Fitness Friday: National Yoga Month

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Last Year I blogged (gushed) about a wonderful in-person yoga class I took with one of my bestest of friends and extolled the virtues of live yoga classes.

Want to know how many live classes I've taken since then? One.  That's it.  So much for following one's own advice.

My reality right now, with Mouse now one, Moose nearly four, and my business on the rise, is that there simply aren't enough hours in my days. Which is why I love/need more than ever at-home resources to keep me fit and centered.

So in honor of National Yoga Month (yep, September every year!) I'm sharing some of my recent yoga faves and finds.  I hope both you and I can sneak in a few minutes of Om for ourselves this September!

(1) Athleta stores (in addition to having {free} live classes all month) have some {free} yoga videos online powered by yogaglo (an online subscription class resource).

(2) I discovered Yoga with Adriene last winter when I'd been awake a lot with a wheezy Mouse and fell in love with her fresh, down-to-earth style.  One of my favorites is this 20-minute morning routine:


(3) Tara Stiles has also become a favorite yogi in my rotation (can you tell that I'm easily intimidated by yoga? so many of my faves have become that way because they seem real and approachable to me).  She has her own YouTube channel as well as some great videos on the Livestrong Woman channel (which, sadly, doesn't seem to be producing any new material since Lance Armstrong's revelations earlier this year, but the previous material is still available and is fantastic).

Happy September!

Book Review: Lean In (Or Run the Other Way?)

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I attended a women’s college in the late 1990s.  Equality was somewhat taken for granted, and where it wasn't, female superiority was assumed and advocated. That brand of feminism never appealed to me.

Which is why when Lean In was first published, my first inclination was to run the other way.  I expected a redux of my undergraduate experience.

It wasn't until a group of fellow female attorneys with whom I breakfast monthly decided to read it together that I caved.  I worked hard to suspend my preconceived notions.  I told myself that I was reading it for Mouse as much as for me.  I really, really tried.  Honest.

Let me be clear: I absolutely, unequivocally believe that women deserve an equal chance to pursue an education and rise to the pinnacle of any career she chooses.

And that is where the crux of my problem with Lean In lies: it's not about choice.  As one of my breakfast colleagues put it:  "It's reverse pigeon-holing; instead of telling us we have to be barefoot in the kitchen like the Mad Men generation, she's telling us we have to want to occupy the C-suite."

As much as Sandberg tries to placate her readers in later chapters of the book, sharing her own experiences as a new mom, and declaring that there's nothing wrong with staying at home to raise the next generation, she gives herself away in the first chapter.  For her, corporate and political leadership is not a choice, it is a moral imperative.

Instead, I think women need:

• To recognize rather than suppress the fact that we possess some uniquely feminine attributes; AND
• To figure out how to use those attributes to our advantage rather than trying to fill a man's shoes.
• To have access to women mentor figures early in life (as a teenager or college student) to help us learn to harness our strengths and discern how we want to apply those in our lives; AND
• To surround ourselves with a "boardroom" of women with whom to commiserate, bounce ideas, vent, brainstorm, and otherwise mutually encourage.

Which is why, if I ever write a book on the subject, it'll be called "True Choice: A pep rally for all women, whether they lead from the boardroom, the living room, the classroom, the courtroom, the operating room, or some combination thereof".

Have you read Lean In (or watched Sheryl Sandberg's TED Talk?  What are your thoughts?

Disclaimer: this post contains some Amazon affiliate links.

Weekend Links

Do click over to YouTube to watch! 

This batch of links has been brewing for awhile, so warning in advance if they're a bit random.

For You:

I positively lived on this green banana-apple-protein smoothie during the DietBet I completed (and won!) in June. 

I thought about making these Sungold Tomato Preserves with the gorgeous tomatoes we got from the CSA. But I accidentally ate most of the tomatoes as a snack one afternoon.  (Oops!) They were like candy!

This HIIT workout kicked my you-know-what! And I loved it!

I fell in love with Small Things because of the beautiful simplicity that came through in all of Ginny's posts. This recent installment reminds me of the reason I've stayed in love with this blog: Ginny's beautiful honesty.

If you only click over on one item in this post, please, read this article.  I'm not saying we all ought to aspire to be astronauts (stay tuned, my review of Lean In is coming up this week . . .) but I do agree that girls need solid role models in all categories!

Recommended by Moose and Mouse:

Mouse desperately wants to self-feed, but only has two teeth and is desperately uncoordinated!  My friend turned me on to these PouchPop toppers that I hoped would help prevent wild squirting!  I never really got the chance to find out, since she drew the line in the sand and refused to eat baby food going on two weeks ago.  Looks like a great idea, though!

Moose has always been a sensitive guy, and especially these days with his sister's increased mobility and toy-stealing, he's had a lot to get worked up about.  This post from Kate on Helping Kids Deal With Big Feelings came our way at just the right time!

Looking forward to making this tissue box guitar with and for Moose.  He LOVES music, and LOVES to play the air guitar, but all the ones in the stores are electronic with buttons instead of strings.

Wishing you a happy week ahead!

Fitness Friday: DietBet Musings

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While I've been off the blog wagon for a bit, I'm happy to say I've stayed firmly seated on the fitness wagon. Thanks are due, at least in some part, to my wild-hair decision to sign up for the Blogilates June DietBet.

What is a DietBet? Basically, it's dieting meets social media.  You sign up by contributing to the betting pot (in my case, it was a $25 buy-in), and the goal is to lose 4% of your body weight in 28 days.  If you achieve your goal, you're a winner.  Period.  Everyone who wins splits the pot even-Steven.

Since I was already on a lean-out kick, it seemed like good idea.  I won't lie, the lure of the $149,000 pot helped.

In some ways it did turn out to be a good idea.  Yes, I won.  So did a bunch of other people, which means my total payout was $44.69.  I did some great workouts.  I exercised some caloric discipline.

BUT . . .

I rediscovered why I didn't own a scale for the first eight years of my marriage.  My husband's only demand when we made our gift registry was that we could not get a scale.  And this was perfectly reasonable: he had seen me go from the (admittedly) chunky - over 170lb - happy, take-on-the-world girl he fell in love with, to an underweight, calorie-crunching, moody and insecure 117lb shadow of myself, all in the space of 18 months. (I'm 5'6" with a curvy build, if you were wondering.)

I was fortunate to recover on my own without professional help and hang on to the positives (in particular, a discovery of and love for fitness) while learning to measure my health by other standards.

All of this to say, I think DietBet has got a great thing going, and doing a DietBet could serve as a great way to kick off a longer-term weight loss campaign, or maybe light a fire to lose those last five pounds.

But because it is only scale-number based, it's something to be careful with.  My husband began noticing my scale-obsession at the end (and the week following - it was hard to break the weigh-every-day habit!).  My sister sent me a somewhat passive text that simply said:

I remember how it was when you were super obsessed about the scale . . .

(The unspoken P.S. to her comment was the reminder that she called me Skeletor during that same time.)

So for me, my DietBet experience will fall in the same category of some extreme roller coaster rides I've been on: glad to say I did it once, but never, ever will do it again!

P.S. If you're interested, here is Cassey's official Blogilates DietBet recap.

How do you measure your weight/health/fitness progress? 

A "Me" Moment

Nail color is Lady Muck by Butter London

The last three months have been an absolute blur!  My office move, which I honestly didn't think much of at the time, has marked the beginning of more success in two months than I experienced in four years of semi-independent practice.  And by success, I don't just mean business coming in the door, but the satisfaction and gratification I feel by using my education and experience to help families cope with aging and death.

It is wonderful.

And exhausting!

So, with the exception of a few rows of knitting here and there, and a few pages turned in front of bleary eyes late at night, my "me" time (such that it was in the first place) has dwindled to near nonexistence.  I'll admit (very sheepishly) that when I do find the odd minute to read a blog post or two, that I'm seeking diversion over deep thought.

The solution takes the form of stolen moments with my phone and YouTube.  And by "stolen" I mean "in the bathroom".  And by "YouTube" I mean, by and large, beauty tips.

You see, somewhere in the bustle of my days, it dawned on me that even though there's pretty much NO way the dress I was knitting for Mouse's first birthday will be done in time, and although there are more unfinished than finished books on my nightstand, I could eek out a couple extra minutes in the morning to make myself feel pretty.

All of which leads me to why I'm confessing this here: I can't be the only one who struggles for two or five "me" minutes a day!  And furthermore, I can't be the only one in need of a frivolous diversion.

So if you're inclined, hang with me.  I'm going to try to share some of my favorite finds (with my own experiences).

What do you do to pamper yourself when you need a quick pick-me-up?