Bikram Yoga class my friend Rachel and I attended.

I was sooooo confident when we walked into this class.  I had been practicing Vinyasa Yoga for almost a year, had hand chalk, a yoga mat, leggings and a t-shirt on.  I brought a small hand towel for sweat, as did Rachel, and we walked into the studio, unrolled our mats and got ready.  I took out my chalk bag, put some on my hands, and offered it to Rachel.  As I did this, the instructor walked into the studio, kind of balked at us and was like, "You must practice Vinyasa.  We don't use that here.  It's not necessary.  Also, you both should go grab a large towel for your mat, you're going to need it."

Well excuse me!  Yeah, I had noticed that the studio was hot and humid, but I didn't realize that half way through the standing postures the 105 degree heat, and 40% humidity was going to turn my mat into a swimming pool of sweat, and cause my outfit to go from feeling light weight, to feeling like I had a 40 pound child hanging off of me.  I remember looking at Rachel at the beginning of the floor series and her picking up her tiny little face cloth and us both laughing out loud.  How ridiculous those tiny towels seemed now!  No wonder why the instructor just laughed at us.  "Yeah, OK ladies, let me know how those teeny tiny little towels work out for you...jackasses!"

For whatever reason, we came back.  Again and again, we came back.  This is what started my obsession with Bikram Yoga Wear.  First it was the perfect towel, and I found this Zenzation two pack, which has worked amazing for the two of us! Then it was clothes.  At first I thought these regular practitioners were crazy for wearing close to nothing in the studio, then I realized that when you practice regularly, it's the only way to be really comfortable.  I wanted in! My favorite is Mika Yoga Wear. Well, this is what happened.  The first top that I ordered looked great on the model, and the reviews led me to believe there was plenty of support for the above B lady.  Well, I wore it to the studio twice, tucked my boobs in the whole time, and never wore it there again!

Beach Wear maybe, Bikram Yoga Wear for larger busted women?  Maybe not!  Even more amusing than that, was when I first got it, and hadn't tried it out at all, and was too excited to wait for my Bikram class.  I put in my Yoga X DVD, set up my mat, got ready, did downward dog, both boobs popped out, my shorts went all the way up my butt and I burst into laughter.  People, all yoga wear is not created equal!

The lesson, one of many, learned here is:  there is yoga wear for Vinyasa Yoga, and there is yoga wear for Bikram Yoga.  They are not necessarily interchangeable!

So, my next Bikram Yoga Wear purchase was much more researched, and way more top-heavy friendly.  I stuck with Mika Yoga Wear, because I'm obsessed with their clothes, but I should share with you that when I placed them on my Christmas wish-list, and my husband came across them, he exclaimed, "Oh, you mean the stripper clothes?!?!"  (Truth be told, Mika also sells attire for pole dancing...so...)

This outfit has been much easier to work in, has way more support, and the top and bottom are super comfortable! Again, I wouldn't recommend trying downward dog in these shorts, unless of course you are indeed pole dancing.  If you decide to climb on into these things as well, you may want to let your significant other know about it before he gets a glimpse of the barely there clothing you have on for yoga class.  It could save you some explanation later.



So all in all, I think what we've learned today is this:  Ashtanga and Bikram are different.  They serve different purposes in the yoga world.  Each has many a great things to offer us, but we need to be wary of what outfits we choose for each practice.  Walk into a Power Yoga Class with booty shorts and a bikini top, and you might actually get some dollar bills thrown at you.  Walk into a Bikram Class with long leggings and a t-shirt, and you may find yourself passed out on the floor, not because you can't breath, but because your clothes are literally too heavy for you to stay standing.  Whatever you choose, be comfortable.  Too little, too much, it's really all relative to what you prefer to have on!

Keep moving.  Keep strong.  KEEP PUSHING PLAY!!!

Maria
www.beachbodycoach.com/MLBARCLAY