Health and Wellness Lately

I don't write about body image and healthy living often, but it's one of those things that's generally at the back of my mind. With my current commute, where I'm out of the house 6:50 AM to 7:50 PM most days, it's been easy to slip into a habit of unconscious snacking. My hunger levels are all over the place! I eat a solid breakfast around 6:20 AM, but not long after I get to work, I'm hungry again and need a snack to stay productive, even if lunch (generally kale caesar salad with chicken) is just around the corner at noon. By 4:00 PM I'm hungry again, but dinner's not until I get home, hours away. Oftentimes, even when I've prepared dinner for the week, I'm so hungry when I walk in the door that I'll have a powerful compulsion to grab something, anything to nosh on while I'm heating it up, and before I know it, I'm basically eating almost two dinners when snacks are factored in. 

There are healthy snacks of course: beef jerky from Trader Joe's has proven to be one of the best ways, ounce for ounce, to keep hunger at bay for a long time; raw almonds are great; carrot sticks are good, etc. Still, that pre-dinner moment of must-eat-now! remains a constant challenge, even with so many hunger-fighting snacks in my arsenal. My body just really wants to eat dinner earlier. I never even got used to my 6:50 PM-ish dinnertimes at the firm. On days when I knew I'd be working late, I was often hungry and on Seamless as soon as ordering for client reimbursement opened up at 6:00 PM. And that was after having afternoon snacks.

On top of that, our in-building gym is closed for renovation. K bought us a folding exercise bike (likely the only reasonably sturdy cardio machine that could conceivably fit in our apartment and isn't too expensive), which has been useful. I'm also taking Barre classes with a friend, using a Gilt City deal that got me in for $12.50/class for five classes. It's typically $32/class, an unlimited monthly pass is nearly $300, and the cheapest package is still $28/class, so this doesn't fit into my current budget otherwise, but it's fun to try. At the promotional price, I thought it'd be a good alternative to going out for coffee or brunch to hang out. 

I'm generally rather skeptical about more expensive, "trendy" fitness options, probably unduly so. I'm perfectly happy to do the same workout over and over, and my ideal routine is probably just being able to regularly run on the West Side Highway running path again and mixing in some Pilates-type workouts at home. Barre really isn't for me, based on my first class. It's very different from what I'm used to (not that similar to Pilates), and half the time i had no idea what the instructor wanted me to do. Some of this isn't their fault. I'm not good at taking direction during fitness classes: I have trouble distinguishing left from right, learn new movements slowly, am uncoordinated, and have poor spatial awareness so I often can't figure out how to follow along. I'll use up the classes I bought, but am not especially interested in trying more. 

Do you have any favorite workout classes? I like Pilates, but am perfectly happy with an at-home video, and I enjoy the right Yoga class. Zumba is almost impossible for me due to my aforementioned lack of coordination, so it isn't much fun. Barre is, of course, not quite working. Spin or Soul Cycle sounds like something I could like, but I'm probably not terribly inclined to exploring it on my own. That's about it for classes I've tried or am familiar with.