Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer

As I have previously posted, I have taken a vow to get in shape without a gym. While people may think this is nutty, I ask–how did people stay in shape decades, centuries before without treadmills? The answer is simple. Technology has made modern life simple and convenient, but has in turn, given us all the ability to make ass-grooves in our desk chairs and sofas.

I opt to move more. Not only do I use the stairwell in my office building to get in some quick cardio when I get antsy at work, but I have also started to plot my walks to work on MapMyRun. You can type in any address and create a walk or run for a distance you had in mind. I am now obsessed. You can also figure out how many calories you have burned.

Since we have been experiencing some warm days in the NYC area, I have started to take the long way home: I walk from my office building on 41st and Lexington all the way down the the Christopher St. PATH station in the West Village. It took about an hour to walk, but I had no idea the actual distance. Thanks to MapMyRun, I found out that it’s almost 3 miles. HUZZAH! And, after plugging in the time it took me to walk it, and my height and weight, apparently I burned about 250 calories.

I have become hooked. As long as I have no time restraint, I walk everywhere. I mean, I don’t have a car, so it’s either the subway or my own legs, but still. I walk everywhere, then map my distance immediately on the site. I even started to fantasize about walking from the Christopher St. station stop to my office every morning to get in 3 miles of walking before I get to my desk, but I don’t really know if that’s feasible. After work though, who cares if I break a sweat?

Also exciting was this recent discovery, thanks to Ms. Ball O’Sunshine, my fellow yogi. For the past few months, ever since our gym closed, we have been looking for cheap yoga classes. Most of the best rates are for beginner package deals that offer unlimited classes for a month for about $40, but after that, memberships and single classes are still out of our affordability range. And we aren’t beginner level. While $16 a class doesn’t seem like a ton, for people like us that really love yoga, it just adds up too quickly.

The other day we discovered that Yoga To The People, a donation-based (you give what you can afford) yoga studio that has a location in the East Village, just opened a spot in Midtown on 38th and 6th Ave. (!!!) for only $5 a class!!

It’s comforting to know that it rough times like these, when there are more and more Splenda Stealers, there are people looking out for us.