Welcome to that special hell known as “Don’t gain 50 bazillion pounds over the holidays!” I both love and hate this time of year. I love it because everything is so festive and the smell of cookies and fancy flavored over-priced coffee is everywhere! I hate it because everything is so frikkin’ festive and the smell of cookies and fancy flavored over-priced coffee is everywhere along with magazines and commercials and ads to remind me not to stuff my face and gain any weight whatsoever over the holidays.
Seriously, have you looked at the cover of women’s magazines during the holiday season? The articles featured on the cover are always about the latest most fantastic holiday recipes that use twenty tons of cream, butter and sugar. And right beneath those are the articles that exclaim “You can lose 500 pounds in just 5 DAYS!” (The rest of the year, these magazines only feature non-holiday recipes that use twenty tons of cream, butter and sugar, and they tell you that you can only lose 495 pounds in just 5 days.)
Anyway, that’s the atmosphere that permeates the holidays every year. And because everything is so busy this time of year, it can be hard to make it to the gym or even step outside for a simple walk, which makes the whole “EAT EAT EAT LOSE WEIGHT LOST WEIGHT LOSE WEIGHT” message even worse to deal with. To combat the artifical sense of guilt that I know this message is trying to instill, I make sure my favorite yoga app is cued up on my iPad so that can stretch wherever I am and do it in short bursts during commercial breaks no matter where I’m watching holiday specials on TV.
And what is my favorite yoga app, you ask? It’s Yoga Studio. Yoga Studio comes with pre-made yoga routines (lasting anywhere from 10-60 minutes) and lets me make my own routines using either individual poses from their pose library or short routines that I can string together in the order I prefer.
But the thing I love the most about Yoga Studio is that I can choose what music I listen to while I do my yoga routines! And I don’t mean choose from the very limited and ear-bleeding options of wailing desert flute or wind-chimey, brain-dead mood music. I can actually make a playlist from the music I have on my iPad and listen to that while I do yoga! You have no idea how much that matters to me. Really, I can’t stand the typical music most yoga apps and videos and classes play. It makes me want to slip into the corpse pose and kill myself.
So what music do I have on my Yoga Studio playlist? My current playlist starts with Imelda May’s “Oh My God, It’s Good to Be Alive!” and then goes straight into “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse. Next up is Gin Wigmore’s “Man Like That,” followed by the Kongos’ “Come With Me Now.” Yes, I prefer pulse-throbbing, heart-pounding, rockin’ and rollickin’ music when I practice my stretching and deep breathing. Because that’s the kind of gal I am.
This is the app I used over Thanksgiving break while we visited the Hubster’s family. I was able to set up in the guest bedroom and stretch my groove thang for half an hour, then go stuff myself with delicious food, then take a long nap and then repeat the whole cycle all over again. I did go for a daily walk, although I didn’t get in the usual 30-60 minutes like I do at home. But still, walking! I will eventually complete that “Walk to Mordor” quest.
I don’t know if using the Yoga Studio app helped me keep off the extra pounds over Thanksgiving break, but honestly, I don’t care. Like I said, the best thing about the app is that I can load the music I want to hear on it. And I made sure to turn up the volume nice and loud so I never had to hear about how I had to stay rediculously slim and trim while stuffing my face this year. And that made me very thankful indeed 🙂
Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I’m gonna stretch out and take a nap now.
