Things I Learned This Week

I was on the road this week, on a business trip. This meant that I got knocked off my P90X schedule. I really hate when that happens. Fortunately my last business trip landed conveniently during a Recovery Week which meant that I could manage to keep up in my hotel room. But this time my trip landed during my last ‘real week’ of the program. I’m getting home just in time for my final Recovery Week and it pains me to think that I have to prolong the program by yet another week. Uuugh.

But this week has taught me two things. First, I realized that I soon as I removed the weight lifting and one hour hard-core cardio sessions from my life, my appetite went right back to normal. I have been starving non-stop for the past two months and now here I am, in the middle of a big city, surrounded by great food (on the company tab, no less) and I can’t be bothered with food. I get to normal meal times and almost force myself to eat something, when normally at home I’m counting down the minutes until I get to eat again. This just proves my theory and makes me wonder why I bother burning so many calories a day when it just causes me to eat that many more. Seems like a silly run around on a hamster wheel, but I know that won’t stop me.

My second lesson of the week involves yoga. Because the hotel that I’m staying in doesn’t have a gym, yoga is the best and easiest way to work out every day. And what I’ve discovered is how much I improved by doing my routine every single day. I started out this week sweating and watching the clock in anticipation of the routine ending. But the second day was a littler easier. And the third day even easier. By the fourth day I was stunned at how easily I breezed through the rigorous routine. I know that practicing anything makes you better, but the speed at which you see improvement in yoga by a consistent and frequent practice is astonishing. Practicing once a week seems like you never get a chance to really build those yoga muscles and get in the zone. You are therefore struggling every time you practice. But if you can increase the amount of days per week in which you practice it really seems to pay off. For me yoga went from a chore to pleasure in just 4 days!

I’m curious how many days per week most enthusiastic yogi practice . . . Please share if you will . . . How many days per week to you practice?