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 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 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 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 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 29+ Vacation is Over

I'm back from the Beach-House. I feel fantastically relaxed and happy. My liver, on the other hand, seems to believe it needs another vacation to recuperate from the previous 5 days. I certainly did not exercise or follow any nutritional guidelines over the long weekend... in fact I drank more soda, ate more chips, and consumed more carbohydrates than the whole of 2010. Sad to see the scale tell me I was 153.5lbs this morning, well over my previous weigh in, but we'll see what happens tomorrow after I workout today and get back on track with eating healthy.

I'll definitely have to tack on a few extra days at the end of the program to make up for this weekend's antics. I'm starting to feel a bit nervous about day 30photos being worse than day 1 photos after this weekend... Perhaps I'll wait till Saturday to take the photos, as usual. At least that way I'll give myself 4 days to get back into shape. I want to be accountable for my actions... but not THAT accountable! Plus nobody wants to see pictures of a fat-guy (we had this discussion at the beach - how fat men can go without a shirt...)

My chili peppers are LIMP AND DYING! I though I had a watering system figured out, looks like I did not! All the leaves are limp and wilty, I'm hoping that by this afternoon, they'll perk back up from this morning's watering... but who knows? It might be the end for them!

Oh and Starcraft 2 is out and installed on my computer! I didn't play it at all this weekend, but the intention will be to play it at least once a night! Pretty much everyone I know has it now so there will be lots of opportunities to play with friends! Yay!

Now I need to convince myself to work... Legs/Back Today

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 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).

Day 89: Pizza and Tax Returns make me happy

"I'm all rev'd up. I'm drooling for God's sake!" -Tony Horton- Legs&Back

Yesterday was tough. Mowed my lawn, did my laundry, and P90X'd all in about a 2.5hour time frame. I was pretty toasted last night. Today, however, will be an entirely different story. In fact, it's already spectacular. I finally got my IRS tax return today! Woohoo! I'm not poor anymore!

And ontop of a wonderful tax return finally arriving, I am going out for pizza at lunch. I debated for a long time if I would bag my lunch and eat healthy, or if I would actually eat pizza. After consulting a few others, looks like today will be my first pizza slice in over 89 days. The excitement can't be matched.

Supposedly tomorrow would have been my final P90X day for round 1. But because of my Spain trip, I have a few more weeks to go to truly be finished. I will keep updating the blog and pictures and I will officially end Round 1 when I have completed 90 days of exercise. But so far I am very pleased with the results.

Next post I will evaluate where I stand on my goals, seeing as how I only have two weeks left to reach them.

Day 88: Powerbar Flavor Guide

"Get down into that Warrior2 Mr. Haas, this is YOGAX Ma-Brotha" -Tony Horton- YogaX

I talked before about my morning diet switching from Egg-whites to Power-bars. Well, a lot of people have been asking "How can you eat those things? They're gross!" Or at least something to that nature. I thought I'd give you my interpretation...

1. Powerbars are not CANDY bars. That means, you shouldn't expect them to taste like Snickers or 3Musketeers or Almond Joys. They are a nutritional supplement and should be compared to things like Protein Shakes, Slim-Fast, and other Nutritional Bars (luna, harvest, etc.). So once you understand that, yes, you'll likely accept that they aren't a dessert you'd find on a restaurant menu.

2. They come in many different flavors and most flavors are okay - but there are some stinkers out there. Because I have tried them all, let me give you a quick rundown of the choices and then I will rate them by taste(T -how does it taste in my mouth?) and repeatability(R -can you eat it day after day?) and perhaps an explanation of why they were rated that way. (10=best, 1=worst)

Honey Roast (6/10)- One of the better tasting bars, but too sweet to eat daily
T=7
R=5
Chocolate Brownie (5/10)- Has these strange brown crunches in it very dry needs water
T=7
R=3
Cookies'n'cream (3.5/10)- One of the worst tasting bars and most easily melted
T=4
R=3
Peanutbutter (8/10)- Most probably the best OVERALL taste is good and can eat it repeatedly
T=8
R=8
Oatmeal Raisin (7.5/10)- Delicious! Tastes like and oatmeal cookie but like the honey, its too sweet
T=10
R=5
Vanilla Crisp (5.5/10)- Decent taste, but it's the kind of flavor you can't have too much of
T=7
R=4
Berries (2.5/10)- By far the worst power bar invention to date. Stay away! You've been warned
T=4
R=1
Caramel Cookie (5/10)- Very sweet, but it's different enough that you could have it a couple times a week
T=5
R=5
Chocolate/Peanutbutter (7.5/10)- Take what's good from the peanut butter and add some chocolate, it's a safe bet.
T=8
R=7

Today is legs and back w/a backpack! YogaX was fine last night. I wasn't as excited about YogaX today as I was last week. Probably because I was just not into it. I'm getting better and stronger in the half-moon section of the moving part (first part). Gonna really dig deep this afternoon for legs + back.

Day 81: Legs and Back

"Let's get BIZZ-EEE-YUR" -Tony Horton- YogaX

Afternoon YogaX + AbripperX went really well, although, I did miss my afternoon free time. Oh well it happens, I don't want to sound like I "bitch-bitch-bitch" all the time. It was my own fault.

So this morning, I was having hallucinations while dreaming. It was wild. I can't remember a more vivid dream. But clearly it was about Spain, because nobody but children could understand my crappy Spanish. But there were shopping malls, volcanoes, rental cars, flights, getting lost, whole-rooms worth of luggage (including things like lamps & shelves), hippies, basket weaving, jello-molds, you name it... it was in this dream. Without getting into too much detail, it was the kind of dream that you wake up and you're in a cold sweat not knowing if what happened was reality or fantasy.

I think I need to lay off the late night video games (late being 10:00pm).

Weighed in this morning at 150lbs. Pretty much right where I was last week. Back and Legs this afternoon - always the toughest workout. Lets see how I do.

Day 75: Legs and Back

"He's from Belgium, it's cold up there all the time" -Tony Horton- Legs&Back

Today was TOUGH! Legs and back is a demanding workout, and I haven't done it in 3 weeks... and looking at the numbers from 3 weeks ago, I wanted to perform at least close to where I left off. Nope. Not happening. Infact, I tried to match my 24 chinups out of the box, I fell short by 8. The next set was no better, falling 10 or more behind. And I was so drained I skipped the first round of switch grip, and did not jump during 80-20's. For my performance during today's workout, I give myself a C+. Much like homework, I did it, finished most of the problems with the correct answer, but just took the hit on the hard questions and either left them blank or just half-assed it.

On the bright side, yesterday was a FITNESS EVALUATION at work. It's about enrollment time for health/dental/optical benefits, so they are offering free fitness exams. They measure things like grip strength, lung capacity, body fat %, BMI, cholesterol, glucose, bloodpressure, flexibility, and a few other things. Overall, quite the gambit of tests. But the one that shocked me the most was body fat %...

I was expecting perhaps 10%? (which is on the low side of an average 27 y/o male). Turns out I am 4.6%. WTF when did that happen? I almost wasn't on the chart. I was in the Very-Very Low (VVL) category (of 7 total brackets VVL, VL, L, Avg, H, VH, VVH) which bottomed out at 4.2%.

So I guess the name of the game for me now is to start building some muscle.

And the rest of the fitness evaluation was delightfully average (with the exception of my freakishly low blood pressure 90/58 - which I'm already aware of).

Day 40: Earth DayX

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

+ =


"Man, I think I just ripped my pants...nope, I'm okay." -Tony Horton- Legs&Back

Today is Earth Day (04/22/2010). I just thought I would let everyone know that I am doing my best to partake in celebrating the Earth. First, I have decided not to club any baby seals for dinner. I've also decided, on my way to work, that I should run all yellow and red lights to conserve gas by not idling. Actually, who am I kidding, I didn't run any yellows... But I decided to post this picture of the Earth-Stamp because I found it funny. Only in America can we commemorate Earth Day by placing an image on something that represents the most inefficient method of communication - the U.S. Postal Service. Seems a bit out of place to me. But all silliness aside, I carpooled into work today and will do my part to try to be eco-friendly.

But this blog isn't about Earth Day (or other random Holidays), it's about P90X! And this day has not been a productive P90X day. I was up late last night and had a difficult time waking up at 5:15am. Let's face it... I DIDN'T wake up at 5:15am, more like 6:45am. Meaning, I did not do my workout as planned. So that means today after work, I need to do Legs and Back. I new eventually this would happen, I just need to make sure I don't make a habit of it!

Day 32: Legs and Back + Green Bean Soup, kinda nasty dude.

"It's balistic, it's static, its Stablatic! I'm making up stuff!" -Tony Horton-

Well, I still haven't hit the 120 leg/back pullup count yet. I was able to reach 114 today. Slowly getting closer. The diet in the past few weeks has been really good. Even though I'm in phase 2, I'm still sticking with phase 1 diet. My only exception was the rice pilaf at the banquet. I've lost another pound, putting me around 155lb (unofficially).

I *think* I'm developing a 6 pack. At least after abripperX I see a pretty serious outline of what is to come. Again, I don't want to make too many claims until all the info is in. Pictures will go up on Saturday as usual.

It's getting closer to summer and I'm about 57ish days away from being done, which puts me at Friday June 11th (assuming no missed workouts because of work/personal life).

Day 19: Legs & BACKPACK

I woke up this morning... I was a little nervous about doing heavy lifting. My blood donation ended at 7:30pm the night before, and it's 5:15am the next day. Clearly still within the 24hr no-heavy lifting ban. But my arms felt good, I did not experience any bruising or tenderness, so what the heck, lets do this!

I went through legs and back pretty swiftly. I didn't jump during the 80-20's... for whatever reason I just couldn't muster up the gumption to leave the ground. However... in my defense, for EVERY EXERCISE (with the exception of wall squats) I wore a backpack filled with my gym stuff + water bottle. That's right, pullups, chinups, lunges, groucho walk, squats, and even the warm-up, I wore a 3ish pound backpack! I really liked it.

When it was all over, and time to do abripperX, I felt exhausted. Most of my chinups/pullups came down significantly from 15-17reps to 10-12. Which is better for muscle building. I think next time I'll start adding some educational material to the pack. For now, I'll call it "my homework assignment." I'm looking forward to picture day on Saturday. I'm starting to see a lot of definition in my front/chest/abs.


Weekend challenge: Stay away from bad food over Easter.

Next week: Easy workouts.

Day 12: Legs & Back, urge to kill... rising

So today was another glorious legs + back day. I upped my 105 pull ups to a whopping 115! Not too shabby. I'm definitely feeling today's workout. My legs are very sore and my last switch grip pull ups were horrendous. I did less than last week on that particular exercise, but the others made up for it.

I have to admit the Groucho walk is probably the least intense exercise of the day. It's placed right near the end, right where you need it. And it's quite funny to watch everybody in the DVDs look like a complete fool - granted I also look like a fool, but they can't see me, so HA!

Urge to kill... rising. I think if I saw a dessert-cart wheel by my office right now, I think I would tackle the courier and devour the entire thing, cart and all. I was warned this might happen, and I can not be held accountable for my actions. I just need to practice the phrase "Seriously, your honor, I'm clinically insane. I'm doing P90X!"

Day 5: Legs and Back - Welcome to Pain Land

This exercise is right up there with Plyometrics. The only major difference is; Plyo was intense cardio, this is some intense muscle building. If I had to place this exercise in the gambit of others, I'd put it as number-2 most difficult so far. That being said, I'm having a hard time remembering Chest&Back (my previously rated #2).

Tony comments at the end "If you did this right, you did over 120 pullups." Okay, I didn't actually achieve 120 pullups, but I added up my sheet and I was able to do over 100. Not bad. I really liked the switch-grip chinups. I was really able to push myself hard to get in the mid-teens. I attempted using a chair a couple times - I didn't enjoy it. I think I'd rather struggle on my last few than use a chair. We'll see if that changes later. My avg pullup was in the 12-13 range (up +2 from chest&back).

But the pull-ups were NOT the hardest part! The sets of 2-3 wall squats + deep lunges were brutal. The sneaky-lunges and the 80-20's were both very challenging. Infact nearly all the exercises really tested my abilities. I often found myself putting my hands on my knees to get up. I'll try to reduce that next round.