Friday, May 21, 2010

P90X - Initial Thoughts

About a month ago I started the P90X program. It's a 90-day full body fitness program and a coordinated nutrition program. With an incredibly annoying trainer/host person. It consists of a huge packet of DVDs, some books, and requires weights and/or band and a pullup bar. All you have to do is set up the minimal equipment somewhere in the house, pop in a disc, and hit play. And have nothing planned for an hour or two. I took my "before" photos and took my starting weight, body fat, and measurements. Wow, depressing. And then I did only a week of it, but I didn't have the pull-up bar yet, and I didn't even crack open the nutrition program. The workouts were hard, but I wasn't that into it. Probably because I had a marathon the following week. So I put it on hold until after the race.

After the marathon, I restarted the program. This time with the pullup bar (of which I can do a whopping total of zero unassisted pullups), but I still disregarded the nutrition plan. I was getting good workouts in, but was still half-assing it. It was also extrememly hard to juggle swimming (haha who am I kidding), biking, running, AND 7+ hours of P90X per week. Not to mention this thing called work. I hit 17 hours of training that week. The week AFTER a marathon. Apparently, my I left my brain somewhere in Eugene. Burnout City was just around the corner. But then...then I found out I had a stress fracture in my left heel and my refuge of running was yanked away. About 6 hours per week of "free time" magically opened up.

So I re-restarted the program on Tuesday. This time I'm using the nutrition plan. I have never seen an eating program THIS CLEAN. So clean in fact, that after only 4 days, I feel like I'm cheating by eating 1 tsp of chocolate chips. One flippin teaspoon. I used to knock back an entire bag of those without blinking. This plan is time consuming, both in the matter of preparation and cooking, but also as far as eating 2400+ calories per day of whole foods, and then logging said calories into the online calculator. Do you know how much lean protein and veggies it takes to equal 2400+ calories? Here is a sample day:

Breakfast: 6-8 egg white scramble with veggies and maybe some grilled chicken, turkey bacon, cup of strawberries
Snacks: protein shake, maybe some cottage cheese, whole wheat bread with almond butter if I'm still hungry (I haven't been)
Lunch: salad with grilled chicken and veggies, maybe some soup, maybe some sweet potatoes
Snacks: string cheese or soy nuts, apple with almond butter
Dinner: salmon, lemon-dill sauce, asparagus, wild rice, roasted red pepper soup, protein powder in the soup
Other: recovery drink after workout(s), whatever carbs/calories I need during workout(s) if over an hour, and whatever else to get me above 2000 calories. Because, seriously, the above list doesn't get me to my target amount. And I'm so full that I'm almost puking.

I'm either working, working out, cooking, or eating. And sleeping a solid 5 hours a night. What, 5 hours is not enough? No, no it's not. I'm working on that. But aside from not getting enough sleep, I feel fabulous. My digestive system is perky and happy, my muscles have that hurts-so-good sore and fatigued feeling, and I was able to do 2 big-girl pushups today. Go me. And I've lost SIX pounds. I was able to button the top part of my jeans this morning and I didn't have to undo them after lunch. Small victories. Only 2 pounds until I'm at Ironman weight, 7 pounds until wedding weight, and 23 pounds to my goal weight. Woah, 23 pounds? Ack, I'll just focus on losing only those 2 pounds for the moment.

Now if only I can get Ken, aka Mr. Mega-meat-eater, to enjoy the squash soup, turkey bacon, protein shakes, and soy sausage as much as I do. But even if he has no interest in trying it, at least he isn't complaining about ME eating it. I'll report back on my progress and thoughts next week. So far, so good.