My friend brought her lyra, a metal hoop for performing aerial tricks. The performance is similar to aerial silks, though it requires less strength and more flexibility. I gave it try twice, once during the day and once at night after I had changed into my costume. Overall, I have to say it was lot of fun. The metal bar can dig painfully into your skin and sometimes leaves bruises, but the structure allows you to try a lot of things that would take much more effort to do in silks. That said, I still prefer silks for several reasons. Mainly I'm partial because my strength is much greater than my flexibility, so I excel more at silks, but also I like the work out I get at silks more than relaxed, gentle exercise of lyra.
Costume might be hard to recognize, but I am Link from Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the Water Temple outfit. Honestly this was kind of a last minute throw-together because I realized I wasn't going to be finished sewing my other costume in time, but it was great to wear because it was so comfortable! (Also it made lyra tricks possible)
In other news, like most women I worry about my appearance on a regular basis. I absolutely refuse to weigh myself because I find weight to be a very deceptive means of health measurement, especially for women, but also for men, who exercise on a regular basis. The last time I was weighed I was at the doctor's office, and I came in at 137 lbs. At 5' 0" that is a hell of a lot. The nurse at the scale repeated the measurement a few times, thinking the scale was broken, because I don't look big at all. I have wide hips and shoulders, but I'm trim and athletic; I'm just extremely dense with muscle.
A lot of us fall for the weight scam. We believe that we need to weigh less than a certain amount to look pretty or be healthy, and that simply is not the case. Muscle weight is much denser than fat weight. In addition, muscle allows you to burn more calories in a sedentary state than fat does, so if you weigh a lot because you have a dense, muscular body, you are not only healthy, you are probably burning more calories per minute than the average person (which for me translates to a free ticket to pig out at Red Robin every once in a while).
However, lately I've been looking in mirror and noticing that my body has more fat than it used to. I'm noticing fat on my back as well as my stomach, and it worries me. The really troublesome thing about this development is that i don't have an explanation such as eating more or working out less. I've been working out plenty and enjoying salads for lunch and light dinners with snacks throughout the day. I have been more stressed out than usual, however, and I'm afraid that might have contributed to the issue. I've also been focusing on aerial silks, which is much more of a weight-building activity than it is cardio, so I wonder if the fat is a by-product of increasing my protein consumption to recover from my work-outs. My stomach and shoulder muscles have also been bulking up lately, so I might be seeing muscle bulging under fat, and simply think it means i'm getting bigger. A body index monitor would solve some of this.
As it is, I'm planning to change my schedule around a little bit so that i do cardio (aka reading H.P. Lovecraft on an elliptical trainer) on Friday nights and doing silks once over the weekend. I'm also hoping to add gymnastics to my Wednesday night schedule, and that should increase my weekly cardio load. As far as eating goes, I guess Red Robin indulgences will have to be off the schedule for a little while, replaced with more veggies and good stuff. If I find any great recipes I'll put them up here. wish me luck!
ageing sucks :)
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