Zumba

Last night was my first time at Zumba class. After a new studio opened and advertised where I work, Zumba has been a new hot topic and several people have gone this week to give it a try. I went with my amazingly lovely friend, Meryl, and had a great time. Or at least when it was over, I told myself that it was a great time. During the hour that we were actually zumba-ing, I’m not sure I was feeling the super-happy dance flow vibes. Thank goodness we had a lot of breaks for water. Without a doubt that was the hardest hour that I’ve had so far this year. Being me, I still wore my watch and heart rate monitor so that I could get credit in my little journal for the exercise. With a max of 178 and an average of 161, I managed to burn 401 calories. Nice. Now, I’ve said before or at least I’ve thought before if I haven’t actually said it, I’m not in this mission to count calories or even necessarily to lose weight. I’m just trying to get fit, increase my energy, and feel better. It just happens that tracking the calories on my watch is a convenient way for me to gauge my workouts. It isn’t like I’m starting to obsess. Or that I get excited for passing 200, 300, or 400…. Whatever. I guess I’ve started paying attention to calories. At least I’m not thinking about the calories going IN to my body. That would depress me.

Zumba itself was fast – no warm up, no instruction or guidance – just movement. A lot of movement. My brain was stumped just trying to figure out how to get parts of my body to move in isolation like that. Thankfully I was in the back, and the lights were off, and the strobe-type light show blurred my mistakes.

I want to go again.