90 Day Transformations

This May Sound Obvious..

..But I'm more convinced than ever that diet plays a key role in physical transformations in particular and overall great health in general.  Strength, conditioning, and flexibility fill out the rest of the cast.  But without a proper, balanced, clean diet, not only can the results of weeks and months of hard work in the gym or in front of the TV with Tony not be seen, but we have less time to enjoy the fruits of these labors through shortened lifespans.  Not to mention greater risk of disease and a crappy emotional state from inflammation and frustration at not being able to see those abs we all know are in there.  Finally, we get mediocre results from using crap fuel.

A typical saying I hear all the time is that "hey, a person can eat whatever they want if they are working out," or its cousin, "I work out so I can eat whatever I want."  In my experience, it's even more crucial to eat clean and balanced when in a strength and conditioning program because those workouts require the right kind of fuel.  And the belly fat will never go away until the diet is cleaned up. 

Never ever.

So unless you're Michael Phelps and you train 8 hours a day, every day, working out for an hour every other day or even every day isn't enough to justify eating "whatever you want."  Just isn't. 

Those of you, myself included at one time or another, who think you can conquer the workouts and just wing it on the diet are going to fail at your goals.  There really is no other reason most people do P90X other than to get ripped.  A few might do it for real athletic conditioning, but it's obviously targeted towards people who want to see their abs.  Winging it on the diet will not achieve these results.

Even when I didn't make the connection at the time, this has been my experience.

For me, there's just no other way around it.  I can eat fries, drink beer, and eat pizza and ice cream all I want to one day every week or two.  But my daily grind must be clean, fresh, whole food. 

My current diet is as follows:

Breakfast:
4 whole egg omelet with fresh white onions, fresh baby spinach, fresh mushrooms, and about a half a cup of regular cheese
1/2 cup of fresh blueberries just rinsed and snacked on while I make my omelet
Banana
5g creatine in about a cupful of Knudsen's Just Blueberry juice (very expensive but so damn good)
Water

Snack:
Small handful of walnuts and an apple or banana
Water

Lunch:
Grilled chicken, pork, ribeye, top sirloin, filet, tuna steak, or canned tuna (I cook a double portion of the grilled stuff the night before so I have some for dinner and then save the rest for lunch)
Double handful of fresh baby spinach (I'm eating a shitload of spinach)
As much fresh broccoli as I can stomach
About a half a cup to a cup of quinoa sometimes - other times a banana
Water

Snacko Numero Dos:
Apple and maybe some more nuts

Dinner:
Grilled meat (see above and also notice that I didn't say "lean")
Broccoli
Spinach
Yam/sweet potato or quinoa
Water

Not really a late night snack kinda guy.  If I find myself with my head in the fridge then it's probably past my bedtime.

Extremely Delicious Post Workout Shake Made in a Shaker:
1 cup of Knudsen's Just Blueberry Juice
1 cup water
5g Creatine
50g GNC Amplified Wheybolic Extreme 60 Chocolate Protein Powder (seriously?)
Two ice cubes

The difference between this diet and what I was doing about 30 days ago is that I have cut out most grains (except quinoa, which I don't eat all the time) including wheat, oats, and yes, rice.  I won't go into the details of the caveman diet because a simple google search will turn up more than a person would ever want to know about it.  But my diet, quinoa and dairy notwithstanding, is rather close to the paleo diet with the exception of the Zone concepts of eating as much fat as possible and not eating any carbs, which I happen to think is dumb.  I eat a lot of sugar in the form of fresh fruit and have lost about 6 pounds in the last 30 days doing this.  Sugar is carbs.

Am I a freak about diet?  Not really.  I absolutely realize that tasty food is one of the great pleasures of living in an advanced civilization where we don't have to toil all day to capture or grow our own food.  But I've said it before and I'll say it again:  the purpose of food isn't to make our taste buds happy, it's to fuel the body.  Period.  And, again, I know that a prescribed diet plan with non-tasty, bland food is a diet that won't be followed.  Which is why everything I eat is something I always look forward to eating.  These days, I enjoy eating blueberries and broccoli more than I ever enjoyed eating a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (not sure I can say the same for delicious Egg McMuffin).  I ordered two large pizzas for myself and some friends last weekend and even though it didn't taste nearly as good as I thought it would - as good as I remembered pizza tasting - I still ate five pieces that night and four the next day for lunch. 

Meh. 

Yes, I'm still a pig when it's in front of me.  I simply can't not eat junk food if it's around.  So I just don't have it around.

I think it's important to note that I haven't done a single second of a traditional cardio workout other than my 3-5 minute warmup since last summer. 

As in 2009 last summer.

Do 6 sets of deadlifts and tell me your heart isn't racing, you aren't breathing heavy, and you aren't in a flop sweat.  I think there's a cardio workout built right in to my resistance workout.

Current weight 175

Happy New Decade, P90X'ers and Wannabees!! Also, I'm Nude.

2009 was an interesting year, to say the least.  I welcome all my usual new New Year's traffic.  I direct those of you who are new to the site here and then here first to get an idea of what I'm all about.  Oh, also here.

Let this be the year you make good on your promises to yourselves to get in shape and start living a healthier lifestyle.  It's really worth every second of the pain and sacrifice (I make it sound so nice, don't I?).  So don't be afraid to take a measly 3 months out of your entire lives and eat clean and workout.  Just 90 tiny little days.  Worried about your friends giving you grief when you pass on the beer and wings?  Just nonchalantly inform them you are "on a program" (keep a good attitude about it and you just might get some allies).  90 days.  12 weeks.  3 months.  It goes by so fast and at the end of it you are a different person.  Isn't it worth trying that just once in your life?  You might be surprised at what other things improve in your life when you improve your health.  I'm just saying. 

Give it a shot.

In other news, I was looking at myself in my living room mirrors naked this morning, and I have to say I'm rather pleased.

Looking back over my training log from December, I weighed 177 on 12/17/09.  Today, 01/06/10, I weighed in at 184.  I know I gained some weight from xmas indulgence, but 7 pounds?  I guess it's possible.  And I took a week off from lifting Christmas to New Year's Eve so my muscles were able to fully recover and grow.

Anyway, I decided to really take a look and see if I can notice any gains.  Nudity required.

Sure enough, I was looking at my quads, glutes, and hams in the mirror and dudes, there's some size and definition there that definitely wasn't there in October, especially in my already fine ass.  Also, my arms are getting bigger.  Nothing huge, but I can definitely tell I'm filling out.  Yeah, there's some extra fat in the spare tire area, but not much.  How much of that 7 pounds is fat and how much is lean muscle?  I really have no idea, but it's definitely not all fat (or all muscle for that matter).

My long-term question is, of course, what will happen next time I do P90X?

I started P90 at 190 pounds.  I ended P90X 6 months later at 164 and a nice 6 pack.  I'm almost back up to where I was before weight-wise, but I'm definitely not chubby like I was.  I can still see 4 of my 6 abs and my face isn't all doughy and round like it was.  My arms and legs are hard, too, not flabby like they used to be back then when I started P90.  My guess is, and this is purely guessing, that if I got P90X lean today, I would weigh somewhere in the 169 to 172 range.  Again, just guessing.  But I don't think it's too far off the mark.  The key will be to lose the little bit of fat without hurting my overall mass gains once I'm ready to cut up.

I still have a little less than 3 months left to go in this first 6 month program.  See, if you had just started P90X when you read my first post about this program...

You would be done.

Response to Airynn

(I was originally going to just respond to Airynn in the comments, but I this is probably one of the most common questions I get about exercise.  So here's a post instead)

Hey, Airynn (cool name!),

P90X or Insanity?  Depends on a few factors:

1.  What is your current fitness level?  Couch potato?  3 times a week on the ellipse machine?  Calisthenics 5 times a week an hour each time?  Triathlete?  If you aren't already in a fairly strenuous exercise program (30 minutes of treadmill or ellipse doesn't count) I would start with P90, not P90X or Insanity.  Like I have said before, I lost almost all the weight with 2 months of dieting and 3 months of regular P90 - about 45 pounds.  P90 will help you lose the weight AND will most definitely tone you up. 

2.  If all you want to do is tone up, then I wouldn't bother beating myself up with P90X or Insanity.  Again, do P90.  After that, reassess what kind of physique you want and what level of conditioning you are interested in and go from there (trust me, at the end of P90, you will be in pretty good shape.  And if you are like me, you will probably want to bring it to the next level.)

3.  If you are actually interested in getting ripped, in SUPER shape, and have at least an hour and 20 minutes to dedicate to your workout (not including shower, etc) 6 days a week, and you are in good physical shape already, I would do P90X.

4.  If you just want to get shredded and don't have as much time and don't want to do any free-weight stuff (or don't have the equipment), do Insanity.  Don't misunderstand, even without weights, Insanity is a killer workout - there are still pushups and burpees and squats and more plyo than you can shake a 30" vertical jump at.  So this program is also for an already fit person.  Those workouts rocked my world.

Since I sense that you don't already have a moderate to heavy workout program you are doing, my recommendation to you, Airynn, is to get P90 and follow that program to the letter, including the diet.  You can kill two birds with one stone with P90.  Here's how:

A.  It utilizes a calorie-deficit diet which will help you shed that 50 pounds.

B.  You will not only get toned, you will gain strength and flexibility.  Believe me, you will need that strength and flexibility when you move on to P90X or Insanity.

If you just diet now and then try to tone afterwards, it's going to take you forever.  Why not do both at the same time?  Besides, exercise will give you a tremendous high that stays with you all day and brightens your mood and makes you feel like anything is possible.

Truth be told, that's really the main reason I work out.  Bad diet and no exercise makes me feel like crap.

All that being said, you can still try to do P90X or Insanity without working up to them.  But the unfortunate reality is that if you are completely out of shape, you won't have developed the physical conditioning required to start those programs.  And that will make your chances of successfully finishing either program very small.  After the very first workout, an unconditioned person will wake up the next day feeling like they were beaten with a baseball bat.  I'm not kidding.  Not only that, but your risk for injury greatly increases, which will effectively sideline you for days, most likely weeks.  And that prevents you from reaching your goals.  I pulled my Achilles tendon about halfway through P90X and it made downward dogs and plyo most unpleasant.  It took months for that to heal, especially since I made myself finish P90X despite the injury.  Not smart.

Ease into those programs, but do your best in P90.  Be patient.  Remember, this is a lifestyle change, not a quick fix.

P90X Noobs: Patience and Persistence

Just a note for those of you who may be just starting P90, P90X, or some other fitness program, there's no shame in doing the first week of exercises some kind of abbreviated manner.  Whether it be at half-pace, half reps, or half the workout.  I would say that you can take longer than a week to up the reps and pace, but certainly don't do half workouts after the first week.

The reason I say this is because going from zero to Tony in no time flat is a recipe for disaster.  I believe that in order to get the most from any kind of lifestyle change the user must be cognizant of the fact that it is, in fact, a lifestyle change.  That is, P90X isn't something a person should do just to say they did.  90 days of exercise won't turn the average Joe into Brad Pitt, after which he can go back to his old ways and not have to think about exercise and proper diet.  Starting the program like this at full speed will cause the most amazing pain a person can inflict on themselves and creates a monumental motivation obstacle that can be nearly impossible to overcome (who hasn't had 4 days of not being able to walk after overdoing it on their first leg workout after 5 years?  Don't lie!).  I've seen it several times and have even experienced it myself.  He should start the program like it's the beginning of a new job and he's in no hurry to make an ass of himself the first day.  

In other words, fitness is a mountain that takes a lifetime to climb.  The bottom walls are nearly vertical.  Patient and persistent climbing of this wall will ultimately get the climber to the next level.  A person can't climb this wall by running at it full speed head first.

Of course, for already fit people there's no excuse for not giving it all you've got out of the gate.  You're already past that first painful and difficult wall.

Welcome to 2009, Fitness Fans!

I see that with the new year comes new interest in fitness.  I haven't posted anything since the beginning of November and yet I get this almost double jump in hits week one of 2009 (W01 above).  Everybody is telling themselves that "this is the year."  This is the big year that we finally decide to get in shape in time for spring break or summer.  This is the big year we start taking control of our lives by starting at the bottom and working our way up.  This is the big year we get a six pack.  

I have been absent for a couple of months due to a family emergency.  There were too many pies, turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It was a serious crisis.  Somebody had to take one for the team, I figured it might as well be me.

So in short, I have not only been absent from 90 Day Transformations, but I have also been absent from the gym.  No dulcet tones of Tony emanating from my tv early in the morning.  Only snoring from my room.

So what effect has two months off my program had, you might ask?  Well, I've gained back about 7 pounds of fat.  I find that to be surprisingly low considering how much pie and beer I've been consuming the last 60 days and how little (okay, none at all) I've been exercising.  I know in the past I've made a lot of big talk about having a clean diet forever more and making exercise just a part of my daily routine.  But nobody's perfect.  When I have a houseful of people and there is wine flowing and pies begging to be eaten, it's hard to be a food nazi.  So I wasn't one.

In a way, I am very thankful that the holidays are over.  With all the overindulging and the fatty, salty, sugary foods and low activity level I found that I was starting to feel not so hot.  After the dust settled from my big New Year's Eve party I restarted my diet and could feel the difference in my energy level and mental and physical state almost immediately.  I enjoyed the holidays, but I can't be that way all year round any more.  I don't know how I did it before.  

All wasn't cookies and nog during my respite.  I did stick to a fairly clean diet overall and continued to eat several small meals starting with my usual breakfast.  It was just around dinner time that the trouble would start.  

I also spent a considerable amount of time researching the methodology for gaining muscle size and strength.  P90X is superb for athletic conditioning, flexibility, and leaning out.  It may be decent for building muscle, but it's far from ideal.  There's just too much cardio and not enough heavy, heavy lifting to build much mass.  So using info from the interweb, the Men'sHealth Power Training book, Arnold's Encyclopedia of Modern Body Building, and stuff from Tony's programs, I'm working on a new fitness paradigm that concentrates primarily on building overall mass and strength with only a secondary focus on athletic conditioning.  In the beginning, there will be just about zero single-muscle exercises.  Everything is compound and done with heavy weights:  ie., squats, deadlifts, chin ups, bench press, cleans, etc.  

One of the cool things about this is that it is a pretty significant shift from P90X, which will make my body have to adapt to a whole bunch of new exercises and should create some obvious gains pretty quickly.  It will also take less time to complete a typical workout.  The downside is that I can't take a squat rack on the road with me.  One of the great things about P90X that made it easy to stick with was that I could take my entire gym with me in a box and do everything in my hotel room.  I proved to myself in 2008 that I could lose 45 pounds and get a six pack.  I achieved this with flying colors.  I'm fairly certain that I mentioned this before, but for 2009 my goal is to gain muscle mass.

For this, I am going to have to start going back to the gym.  

The shorter workouts will help a little bit in this regard.  I can use the extra time to drive back and forth from the gym that I would have otherwise used for the rest of Tony's workouts - "REPEAT-O!"  It will also help to be able to recruit the occasional spotter for some of the tougher workouts.  In the beginning I am going to have to get a live coach to show me the right way to do some of these exercise.  Form is always very important.  

As far as diet goes, I am going to concern myself less with calorie deficits and getting cut and more with getting enough carbs and fat for energy and recovery and protein for rebuilding.  The caloric intake will increase, but not by as much as I thought it might.  I am convinced that I can gain real muscle mass without getting fat and most everything I have read backs this up.  

Once I finalize my plan I will post it up and provide my usual reasonably frequent weekly/bi-weekly updates on my progress.

For those of you who found your way here by doing "does P90X work" google searches the answer is, in short, yes.  But like anything else in this world, the key ingredient to making it work is you.  Programs like Power 90, P90X, Body For Life, Weight Watchers and so on are just tools.  They only work if we, the user, actually use them.  Our results are directly proportional to our efforts.  To get truly great results, we push ourselves past our comfort zones and squeeze out every last rep like that is the rep that is going to add that inch to our biceps or dissolve that pound of fat.  It takes a lot of consistent work over a relatively long period of time - there is no other way around it, that's just the way it is.  Anybody can get in decent shape by getting moderate exercise and not eating like a pig.  If we want to get into the best shape of our lives, we follow the P90X or P90 program like our lives depend on it.  If we want to get big, well, we stay tuned to this here blog.

You, Inc.

One of the fitness blogs I read made a good point about motivation and goals using a Dave Ramsey concept (quoted from her blog):

“If you were in charge of the operations of a company called You, Inc., and it was your job to make sure You, Inc. followed its business plan (program) and didn’t outspend (eat) more than it earned (exercised), would you fire yourself?”

There are a few Dave Ramsey disciples out there (Dan and Alicia are debt free as of yesterday, congrats!!) who will recognize this.  Applying it to fitness is just brilliant.

I think people can apply it to all aspects of their lives - social, emotional, spiritual, etc. - not just financial and physical. 

Shannon - 90 Days

 

Wow.

Shannon included some words about his experience and his plans for the future:

Starting weight:  235
Final weight:  208

My 90 Days have been a mixed bag of situations, emotions and physical ailments. I'm not going to have a full-on puff piece on how great I feel or how awesome this whole experience has been. My words are not going to be put on any testimonial pages on Beachbody.com. What I have  for you instead is my real experience with actually working out solid for 90 days...for the FIRST time in my life.

I didn't know if I would last. I didn't know how much I wanted to work to get to this point. All I knew was that I was tired of being fat.  Tired of my knees and back hurting for no reason. Tired of feeling depressed. And most of all, tired of being tired.

PAINS
Ignorantly, I thought that doing this program would be a cure-all for my body aches. I didn't expect to have even MORE ailments throughout this program. To its credit, my knees do hurt far less, but I think my back problem needs to be looked at professionally. I think it will take more than just exercise to fix it. I didn't plan on a hip problem six weeks in to the program though. It created a situation to where I couldn't do a good amount of the leg exercises in the cardio or the lower ab routines without severe pain in my hip joint. SO, I had to be creative with my workouts. I ran, biked and swam for cardio as an alternative to some of the exercises on the program.

RESULTS
Now, I don't know if switching up hurt or helped but i knew I was plateauing on the last 30 days and I found it very difficult to lose weight as fast as I did during the first 60 days. As you can tell, I only lost 5 pounds this last 30 days as compared to 10 pounds each prior 30 days. However, like Dan and Mat have been telling me and what I have witnessed is that I noticed little changes everyday in my physique.  I wasn't losing the weight but I was still changing for the better.

MINDSET
It was hard, invigorating, painful, redundant, annoying, satisfying, and ego-boosting at the same time. You get out what you put in.  Everyone around me would make fun of me while I was working out because I was growling, grunting, howling with every rep I took. I took it to the max because I didn't want to cheat myself. Others around me kinda sorta jumped on the band wagon at some point or the other, but never stuck with the routine because they maybe didn't want to sacrifice the food or didn't want to really  "work" when they exercised. But I think, they didn't have the mindset. If you don't want the change, you won't get it. If you do this program and just go through the motions, you won't get the satisfaction and results you want. Like I said, it's hard, it will hurt, and you have to want it.  Period. If you can't handle that, then you will always be stuck.

FOOD
Growing up, you get so used to eating a certain way and eating certain foods. You get used to tons of sugar, salt, fat and you rely on them as flavor gauges. Doing this program, all that you know gets stripped from you. No sweets. No fatty, salty cheeseburgers. Just pure, bland good for you healthy whole foods. Yuck. At lease, that's what I thought at the beginning. Now, I can tell how much salt and butter and sugar is in something just from smell. Eating a bell pepper is more satisfying than a chocolate chip cookie. A banana is a dessert. AND ITS GOOD! Your taste for food changes. You realize how good natural food tastes once you are stripped of your dependance from fat, sugar and salt. PLUS, you don't feel like crap after you eat a banana. Will I stop eating cheeseburgers? Uh, no. I will treat myself to whatever I crave. If I crave a cheeseburger, I will eat it. If I crave ice cream, I will eat it. The good thing is that I know I don't crave those things nearly as much, if at all.

RESULTS
Am I happy with the results? Heck yeah!  Would I do it over again? Every time!  Do I think I could have done more? Looking back, probably. But that would have meant more time away from my family. Getting fit is one thing, not everything. My family comes first.

FUTURE
Will I do P90X? Probably not. I can't sacrifice the time it takes to be dedicated to the program.  What will I do? I will continue to workout. Lose the rest of my tire belly. I will be doing Tony's 10 minute Trainer workouts as well as working on building up my chest and back. I will continue to post updates and results because I am not finished with my physique and most of my routines and diet plans are still based off P90.

THANKS
Mat has been a great resource for motivation and information throughout and he has always given me solid alternatives and ideas with each of my predicaments and I would just like to thank him for everything. You're a great man, Mathew Allen.  Thanks for motivating me to do this. I will never regret it!

Damn.  You look incredible, Shannon.  But I knew you would make it because you wanted it bad enough.  You are welcome.

Back & Biceps, Day One Mat Again

Strip Set Curls aftermath

Back and Biceps.  Boy, that was one heck of a workout, made a little more complex because I am still working the kinks out of the new dumbbells.  I can’t imagine being able to pull off more than three or four Corn Cob Pull-ups or Towel Pull-ups by the end of this go-round of P90X.  I would be surprised if I could do more than two.  We’ll see.  A tough workout, but just as fun as the rest of them.

As you can see above, having to change weights frequently and quickly ends up making a mess.  There is no doubt that the selectorized dumbbells like the Bowflex 552’s and the Powerblocks are faster in weight changes as well as less messy when a lot of weight changes are called for.  But the Ironmasters are fast enough under normal set-to-set changes and the plates stack nicely on the stand if I’m not in a hurry.  Plus they are tough.  I don’t think I could break them if I tried.  When I swing them around they are not only as solid as a standard dumbbell but blessedly silent.  And to top it all off, they are really nice looking.

No Pity Party For Day 1 Mat

I wanted to add a little bit to my previous post about my former self.  The more I think about it, I don't have any reason to pity that Day 1 guy.  What also helped me think a little deeper about it was having to explain to my dad after he read it that I am not generally depressed because of some nutrient deficiency, but just got a little twinge of sadness for the chump in the photo.  You know how parents can be.  He hadn’t really seen me since I was plump so when I visited him for his birthday a couple weeks ago he was surprised at how not-fat I was. 

In fact, I have every reason to thank Day 1 Matty.  After all, if he hadn't made the promise to himself to get in the shape he's always wanted to be in, to keep that promise to himself through thick and thin, to sacrifice all of the things that pleased him (but were keeping him fat and unhappy) for a far distant goal that would only come in tiny, barely noticeable increments, and to maintain the discipline required to really push himself outside of his comfort zone, Mr. Day 90 wouldn’t be here today – er, six weeks ago(?!).  So really, that guy in the Day 1 picture isn’t any different than the guy in the Day 90 picture because he already made the commitment to change and is prepared to do the hard work to get where he wants to be.  He’s just wearing a fat suit and a bad goatee.  Without him I wouldn’t have made it through all the hard parts to get to this fun part.

So he’s my hero. 

Now the guy in the photos from last winter and the year before and the year before that, that guy needs a kick in the butt.

Grief and Loss. . . and Fun!

I had commented on one of my earlier posts (before I screwed it all up and had to delete and repost the post) that I was looking at my photos from P90 Day One and I was suddenly overcome with this weird sadness.  Well, I happened to find Tony Horton's blog and lo and behold, there is an entry about just this very thing:

Working through a loss is a complex process.  Expect ups and downs and even two steps forward, one step back kinds of progress along the way toward closure.  There is no one “right” or “wrong” way to grieve, but ultimately the sense of loss and grief will subside toward resolution over time. If the road gets rocker and never seems to smooth out or if you feel stuck and despaired at any time, seeking assistance from a grief counselor or other mental health professional who is knowledgeable about grief issues can help you better understand your grief and assist you in moving forward in the healing process.

You may be wondering what this has to do with eating right and exercise and I'm here to tell you that the main reason why so many people can't maintain a fit and healthy physique for a lifetime is because they're not willing to let go of that person in the day 1 photo. Intellectually you know that the new you is a better you, but the person you were at the beginning of this process is a dear old friend that's hard to abandon. There are memories, experiences and pleasures that make up who you were and it's hard to wrap your arms around the idea that this part of you is gone forever.

There must be a grieving period or process to break through to the other side. It's normal, it's weird and uncomfortable and it's part of life. Going from unfit & unhealthy to fit and healthy in a relatively short period of time is daunting and traumatic. Nobody talks about it because there's no clear cut way to understand it or deal with it. Some folks make the transition easily while others still see themselves as the overweight, unhappy person they were on day 1. The thoughts and memories in your mind that cause profound emotions from your past don't go away just because you lost weight and got strong. Day 90 of Power 90 and P90X is often a very sad and depressing day for many many people. While it's an amazing accomplishment it also signifies the death of an old friend and the start of a difficult new beginning. The old me is dead, now what? 

What's crazy is that the sudden sadness is also mixed with a sense of great possibility (I have this great new body, now what?).  It's the similar to the feeling I got when I learned that there is a "space between the stimulus and the response."   What I mean by that is this:  The stimulus is something that happens to a person, whether it's something that someone says to them or something that happens (like a choice to do the right thing when nobody is looking).  The response is how the person reacts to the stimulus.  Here's the good - and relevant - part:  the space is where the choice is made on what the response will be.  All of an individual's freedom lives in that space between the stimulus and the response.  How much freedom we have is dictated by how big we can make that space - our worldview and personal paradigm helps determine the size of that space.  The more room a person has to decide how to respond, the better the choice can be.  Sometimes the space is necessarily small (a mother bear with cubs appears around the next bend of a trail) but by realizing that I am responsible for each and every response I make to any stimulus (getting cut off in traffic, seeing an old lady who needs help across the street, being offered a plate of hot wings, getting a promotion, having the opportunity to talk about somebody else behind their back, etc.) I suddenly have not only great freedom, but tremendous responsibility.  Get it?  Response-ability?  Making good choices sometimes requires sacrifice and discipline.  It's not always easy.

The difference in this case is that instead of sadness, I was struck with blind terror:  Holy Boston Creme Pie, Batman, I guess I really am totally responsible for my lot in life!  If I want to truly be free, I have to take responsibility for my decisions and choices in life.  But the sense of great potential was there as well.  This life is mine and I can exercise and improve my mind, emotional well-being, social well-being, spiritual well-being, and even financial well-being the same way I am improving my physical well-being with great exercise and proper nutrition.  I can make good decisions about all of these things and the cumulative effect will be exponential instead of linear.

So while I have a small melancholy feeling about the me that was, I have a much greater sense of who I am and who I can become.  It is my response-ability to decide who I am and where I can go and what my life will be like. 

Being sad and feeling a little sorry for the old me is part of the transformation.

Core Synergistics, The Phelps Diet

I didn't realize that weights were required in Core Synergistics so I am excited to say that my new Ironmaster Quick-locks are drawn earthward by the force of gravity better than any other dumbbell I have ever tried, bar none.

Why can't I just drink Recovery Drink during Recovery Week?

There is a little bit of everything in Core Synergistics:  pushups, lunges, tons of ab stuff, rolling around on the floor like a gimp banana, and so much more.  Not easy like I hoped it would be.  I'm definitely not recovering from anything with this workout.

Not sure why they call it recovery week because these workouts are skullcrushers just like the regular workouts.  For those unfamiliar with some of the P90X routines, here are the Recovery Week workouts:

1. Yoga X (isometrics, legs, cardio)
2. Core Synergistics (abs, pushups, back, core)
3. Kenpo X (cardio)
4. X Stretch (doy)
5. Core Synergistics again
6. Yoga X again
7. Rest or X Stretch

Okay, so maybe X Stretch isn't exactly extreme, but Recovery Week is not a week off, no sir. 

Overall, it's going well - nothing but good things to say about this part of P90X.

Michael Phelps' diet looks a lot like my pre-P90 diet:

Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.

Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.

Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.

That's about 12,000 calories A DAY.  12,000 calories.  I feel like I need to say it twice for effect.  He spends up to 8 hours a day in the pool, all for a race that lasts for a couple of minutes.

We may not have the desire to become the world's greatest Olympians, but we can be great in our own smaller ways.  The discipline, motivation, and commitment required for this kind of personal improvement is very powerful stuff and is something we have to reach deep down to find.  Integrity begins with keeping the promises we have made to ourselves to make our lives better.  What an incredible accomplishment to complete a program like P90 or P90X or Body For Life.  You should all be very proud of yourselves.