Faithful Readers

Hello to all of Erica's faithful readers!

My name is Amie Avi. I mostly teach Pilates these days, but have done about every job one can do in a health club or a restaurant, and would have preferred to play those roles on TV.

In the following few posts, I'll be introducing you to Pilates. Posts unrelated to Pilates may follow. I'm looking forward to getting to know you, and to sharing with you all about something I really enjoy. Please leave questions or comments below, and Erica and I will do our best to respond.

All that said, let's crack on, shall we?

Though Pilates has become a bit more ubiquitous since I first started teaching, thirteen years ago, it is still synonymous with circus acts, knife-throwing, and oddly-named cocktails. It is an odd-sounding word, and most people have no idea what Pilates is.

I will never forget the evening I overheard a hapless, yet blindingly attractive, membership sales representative at a gym where I taught, explaining to a prospective member that Pilates is the American form of yoga. (With his model-esque smile, even I might have believed it, but that’s beside the point.)

Pilates is not the American form of yoga. It also does not involve jumping through hoops of fire, (though working with certain Pilates apparatus called the “Magic Circle” conjures up such images), and is not an obscure liquor native to a Baltic State.

In the next few posts, I’ll introduce a bit of the history of Pilates, why it rocks so incredibly much, and why everyone from competitors in the octagon to octogenarians should be doing Pilates.

Cheers and peace,

A.

Being Healthy on the Night Shift

This Sunday morning ended my year and a half of being on and off night shift.  I can't say I'm sad to see it go, but I am incredibly thankful for the things it allowed me to learn.  Until the night shift, I would consistently go to bed at one time and wake up at pretty much the exact same time every day.  Before I worked night shift I had only slept past 1030 AM a very few times in my life.  Until I worked night shift I did not realize how incredibly hard it is to stay healthy on a night shift schedule.

As a nurse, I learned so much in my career by being on night shift.  It allowed me to work more autonomously. I definitely learned the wonderfulness of Ambien.  I transferred far too many patients to the ICU, but not a single one of them coded in my care for which I am thankful. And I got to know some really incredible people and learn how to be a nurse without all the people around.

As a nutritionist I learned that working the night shift means that those regular meals are not going to happen. That when you stay up all night and are stressed, as nursing as a career makes you stressed, you crave those high fat foods.

As a personal trainer I learned just how hard it is to get in a regular work out routine when you walk an average of 6 miles a night at work and you are never actually awake consistently at the same time every day of the week, let alone have the consistency to work out.

As a person, I learned that my body much prefers a day schedule and I'm not the nicest person on night shift.  I learned that there were times I could sleep for almost 24 hours. And I was definitely able to sleep past 10:30 AM.