I made a pause

First of all, thank you dear KFBers for your encouragement. Your words made me smile and gave me energy.

Which brings me to how crucial it is to write and get feedback on our blogs. It would be very easy to just forget about getting into better shape without this space.

Now, I have to confess that I haven't been doing my workout for the past couple of days. My excuse would be that I am feeling very tired with all this packing and coordinating. 

I don't know, I just wake up feeling heavy, open my computer to see the day's exercises  and my body says: no thanks. Then, Pablo invites me for a long walk from our place to the woods and the little lake, where it is fresh and beautiful and where I finally wake up. I eat an apple and immediately feel even better. While I walk and talk to Pablo about the things that we will miss from Germany and the plans for the future, I do some stretches, some jumps, some balance tests. I end up sweating and feeling very good. Ready for a powerful breakfast.

That's why I have decided that tomorrow I will incorporate and adapt more KFB exercises into my morning walk. It will bring a change into the workout routine and my body won't protest!

I also need to stop sometime during the day for a meditation session to calm my mind and see if I feel less anxious.

I need more power!

Yesterday I woke up early to a fresh morning and trained really hard. After that I proceeded to several hours of cleaning, selecting, washing kitchen appliances, disposing of glass and paper and packing. All of that in a sunny summer day under 35 degrees of temperature. I had the fury and the power!

A strange way to spend a nice summer day, you might say, and it's true, but at last the moment has come for Pablo and me to go back home. By the end of this month I will be arriving in Bogotá with only two suitcases and great memories of these years in Germany. So I need to get rid of my possessions and clean up my apartment. 

Well, after that tough day of physical activity and emotional detachment I woke up this morning feeling less powerful. I couldn't do today's workout complete. I simply didn't have the energy. Only 2 sets of every exercise, no meditation because the church bells were too loud, and I was not very enthusiastic to continue the packing process. 

I have to confess that yesterday's intense labour kept my attention from having all the food I had to. On top of that the heat and the anxiety are making me loose the appetite.

More physical effort and less food is not a good combination, I know. So as an exercise on mindfulness I will take better care of my body through this demanding time. But if you have special recipes for en extra power kick, please, tell me.

I'm very excited about the variations we'll have in our KFB workouts!

Not very hungry

Dear KFBers, has your appetite diminished considerably with the heat? 

I feel like I only want to have very small portions, no bread, no cooking!

I need new recipes to prepare carbs that taste fresh and cold. Do you have a fresh way to eat carbs for breakfast?

About the wide angle stretch: The extreme heat may have helped me widen the angle but it also made the minutes last forever. I'm considering sitting on a folded blanket while doing this stretch to see if my back does't bent forward in a C.

I hope you enjoy the day and stay hydrated.

The trip to Holland was amazing. Rotterdam and Amsterdam are fantastic cities. The first with experimental architecture and wide open spaces and the second with old buildings and very crowded.

Rotterdam's Erasmus Bridge

I enjoyed a lot these days but staying true to KFB was very difficult. I didn't workout. Mostly because I felt I had no time with so much to see in the city. Then, there was no space in the places I was staying and going to a park with the intense heat was not an option. But mostly because I was very tired of walking all around the cities. By the end of the day my feet were hurting really bad.

The positive is that I felt the advantage of being fit. You can take a few days off if necessary and use the energy you have acquired, trust your body, feel alive.

Now, about the food.  This region of Europe has great cheese and bread and that's mostly what they eat. So we ate a lot of sandwiches and to my surprise aged, strong cheese isn't that appealing to me any more.

As a protein source I had a traditional raw marinated herring as often as I could. I would say you really have to like fish to find the Haring Matjes delicious. I did!

A haring matjes makes you feel strong!

I had some beers, had to try the dutch apple tart, which is truly delicious, and drank a lot of coffee.

In general I felt that my nutrition during the trip was poor. If you can't afford to go to a good restaurant it's hard to get your vegetables and lean protein. But in the middle of this carb loaded menus something magical happened: I bought cucumbers and peppers, ate them voraciously and a few minutes later I was feeling cool, light, energized. Like if a torrent of vitamins was reaching every cell of my body (and this is not a coffeeshop induced experience!).  My love for peppers grew stronger and wilder.

Now, some photos for my KFBers:

The old Delft canal in Rotterdam

Rotterdam has beautiful little harbors all around

and liquid houses

A quiet street in Amsterdam

Women in Amsterdam look very sexy because they drive this flower powered vehicles

Now I'm back, loving clean food and tough workouts. 

Note: Emily, the home made banana ice cream is fantastic!