Four Months of Yoga

In four months of Yoga, I have made progress. If Yoga is a journey, then I have assuredly begun, though I have a long way to go. Okay, let’s start with what I couldn’t do before, but can do now.

I could not do a full or even half lotus. When I put a foot on top of either thigh, the knee stuck way up in the air. Now I do a passable half lotus and can get the right knee to the floor if I work at it. The left side has a few inches to go.

I could not do a full squat and now can. I could not kneel and put my full weight on my heels, and I sort of can now. I can’t quite get my full weight there, my knees protest a little too much. There’s a position in which you start kneeling, but your torso is straight, then you put your hands behind you on your heels and arch your back, looking at the ceiling. Couldn’t do it before, but can do it now. In fact, I can even do the next more difficult version of that in which my hands are palm down behind my feet.

With my knees locked, I could only get the palms of my hands within four inches of the floor, but I can put them flat now, and with my hands behind my ankles, I can pull my nose to my knees. Sitting, I can bring the toes of my foot to my nose. That's a gain of about six inches, the goal is to bring them to your ears.

Sitting crosslegged, I can bend forward and put my elbows and forearms on the floor. Before, I could barely sit up straight, let alone lean forward while sitting crosslegged.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not magic. It’s not easy, and it’s not quick. I’ve been practicing Yoga (that sounds pretentious), doing Yoga for forty minutes to an hour almost every day. But the best thing isn’t the increased flexibility, though that’s certainly important. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all spiritual, either, though as with my nearly daily cardio workouts, there is a certain energy that Yoga brings to my day, a relaxment, an easiness. 

No, the most important thing that Yoga has done, or is doing for me, is that it is helping me finally, after about 35 years, deal with my back problems. No, not deal with them, but, and perhaps I’m overoptimistic, but fix them. Full confession: I was once given a series of exercises that might have fixed my back problems, but I didn’t stick with it. And I think that perhaps that’s because, at least for me, there’s a difference between exercising and Yoga, which makes it easier to stick with.

So, short version, though I haven’t had a recurrence for fifteen years, I have had, and still have something stiff and sore, tight, and angry in my lower back, left side. It was muscle spasms, not spine problems I was told by the doctor and physical therapist fifteen years ago. The original injury, or strain, was never really treated, so I compensated for it by putting less weight on that side when I sat, walked, lived. And those muscles got weaker and weaker over time. Consequently, they could get strained more easily and the cycle continued. The PT taught me some exercise to strengthen those muscles, and I did them just enough that the back and stomach muscles got strong enough to keep a recurrence at bay. Yoga does some of the same things those exercises did, but it is a much more balanced program of stretching and strengthening, and of course it is strengthening and stretching my entire body, not just my lower back. 

I believe, that is I hope, that if I keep it up, eventually the final knot will be relaxed, the muscles will become completely healed and strong at long last, and unless I do something stupid, as I did thirty-five years ago when I picked up one end of a 24 foot long 12”x12” oak barn beam, probably the 20th I’d helped move that day, and tore something, I will live out my life without a sore back. Oh, and I’m for the first time in my life learning to sit up straight. I can’t stand to sit in the Lazy Boy or slouch for long anymore. If only my mother could see me now. 

My Yoga Baseline

Let’s be clear. I ain’t skinny. At 5’8”, 185 pounds, all the charts say I’m overweight. And, though I’ve got a fair amount of muscle from years of bike riding and cutting and hauling firewood in my younger days, and though I lost 25 pounds (well, 30, but got 5 back, read back over the last year of posts to read about losing the weight), I’m carrying at least 30 pounds of extra fat around the middle. At 62 years old, it’s unlikely I’m going to become a yogi, a person who is proficient in yoga. And by proficient, I guess in my mind, I would have to be able to do a full lotus and maybe some other complicated, twisty poses.

Of course, by some definitions, a Yogi is simply someone “on the journey,” which reminds me very much of psychotherapy, Zen Buddhism, or nearly any “discipline.” At any rate, let me tell you some of the things I can’t do, so that, if over time I can do them, we can agree that Yoga has had an effect on my body. The possible mental/spiritual benefits I may report on, but I don’t know how I can objectively report a baseline short of asking people to write down their impressions of my personality now and some time in the future to see if it’s changed.

I cannot do a full or even a half lotus. In those poses you start cross-legged, bring one foot on top of the other thigh for half lotus and the other foot on top for full. Your knees should be touching or almost touching the floor. When I bring either foot on top of my thigh my knee sticks almost straight up in the air. And with one foot on a thigh the other won’t come anywhere near the other.

I cannot hang one arm behind my head, put the other behind my waist, and grasp hands, in fact my arms stay at least 6 inches apart (I’ll have my wife measure the gap before my next post).

I cannot do a full squat where my butt touches the back of my calves. I can almost get there, but my knees or thigh muscles protest. Same thing when I’m kneeling: can't sit on my heels.

I can touch my toes, hold my ankles, but can’t put my put my hands flat on the floor with my knees locked. I’ve got about 4 inches to go. I can’t come near folding my body in half and putting my head on the floor when I’m sitting on my butt no matter where my legs are. When doing “the clam” I get the closest. That’s where your legs are out in front of you with the soles of your feet together, you hold your feet and pull yourself forward and drop your head. Honestly, I can’t begin to do it. Maybe I’ll have Rita take a picture.

There are a million other things I probably can’t do or do right, but these are some of the important ones. So I have a long way to go. If you read my post last week, you know that one of the issues I have is a history of back pain. I’ve been pushing myself pretty hard this week, practicing yoga at least an hour each day using “Priscilla’s Yoga Stretches” a series of 15 minute programs which shows on WVPBS-2 in the Charleston, WV and online at http://video.scetv.org/video/1832171696/. She runs through her lessons pretty fast, so I take at least 30 minutes to complete a fifteen program because I’ll pause it to spend more time doing what I can do to approximate what she’d doing and maintaining and stretch more deeply into my facsimile of the pose.

In the course of my stretching, I have had cause to well remember back problems which plagued me between the ages of 25 and 45. I’ve come to realize that I never fully healed, or perhaps more accurately never fully strengthened myself after those episodes of severe back spasms and pain. And that is one of the reasons I am so tight.

The physical therapist who worked with me taught me that it was not really through stretching that I would heal my back, but through strengthening exercises. She taught me some, but after the pain receded I stopped doing them. The bike riding I do works some of those muscles as do a couple of the machines I use sometimes at the YWCA Nautilus, but I have to confess that actually strengthening my back and stomach muscles more than has been needed to keep pain at bay has not been something I’ve felt motivated to do…until now.

As I do the yoga stretches I feel the old ball of tightness down in my lower back on the left side and know that is what is keeping that left knee high in the air when I attempt half lotus and what is stopping me from bending far at the waist.

So, while I say I’ve been practicing yoga an hour or so a day, I’ve also been spending additional time as I sit and watch TV or even use the computer working those back and stomach muscles, stretching this way and that, tensing my “core”, even getting down on the floor sometimes to work on something. And as I walk around the house or take a walk outside, I’m trying to keep my stomach and lower back muscles tightened, which results in what I think of as the Denzel Washington walk (or the George W. Bush walk, but I really don’t want to compare myself to him)—a military walk: stomach in, back straight, butt tucked.

Okay, enough about me. How about posting your story about your back or your experience with back pain, yoga, or exercise? 

Yoga: How Far Can I Go?

Does anyone get through life without back pain? 50% of Americans experience back pain each year! My back problems are probably relatively small. Sometime in my twenties I strained it pretty badly. Since I was living in poverty at the time, it took me awhile to see a doctor, and when I did, I took the meds he prescribed, stayed off my feet as much as I could for thirty days, did some of the exercises and got over it…more or less. Apparently what I actually did was to start favoring one side of my body that didn’t hurt as much, and over the next fifteen years I had a couple recurrences, for which I sought help from a chiropractor.

That provided relief, but finally, at the age of forty-two I went down. Literally. On the floor of my classroom. During the pledge of allegiance. I’d been taking increasingly higher doses of ibuprofen for a few weeks, going to a chiropractor for the past week, and had been squatting to try to stretch out the spasmed muscles of my lower back, and on that morning they said, “No more.” I curled up in fetal position, motioned for one of the fifth graders to bring me pencil and paper, and wrote a note to the school secretary to call an ambulance. Another teacher came, took the students to the playground, and I was carried out on a stretcher. With a month of sick days, the help of codeine, valium, and a fantastic physical therapist, I learned how to start strengthening the muscles of my lower back and abdomen, especially on the side that had become weak from my efforts to protect myself from pain. Luckily, my problems were with muscles, not discs.

Fast forward to age 62 and retirement. I have had no relapses since then. I’ve maintained my physical condition through bike riding and using the Nautilus machines at the YWCA a couple times a week.

But I would never claim to be limber. I am flexible…to a point. Which, I guess is true of everyone. Over the last five years or so, I’ve dabbled a bit with Yoga. I participated in a couple sessions at a resort and found out what it was – basically stretching and breathing mindfully, and I bought a DVD by Lilia of PBS fame and have used that off and on for the past couple years. But Lilia was a bit too easy on me – she didn’t push me to go farther than what I was already able to do, and consequently, I made little progress.

I recently attended a Yoga class while in New York City from a young man who showed me a bit more about what a true practitioner of yoga does. Of course, I knew that people who “practice Yoga” do amazing things, turning themselves into human pretzels, but I have never pictured myself attempting that.

Now I’m not so sure. Or, at any rate, now I’m open to stretching my body…pushing my body to stretch to new limits.

When I returned home I started with another PBS yoga program, this one called Priscilla’s Yoga Stretches, which airs on our secondary PBS channel (Suddenlink channel 5 from 6:30-7:00 am….I use the DVR). Priscilla does things that are far beyond my capability, but she says that if you keep trying, you will make progress.

When I say I’m not limber, I mean I can’t even squat comfortably. I can barely sit cross-legged, let alone do a half lotus (one foot on the other thigh) where the knees rest on the floor as Priscilla does. I can’t hang one hand behind my head and bring the other one up from below to clasp hands…not even close. So if I’m going to make real progress with Hatha Yoga, I realize I’m going to have to stretch some muscles and ligaments to “open my hips” and “open my shoulders”.  

Many people reject Yoga without trying it because of its exotic name or because they believe it is a religion. Many practitioners report benefits that have some of the earmarks of religious claims: connecting the mind and body, opening up of energy centers (chakras), and such. While I’m not seeking benefits greater than a more limber and presumably longer lasting body, I am open to the possibility that restoring my body, and most importantly, my spine, to a healthier, straighter, more limber and resilient condition while breathing in ways that lull my mind into a hypnotic or meditative state might over time improve my mood or even result in what are sometimes called transcendental experiences.

As I did with my weight as I changed my diet and dropped thirty pounds (of which I have now gained back several) over the past year, I may report my progress in this space from time to time. If I open any chakras (or learn what they are), I’ll let you know, too.

Lazy, Hazy, but not Crazy

I can't believe it's almost a month since I last posted to this blog. For months after beginning a strategy for losing weight last November, I posted every week, usually to give updates on my progress and delve into the successes or struggles I experienced. I transformed my eating habits and lost thirty pounds, and though my goal of forty-four pounds remains something I'd like to reach, I've decided to live with this weight for awhile without "trying" so hard to restrict my eating. And so far I've done pretty well, though predictably, I'm at the high range of the weight I decided to allow myself for "maintenance"-- 180 pounds (I had started at 209).

I don't feel like I've been sitting around doing nothing, but I've been decidedly less ambitious than in the months previous to July 3rd when the fundraising event for AWARE: Artists Working to Restore the Environment was held. I had put so much effort into making that a success (netted over $3,000, $2500 of which I'll be distributing to WV Environmental Council and member groups, the rest of which will be used for upcoming projects), that my wife had mused that I was working harder in retirement than I had for years.

So the rhythm of activity has definitely slowed, and I've actually had time to sit down and read a little in the last couple weeks, ride my bike regularly, play a bit more music, even actually doing a "bar gig" of sorts (tip jar Tuesday at the Boulevard Tavern), dusting off a slew of my original songs many of which have not been played in public much over the years, some of which have only been heard by Rita and a couple others. Not that they've been heard by many others after playing Tuesday night -- it was a pretty empty room. But it was good practice, and when I finished my second set and called it a night with a solo rendition of the fiddle tune, Catharsis, a complex G-minor rockin' contra dance favorite, the eight or nine people at the bar clapped and whistled.

Tonight, old friend Joe McHugh and his wife, Paula, will play for a FOOTMAD Wandering Minstrel Concert I organized for them. They live in Washington state and came here to do a couple programs at the Appalachian String Band Festival at Clifftop, WV, and this is their last stop before heading home. I may also play a little fiddle before the anti-Mountain Top Removal at Kanawha State Forest rally at the WV Capitol beforehand (5 pm).

Rita and I fly out in the morning for ten days in Colorado Springs (visiting grandchild, Jack Martorella, and his parents), Albuquerque (daughter Hannah and husband), and points in between. So this is retirement during lazy, hazy, not too crazy days of summer 2014.

Diet Milestone: 33 pounds gone 11 to go, 3/4 of the way to goal.

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 29, May 25, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 38 in.

Weight end of this week:  176 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  -1 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -33 lbs.

This week, 7 months into my physical transformation through change in diet, I’ve reached a milestone. I am three-fourths of the way to my goal of reducing my weight to 165 pounds from 209 pounds since I now have “lost” 33 pounds. Go to a gym and pick up thirty-three pounds of weights--it's the equivalent of a cinderblock or a small microwave oven. It’s significant. I have not weighed this little for at least twenty-five years.

When I reach my goal of one hundred sixty-five pounds, I will still be as much as ten pounds overweight, depending on what measure of healthy weight you use. My doctor, an internist, recommended not losing any more than that. He says that when his patients reach my age, he wants them to have ten to fifteen extra pounds, so that if they get ill and lose some weight, they have some fat to lose. Otherwise, they may lose muscle mass, which is harder to regain as you age. At any rate, I am already quite happy with the way I look. For those of you who have been reading my blog, I’ve said before that I always felt pretty good about the way I looked in a mirror, but I also know that pictures don’t lie. And now when I see pictures of myself, I’m amazed at how much better I look, the stronger, leaner face, the lack of a potbelly, and a general look of fitness. Yes, under all that blubber I really did have quite a bit of muscle from all the bike riding and regular workouts at the YWCA.

An Op-Ed in the New York Times last week by medical researchers Dr. David Ludwig (Harvard School of Medicine) and Mark Friedman, a physiologist and psychologist, entitled, “Always Hungry? Here’s Why,” and a wonderful interview I heard on the NPR program, People’s Pharmacy, with Dr. Robert Lustig, a neuroendocrinologist and Professor of Pediatrics at University of California, San Francisco, who wrote a book called Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease (link to radio show and podcast) both reinforce the science behind my experiences during my journey to a healthier body weight (I’ve lost thirty-three pounds since November 2013).

Ludwig and Friedman note that scientists studying weight loss and nutrition have often gotten it wrong in their understanding of the correlations between calories and weight loss or gain. A calorie is a measure of energy in food. It seemed logical that the number of calories you consume minus the amount of energy measured in calories that your body expends should determine whether you gain or lose weight. But some research now indicates it’s not that simple for multiple reasons, including the way our bodies adjust metabolism depending on the types of foods we eat and even the proportion of fat and muscle in our bodies, squeezing more energy out of calories in some instances and passing calories out of our systems unused in others. To make losing weight more difficult for people with excess fat, Ludwig and Friedman found that fat cells require more calories to maintain than other body cells. They postulate that fat cells ‘grab’ incoming calories, causing the body to need additional food to do other necessary tasks such as nourishing muscle and organ cells and performing necessary body functions.

This creates additional hunger, seemingly caused by the existence of fat itself. Compounding that are the effects of the consumption of sugars and other foods with a high glycemic index, which I think of as the “white foods”: white potatoes, white bread, white rice, and anything made with white flour including regular pastas, most cereals, and in addition, all corn and corn products. Among the sugars are honey, corn syrups, fructose, and even fruit juices. And these days almost all processed foods have added sugar in some form, often "high fructose corn syrup."

When I searched for Glycemic Index chart I found wildly
different numbers in different charts. This one seemed
to match what I believe is true, though it has fruit juices
classified at the high end of Low.

If you got thrown by the words, “glycemic index,” let me give a brief explanation of this important concept. For diabetics, knowing the glycemic index values of foods is critical to their ability to control blood sugar levels because of their lack of insulin production. All food must be broken down to its most basic element, glucose, a form of sugar, for your cells to absorb its energy. Sugars and the white foods are the easiest foods for the body to convert to glucose, which spurs insulin production. Insulin helps our cells absorb the sugar, getting it out of our blood stream. We want it out of our bloodstream because high blood sugar levels cause the blood to be ‘sticky’ and not circulate well, causing cholesterol to build up in the cell walls leading to increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and various other ailments. 

 

The lower glycemic foods make the body work harder and take longer to break down into sugar. Lustig’s research and work with obese children has led him to discover that hunger decreases dramatically when the white foods are eliminated and carbs in general are reduced, and blood sugar levels remain steadier. This was my experience when I reduced carbohydrate intake following the recommendations in a book called the 2 Day Diet: diet two days a week and eat normally the rest of the week, by Dr. Michelle Harvie and Professor Tony Howell.

But why? It’s because high glycemic index foods cause blood sugar levels to spike, spurring glucose production, sending the sugars to the cells and a quick drop in blood sugar. In other words, the spike is followed by a dip, and the low blood sugar levels cause your body to cry out for more food. It is a classic addiction pattern, compounded by the fact that no one can live without carbohydrates. You can’t completely remove carbohydrates from your diet; you would starve. I used to snack on corn chips between meals. Of course this was just keeping the roller coaster going. It's funny how obese people like I was don't stop to ask ourselves, "Why am I hungry?" We know our bodies don't "need the food," after all, we're carrying enough fuel in the form of fat to keep the engines of our bodies running for months. And, in most cases, obese people get hungry every every or two. And not just a little hungry, desperately hungry. Well, it's not for most of us a case of some basic flaw of character or terrible childhood trauma, it's body chemistry. An addiction to simple carbohydrates.

What you can do to break the addiction, however, is avoid high glycemic index foods and replace them with low glycemic index foods: low fat meat and fish in reasonable quantities (4 oz. or less), nuts, low fat dairy like low fat cottage cheese and nonfat yogurt (without the syrupy fruit—use fresh or canned fruit); all the green vegetables you can eat of any kind, including tomatoes (yes, they turn red, but start green, just like peppers), eggplant, summer squash. Sweet potatoes and winter squash, lima beans and other beans are in the medium range and fine in limited quantities. Vegetarians will depend on them for protein. Whole grain (make sure its 100% whole grain, though, and doesn't have added sugar) foods like oatmeal or Cheerios, whole wheat bread and pasta, brown rice and such are relatively low in their glycemic indexes, but should not be overeaten. A tennis ball size serving (about ¾ cup) or one or two slices of bread constitutes a serving. I have had many satisfying lunches of just half a sandwich, an open sandwich, or a light wrap made with a small "light" tortilla (or on a low carb day that the 2 Day Diet recommends twice a week, I might use a piece of lettuce or cabbage as the wrap).

For me, that diet, described as a Mediterranean diet in the 2 Day Diet book, has become a way of life. I no longer have to measure portions or keep track of how much of each food group I eat, because basically I now eat as much as I want. It's just that I don’t want very much. My appetite has been reduced so that a salad with a few ounces of canned tuna, sardines, smoked oysters, or a small piece of salmon, chicken, or a couple thin slices of turkey is a satisfying meal. A couple tablespoons of cottage cheese with some canned peaches or pears, fresh strawberries and couple walnuts…a great breakfast or snack between meals. 

One small serving of brown rice with as much broccoli or stir-fry veges as I want, and the equivalent of a small pork chop, chicken thigh or fish portion makes a great dinner. And yes, I sometimes have beef as well if that’s what I want. And if I’m at someone’s house and they serve a rich lasagna dripping with fat and cheeses, I don’t decline it, I just take a portion that is half or less of what we’ve come to think of as a normal serving: about ½ cup in volume. Then I eat it very slowly and eat a lot of salad or other green vegetables. And if they don’t serve any green vegetables, fine, I eat some when I get home.

One food that most people have a hard time believing is not part of a healthy diet is fruit juice. Dr. Lustig recounted a really smart demonstration he and his colleague, a nutritionist, do on visits to schools. They give two students six oranges each. One is given a juicer; he uses the six oranges to make a 12 oz. glass of orange juice, drinks it down, and says, “Now what’s for breakfast?” The other student starts eating oranges. By the time he finishes orange number four, he’s so full he feels like throwing up. In other words, according to Dr. Lustig, though some fruits are considered medium or high glycemic index foods, they have a self-limiting ingredient that keeps us from overeating if we eat the whole fruit: fiber.

I love that science explains why I’ve been successful on this diet. And if you struggle with your weight, there’s one takeaway I hope you get from reading this; it’s that I didn’t succeed because I have superior willpower. I’m succeeding because I stopped feeling hungry all the time. Yes, I did need some willpower in the first month or two. You can go back and read about how I held myself back at parties…or didn’t, and if I didn’t, I forgave myself and started fresh the next day. But as I learned when I (finally after many tries) quit smoking 20 years ago, breaking an addiction takes at least a month. But once you break your carb addiction, you’ll be home free. Go for it!