Day 72+ Legs and Back

Well, I have to be honest. Yesterday's TND (Tuesday night dinner) was fantastic. Two of the people who are regular participants had what they called a "MEATGASM" feast. This meant basically all meat. The official menu actually read "Meat, Meat, Green Shit, More Meat" (there was an optional salad, which nobody ate). The only down side of this mean, which I covet so much, was the chocolate dessert. Normally I would pass on such a thing... but this was "sexual chocolate" and everyone was being wimps and wouldn't eat the phallic one. So I told them to man up, nobody did, so I ate it. Thankfully it wasn't well endowed. So my consumption was minimal, but I really should be setting an example for the people I workout with, and keep telling "Not to eat sugary foods" because nobody likes to be a hypocrite.

On another note, I think I might flip back to having eggs in the morning. I will still continue to eat powerbars in the afternoon, but lately I have been having a sensation that I want my 6pack to be more defined (or return, or however you want to phrase it). So starting soon, I think I'll start cooking eggs in the morning and waking up a bit earlier to do that.

Aside from that, I weighed in at 152lbs this morning, not too shabby after the Meatgasm... The best "____gasm" there is...

Legs and back should be a challenge trying to get us all doing the moves at the same time especially pullups.

Day 61+ Chest/Back

Pulling out all the stops... finally looks like I'll be putting in a full week of exercising! Something I haven't done in a while! It feels good. I feel good. Everything seems to be in order. Nothing major to report except that yesterday's numbers were significantly less than a few weeks ago (recalling I've missed some days/weeks in the recent past). My blog seems to be a bit scatter brained. There isn't much focus or goal here. I've read some REALLY good blogs from some other P90Xers and Fitness Folks, and I'm very impressed by their linearity! How they can migrate from one topic to the other - where as I write typically about whatever comes to my mind the second I'm writing it. Perhaps it's more genuine? But I'm sure it makes reading multiple posts in a row a nightmare!

I've got a few people at the gym working out with me now. Mostly co-workers who go to the gym with me. I won't name names, but I don't think one of them is cut out for the routines. I tried to show them how to do pushups and I don't think this person has ever done a pushup in their life! It was so abysmal I was shocked. In short, it was more of a rocking motion from front/back on hands+knees. Not good. I tried to explain the importance of bending at the elbow and lowering your whole body to the floor... it just didn't happen. It's okay though, I know everyone has their own level of fitness and capabilities. So perhaps over time they'll start piecing it together... I won't throw in the towel on anyone who's actively trying to get healthy (or in shape). In fact I probably won't let them give up!! (and everyone who knows me in the real world will absolutely agree to that).

I've finished my "loading" phase of creatine. Which means next week (and the following 2 after that) I'll reduce the intake to just a single 5g scoop every day instead of two. I really think, of all the items I've taken the creatine is the most effective, and I've only used it for a month and a half now (and two of those weeks I was off). It's also very in-expensive. $20 gets you a container that easily lasts 3-4 months. I'm not even 1/3rd the way through mine yet.

Okay time to work! I weighed in last night at 151lbs (which means I probably weighed less than 150lbs this morning), but I didn't check.

Day 60+ 2/3rds the way there

66.6%

The final phase!

The big cheese!

Naw, it's just another day. But it reminds me I should take day 60 photos and post them on the site, I know everyone just loves to see me in my poster-boy pose. Haha. Okay enough pumping mysef up, I'll actually talk about something I have failed to really mention.

What happened to Plyo and Yoga? For the people who read my blog regularly, you've probably noticed that I haven't had (for example) Day 55 PlyoX or Day 57 YogaX as any titles. And I've done that in such a way to help bulk up. I gott way too skinny on P90X, and I was pretty normal sized to begin with. So eliminated Plyo and Yoga have given me the opportunity to substitute additional weight lifting/body weight workouts (mainly chest/back, legs/back, back/bicep, C/S/T, and arms/shoulders). I have noticed a slight increase in bulk and I'm still doing the diet, just not in seperate phases. I'm just watching the protein/carb ratio and sticking with what I would call phase 2 diet.

Speaking of diet, I have been reading www.fitbomb.com 's blog and I'm intriqued by the PALEOLITHIC diet "eating like a caveman" nuts, berries, dried fruits, meats, eggs, veggies and basically no carbs. I'm 85% there already with my decreased carb intake, but I'd have to give up some of my packaged food items like powerbars and yogurt. I'm tempted to give it a try and see how I do... I won't write a big long post like the guy at fitbomb did (which was awesome by the way, I highly suggest everyone reads it)... but I might give it a shot either for this last phase of when my 2nd round is over.

Arms/Shoulders today! Weighed in at 150lbs.

Day 58+ Back and Bicep

Seems like a repeat title from yesterday. I ended up doing chest/shoulders/tris yesterday because I wanted to give my back a break, since I did legs and back the day before. So TODAY I will be doing back and biceps - my favorite workout.

Going to do more work on the kitchen this weekend. Hopefully we can get some primer up. It's going to be a bit of a challenge with the kitten running around. He already tries to eat just about everything smaller than him, lets hope he doesn't have an affinity for latex paints. I'm sure he does.

I've pretty much kicked my coffee problem at work. I think it was just a matter of getting it through my head that I didn't need it. Plus I reminded myself that for every coffee I drink, need to drink 2 more glasses of water to recoupe the dihurettic effects of the caffeine. That, and I know the water is filling my muscles and I'm TRYING to get bigger and if the water is being wisked away, that just means more work for me in the long run. So I'm trying to hold back on the coffee - it seems to be working. Eventually I'll crack down and have another. But I've been doing great all week!

Day 53+: Back and Biceps

I like this cartoon. It says a lot about "quick-fixes" and "miracle fat-loss" I think it's all rubbish. You wanna lose weight? You wanna be healthy? Put down the twinky and pick up a dumbbell. It's that simple. Speaking of twinkies... turns out they don't last forever and actually have a shelf-life of 25 days! I've been duped! You're trying to tell me there's actual food in there? All this time I thought it was some chemical by-product that resembled a pastry. But hostess does produce 500million of them every year, so they might as well be infinite.

Okay, that was random. My apologies.

Coming up on Day 60. Only a week away. I don't feel this phase 2+ has been my best (by any means). Took a lot of days off, slacked a lot with the diet and coffee (mainly coffee).

Going to a bachelor party this weekend, speaking of which, since when did bachelor parties start lasting 2 and 3 days? From my understanding it was a drunken night of men doing stupid stuff often times with hired female entertainment. If by the end of the night, if you were sober enough to drive home, that was the end of it. Otherwise wake up in the morning, shower, have some scrambled eggs, shower again, drive home feeling like you want to vomit, and then sleep until 4pm. But seems like everyone I know has been doing these Go to Vegas bachelor parties or spend the weekend at my cottage/summer home deals.

Okay, that's enough complaining for 1 day. I am back on the creatine monohydrate. I haven't re-started taken the hulk drink yet. I want to kick my coffee habit first.

Day 52:C/S/T

I still haven't kicked the work-coffee habit that spawned a few weeks ago. Ever since I've been having a coffee or two a day in the office. It's not killing me, but I feel it's not right. I don't put any sugar/milk in it... it's just that I'm trying to be habitual about drinking water and the coffee just ruins that whole aura - even if it's not doing any "harm" persay. Don't worry, it makes sense in my head. And what's really perplexing, I don't even ENJOY the coffee here at work, it's absolutely horrid.

The joys of making sesnse!

Update on my friend Jake, who has failed at blogging, yet again... Has gotten back on the bandwagon with two recruits to P90X. Turns out with all the moves he's been going through, work and home, he's put fitness on the side-lines. Well, I guess his new building has a big open gym in it and they're asking for suggestions and some of his co-workers are getting "wall-to-wall" chin-up bars specifically for P90X. Should spark some interest back into his fitness program. Weither or not he'll be back to the blog world, I have no idea.

Day 50+ Took a few days off - Kitten has arrived

Sorry for anyone who reads my blog on a daily basis, I missed a couple days (Mainly Thursday through Sunday). I was pre-occupied, lazy, and just not motivated to write anything. But now that I'm back I figure I should let you know what happened over the weekend.

1. I took a well deserved 4 days off working out! I'm not upset or proud about this, I just needed some non-workout days. I'm on week 8 of P90X+ and I haven't had any real rest days since the new program started.

2. I went out and purchased some new clothes. I didn't buy any pants, which are the worst fitting clothing items I have, but I did buy some new dress shirts and such.

3.The kitten is here! He came over the weekend. From the picture I posted, I thought he was going to be grey. It turns out he's an orangy/white mix. I didn't see that one coming. He's very cute and friendly.

4. Continuing the kitchen renovations. The cabinets and trim were finished quite a while ago. But we started taking down wallpaper and plan to soon paint the walls/doors, completing the project.

5. Back on the chemicals for another 28-30 days.

I'll try to target some posts around the new kitten in the near future. I've got some photos and stories alraedy, just need to get them online...

Legs and back today.

Day 49+ And we're back

Yesterday's TND was delicious. I had never cooked ribs before, but they were wonderful. Unfortunately, no opportunities to workout yesterday, so we'll just forget about that today and press forward like nothing happened.

At work I have been consuming more coffee than normal, perhaps I should blame Starcraft 2 for being up a little later than normal each night, or perhaps I'm just getting "cravings" regularly, but I have discovered it's not crappy coffee at work (although it still isn't great), it's actually crappy creamer. So I've axed that portion of my coffee and switched over to just plain sweetner (sucralose/splenda). Even though it's not water, I guess you could argue it's not BAD for you... I'm at one or two cups a day. Perhaps I should kick the habit before I go back on creatine - which suggests not consuming many diuretics.

Next week will be kitten week. I hope to still be able to hit the gym, but I think I'll be excited to head home early to check on him and play. I'll play it by ear.

Day 48+ Legs and Back

It turns out that 30% of Americans have a blog, and 20 years ago nobody did... it's a random factoid. I heard it in the radio as I was coming to work. I haven't verified it but I have no reason to dispute the claim.

My weekends remain lazy. Granted one of the days is a rest-day anyway, I just always feel that my weekend activities and eating don't really conform to the exercise/nutrition P90X suggests. It's not really a bad thing, but I just feel a bit guilty.

This will be my 2nd week off the chemicals. I plan on getting back on them either late this week or early next week. I look forward to it, I think they really do help me get in those extra reps.

**There is a bundle of joy on the way** No I'm not having a child, but I will be adopting a 5mo. old cat from a friend whose parents are deathly allergic to cat-dander. So I'm sure you'll be reading about the mayhem and the mischief my new friend will be getting into. I hope he behaves.

Day 44+ and 45+ Half Way - Day of Caring and Platelets

Yesterday was the anual Day of Caring, where companies all over Western NY get volunteers together and go work on community projects throughout the region and help clean things up or accompany kids to the park or train unemployeed people how to act in an interview. Depending what your skill set is, and what you sign up for, it's a great opportunity to reach out to the community. It's also a great way to take a day off work! So yesterday I spent my whole morning cleaning up Gallagher Beach, picking out trash from the rocks and raking up sea weed (interesting side note: what are the rules with sea-weed? If it's from a lake... is it still SEA weed? or is it LAKE weed?) It was physically demanding, it wasn't P90X, but I'm going to consider it as a workout day, only because I would have otherwise been sitting on my butt for 8hrs at work, not getting any exercise.

Immediately following my Day of Caring activities, I went to the red cross to donate platelets - I racked up some big points on the charity scale yesterday. So workout out really wasn't an option anyway. They're offering "A netbook-a-day" for platelet donors. The staff at the clinic already told me "Enter on a Sunday... that way you have the best chances of winning." Hopefully they haven't been telling everyone else that... it would be neat to win something!

Today will be another P90X at the gym day. My schedule is a little messed up since I did the trainer's exercises so perhaps today I'll take it easy and do shoulders/arms. Who knows, I guess I'll do whatever feels good when I arrive at the gym.

My weight has been around 151 recently. This morning I was 152.5lbs, but yesterday I was 150.0lbs. Being off the chemicals, I've noticed that I'm less EXCITED about going to the gym. But that's probably all plaecebo effets, I can't imagine creatine making me want to work out, more than the fact I'm taking creatine so in my mind I SHOULD work out... or maybe it's the Hulk Drink, who knows. Either way, it's a difference.

Day 43+ Was that a train or a bus that hit me?

Does it matter? I was hit by a trainer, a far worse scenario. So 1 hour with the trainer, and this is after I made him do about 120 pullups/lunges/pushups. He knows I can take a beating, and he came back with a vengeance.

(I wrote down all the moves we did... but I left it in my gym bag)

For starters we did about 5minutes of stretching and quick chatting. Then he reached into his bag'o tricks and pulled out a 20ft long (what looked like sailing rope) but was actually a bungee. He had me first go through a series of Judo moves "Grab'n throw" style stuff 15 times over each shoulder. Then into swimming, skiing, curls, extensions, flies, press with no rest in between and each exercise he kept taking a step back making the bungee even more taught.

Then, he throws me the heaviest medicine ball in the gym and says "Squat-jump-shoot" and when I shoot, he'll pass me a smaller medicine ball and catch the heavy one. Making this an alternating weight squat-jump-press. 20 reps. I was already dead. But we went straight into lunge-twists, holding the medicine ball. 20 each side. How I survived, I'll never know.

Without a stop we went down to the floor, pushup-tear downs (here comes the revenge for the large amounts of pushups I made him go through), except these tear downs were 5 second rest between sets of 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5. The 15's and 10's were my worst. But it totalled 75 pushups straight.

I think I at this point I grabbed some water. I was pretty sweaty. But then we hit the floor for some abs. We did jack-knifes 4 ways, but the one that I remember most vividly was the medicine ball in my hands (heavy) and the smaller one between my ankles. Then going full extension and then curling up to the ceiling. But I also did 1 leg jack-knife, side jack-knife, and alternating 1hand-1leg jack-knife.

Balance lunge on ball - yeah finally something I'm familiar with. This one was actually okay. He had me hold + curl 15lb weights, which I was okay with. Following that I did super-skaters holding a 12.5lb weight then doing a knee-lift press during the up-swing of the super skater. I actually took this time to catch up with myself, because I am pretty toasty at this point.

Then we hopped back to abs. Plank/sphinx/knee-tuck on the ball for 90 seconds. Then to plank 60 seconds. 1 leg plank 30sec each side. to mountain climber (alternating fast-feet in from a pike-position).

Then we rounded it all off with some super-sets on the exercise ball 15lbs(heavy) 10lbs(light) 20reps each time for each exercise... Arnold-Press (shoulder press with a twist at the bottom) 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to bicep curls 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to alternating shoulder press 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to alternating bicep curls 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to peck-flies 20x15lbs + 10x15lbs, to triceps extensions 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to finally close-grip press 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs. Please let it be over...

Thankfully it was. It took about 50minutes and we took some time at the end to stretch and go over all the moves we did. I think we totalled about 25moves. But a lot of them were LONG! But man o man I was pooped at the end.

I think I'll do legs and back today.

Day 38+ Tony Horton wanabee?

Today's the day I get to train somebody! Not just anybody, but somebody who knows a thing or two about fitness. It almost feels like I'm taking an exam or a competency test, but the bright side... I'm prepared. I put together a list of exercises for he and I to do, I did weigh it heavily on pushups/legs. But I've got some random abs and other strange goodies in there. Then I finish off with my modified Ab-ripper-X (which is basically the same thing but with scisor climber instead of leg-climber).

1. Military Pushups (25)
2. Wide-front Pull ups (20)
3. 80-20 Speed Squats (15/15jump)
4. Diamond Pushups (25)
5. Corn-Cob Pullups (10)
6. Super-Skaters (20/side)
7. Dive Bomber Pushups (20)
8. Warrior Bows (20/side)
9. One Leg Deadlift Squats (20/side)
10. Wide-Fly Pushups (30)
11. Close-Grip Chinups (25)
12. Balance Lunges (25/side)
13. Spiderman Pushups (20)
14. Switch-Grip Chinups (14)
15. Sneaky Lunges (20)
16. 1-arm balance pushup (20)
17. Max-Rep Pullups (your choice)
18. Plyometric Pushup (12)
19. Calf Raises (15slow/10fastx3ways)
20. Heavy-Pants (40lbs/16 times)

**AB WORKOUT EXTRA**

1. In-and-Outs (25)
2. Bicycles (25)
3. Crunchy Frog (25)
4. Wide-leg Situps (12/side)
5. Fifer Scisors (30count)
6. Hip Raise (25)
7. Heels 2 Heavens (25)
8. V-up Roll-up (26 total)
9. Oblique V-up (25/sdie)
10. Scisor climber (25count)
11. Russian Twists (50)

Then on Monday he's going to give me a 1hr free fitness instructing - which is kinda cool. So next two workouts at the gym will be strange, to say the least!

Day 36+ Something

For some reason the blog was busted for a minute or two... It seems to be working now. Today will be Legs&Back. My weight today is 150.5lbs. Up 4lbs from day 110.

Day 31+ Back and Bicep

Random story I heard on the news on my drive to work: 5hour Energy has taken on a lawsuit of $105million because there is a claim that the energy drink has caused a heart attack in a young-man. Insane! I always see the ads on the internet and see them at the checkout counter as I'm leaving the grocery store. Hard to imagine those little bottles of vitamins + caffeine could give somebody (without a pre-condition) a heart attack. That's like having a morning starbucks coffee give you a heart attack... could you really file a lawsuit against coffee? Oh wait, they did back in 1994 Liebeck vs Mcdonalds for 2.86million, and that didn't even involve a death. The joys of the judicial system.

In other news, trying my best to bring my weight down back to normal P90X graduate weights (below 150). I'm hanging in there from my binge weekend, but only by a thread. The last two days workouts were tough ones, although I thought I did an exceptional job yesterday with CST. One handed pushups anyone? Managed to muscle out 12 per side, a new record.

I've swapped out leg climber for scissor climber in abripperX. I learned it from Ab-core Plus. You do a leg climber, then while in half-boat, swap legs and come down with the opposite leg up in half-boat. It's quite nice. Very ab-tastic. And I have been adding some hanging leg-raises to the tail end of the AbripperX, just because I think they are good for my lower abs, which have been the last things to really show. We'll see how that all works in a couple weeks.

All my fallen trees/branches have been picked up. Thank you town traffic department.

Been playing starcraft 2 in the late afternoons, been a lot of fun so far!

Day 30+ Chest/Shoulders/Tris

Thankfully, work really puts me back on my eating schedule. If it wasn't for the structured daily habits of waking up at 6:45am, having lunch at 12:00pm, leaving work at 5:00pm and eating dinner after the gym 7:30pm, I don't know how I would even be able to maintain a diet at all.

Legs and back yesterday was pretty rough. It's amazing how a couple lazy days really makes you remember how hard some of these workouts can be. All the more reason to stick to the program I guess.

I saw some kids at the gym doing AbripperX, I know it was abripper because they started doing the V-up roll-up, and seriously, who's going to do that unless they're doing P90X. So I talked to them and asked what week they were on. Turns out they were on week #3. So good for them! I hope they make it through!

I somehow managed to become a top-contributor on yahoo answers for Diet & Fitness. That's never happened to me before, but it's cool that I got that little orange bubble so people will actually read my responses! But it probably also means I should be doing more work at work and less answering people's fitness questions (doh!).

It's already Wednesday, and I am 30 days into P90X round2, but I want to keep everyone waiting for day 30photos because I have taken so many days off in the past week. I'll post them on Saturday! But it's amazing that I'm already 1/3rd done!

Day 15+ Upper and Abs Plus

Have you ever had a bad fitness weekend? Ever spend the weekend eating junk food for meals and snack regularly in between? Ever skip 3 days worth of exercises in a row? Ever gain 4lbs in 3 days? Ever drink soda and alcohol instead of water and protein shakes?

If you've said "Yes" to any of those questions above - congratulations, you're human. If you've said "Yes" to all of them, welcome to my world.

Parents were up, we ate, we drank, we relaxed, we partied, we certainly didn't work out. I think the biggest contribution to my miserable state was the soda/alcohol that I heavily consumed. Oh rum and coke, why are you so delicious? And why are you even more delicious immediately following a couple slices of pizza and wings?

On the bright side, I do plan to be right back up on my horse! Yesterday, after they left I was able to do my workout and plan to do more today - tomorrow - and the next day. I just know looming out in the not so distant future is the cottage weekend, which will be another large upset in the routine. (Crossing my fingers I'll be better during that one).

Day 10+ Legs and Back and Wonky

I am so tired today (granted it's still morning). I woke up with some serious conjunctiva in my right eye, so because of the eye gunk, I am wearing my glasses for the first time in nearly 3 years. Feels like I am looking through a carnival mirror (where everything gets distorted). Almost makes me feel nauseous.

Legs and back today (if I can survive til this afternoon without hurling). I'll be doing the workout at the gym, so I'll need to look up the leg exercises since my workout sheets only have the upper-body portion. Shouldn't be too hard.

I've been adding some food to my diet, especially right before workouts. It'll give me that extra boost to make it through some of the tougher workouts (today's and plyo - come to mind immediately).

I haven't gained any weight yet. Still hovering around the 146lbs mark. Which I am not complaining about, but it just means I haven't put on any size yet.

Day 7+ Chest and Back

This week I was supposed to begin the P90X+ program. Okay, I'm a big stinking liar (I'm not really stinky). I thought the schedule would work out in such a way that I could begin doing the Upper/Abs workout today, but alas I am wrong! So today I will just be doing Chest and Back. Tomorrow I will continue with Plyo and the regular P90X workouts. My apologies for guiding you astray!

However, I DO plan on getting the P90X+ program started ASAP. I just have some schedule conflicts this week because my parents are visiting over the weekend (lots of cleaning and house-preparations required).

Today will be my first workout where I take JACK3D before hand. I am a bit nervous. The stuff seems pretty potent. The warning label is larger than the rest of the packaging. You must be 18 years old to consume, don't take 3hrs before bed, don't take more than 1 scoop if you weight less than 125lbs, don't take if you have heart problems, don't take if you are easily affected by caffeine, don't take more than 3 scoops in any one 24hr period, don't snort JACK3D, don't smoke JACK3D, don't take while doing a cartwheel, don't feed it to your cat. Okay, I made some of those last ones up, but still! I'm having a scoop today before my workout. I bet I'll be wired the rest of the month.

Day 3+ Chest Shoulders Tris

So far everything seems normal. I was at the gym the other day and a middle-aged woman (who introduced herself as Jan) was asking about my ab routine - which I was doing reverse abripperX (with reps of 30 instead of 25). After I finished I showed her; fifer scissors, oblique V-ups, leg-climbers, and mason twists. She was very impressed with the difficulty of the moves. I told her it was from P90X and she instantly knew what I was talking about. I thought the whole experience was quite nice.

Today will be another muscle training day, chest-shoulders-tris (CST). Definitely one of the better workouts. It's not super hard, but you feel the burn after your couple hundred pushups. I like doing this one at the gym because you can use free weights for things like Pour-Flies and weighted circles.

It's going to be a rough first week with P90X+. I think the interval training is going to spank the crap out of me. I think it will be harder than plyo (and oh, plyo is still in the rotation). Other than that - woke up a bit late for work this morning, so I skipped my shower.

I've started to take the creatine monohydrate in the mornings and afternoons. I was informed I need to load up my first week. Then once the stores of ATP have been generated I can start relaxing the dosage - perhaps one scoop/day instead of the two I am taking now. And I haven't taken the workout drink yet, but I assume it will give me a much needed energy boost to get through some of the more difficult workouts (I'm talking about you Legs & Back).

It's been hot as hell where I live, been sweating like crazy during workouts, even in the air-conditioned gym.

Day 103: Legs + Back Final Week Report

"The man's pure grissle from head to toe" -Tony Horton- Legs&Back

So today I am going to start something different. Since this is my last week, I want to start giving future P90Xers some insight on how the program went for me. Without being too unorganized I think I will give everyone a rough outline so that if you only want to read about a specific topic, you can tune in that day:

1.Thursday - P90X Diet
2.Friday - P90X Exercises (Cardio)
3.Monday - P90X Exercises (Weight)
4.Tuesday - P90X Dedication
5.Wednesday - Tony Horton
6.Thursday - Results
7.Friday - Final thoughts (last day)

Let's Begin: P90X Diet

For starters, I have never been on a diet before. It has never phased me that eating specific items would have such a large impact on weight loss (and for that matter, weight gain). To date, I have lost over 20lbs (168lbs --> 146.5lbs) which is fairly impressive considering I was told I didn't have much to lose.

The first two weeks on the P90X diet I was constantly hungry. The high protein diet does not give the satisfaction of a carb-rich meal. I called it rolling hunger, because you'd be hungry - so you'd eat - but you'd still be hungry. A few hours later, the hunger would go away. You wouldn't be hungry - and you'd eat your next meal - then hunger would come back and then vanish. It was a bit strange, but after week 2, I never felt that sensation again.

In my all honest personal opinion, I think the diet has had a more sculpting effect on my physique than all the exercises. But another thing I have learned is that dieting is NOT EASY. Temptation knocks at your door on a regular basis, sometimes daily, sometimes more frequently than that. I started my diet right at the height of "Birthday Season" where it seems like everyone you know is having cake and ice cream. But thankfully, that was when I was at my strongest. I resisted all cake-attacks up until almost Phase 3. But cake isn't the only temptation, and in fact it's one of the rarer ones.

The most frequent thing to resist is going out to eat. Eating out can be okay. I've found it possible to special request two sides of vegetables instead of rice/potato. You can often ask for calorie information and you have to make smart choices. But it is always hard to quantify how much you ate, and if you obeyed the P90X diet. The less eating out you do, the better your diet will be, WITHOUT QUESTION.

Eating with others or family is challenging too, I am lucky because I live alone. Although you want to eat healthy, it's not always true that your family embraces steamed broccoli with unseasoned chicken (a frequent meal I ate). Or, likewise if your family is cooking for you, it's all up in the air as to what's on the menu.

Your best bet is to prepare your food for yourself. You know what your goals are, you know the nutrition plan, you know what needs to be done. And like many things I will say in the next couple of days - it all comes down to you! You decide to go out to eat, you put the cooked food on your plate, you do your grocery shopping. If you have no will power and can't leave the bag of chips closed - give them away. If those cans of soda in your fridge keep calling your name and you crack them open, throw them out. Breaking the diet is just as bad (and in some cases WORSE) than skipping an exercise (we'll get into that on a later date).

Dieting is hard, I struggled, I cheated (although only a few times), but I've kept it up and the results show. I think if anyone is serious about starting P90X and decides to negate the diet, I'd suggest they highly reconsider. I've mentioned this before, but I think the diet is 60% of the results, so unless you want to exercise and listen to Tony for a total of 225 days (I just did 90days / 0.4 = 225 days of exercise without the diet = 90days exercise + diet) I'd start eating healthy.

For anyone who doesn't know the diet is mainly protein, reducing carbs, and no sweets or alcohol. If you're interested to know what I primarily ate during my journey, I posted it just a few days ago (perhaps I will throw in a link - if I remember to do that).