My thoughts after 30 days, and pictures

Well now that I am 1/3 the way there I thought I would take a little time to reflect on it and what I think about it. First motivation. For me there are several things that have gone into this and this blog is one of them. I am a very competitive person and get really upset with myself if I fail at anything especially if someone else is aware of it. This is part of the reason I started blogging about this experience, so I would be less likely to give up. While this blog has served that purpose well I am also finding that I just like doing it and I will probably continue it once I am done with the 90 days. One of my goals all along in my recent fitness quest that started earlier this year was to increase my core strength to diminish the chances of any recurrence of my back problems and so far that has been going good as well. The P90X program itself has been a great motivator for me because I am seeing results on an ongoing basis and the more results I see the more motivated I get to go harder and stick to it to see even more. I have also been reading some other blogs, you can see links to some of them on my blog, and other peoples stories and thoughts have been helpful for me as well. There is one blog I have to call out by name though and that is fitbomb. This guy has some very entertaining things to say, hands down the most entertaining blog about P90X I can imagine, and some really good information about the program to go along with it and I can't recommend this blog enough to anyone considering or doing P90X, I am not sure where he finds the time for all that blogging though shouldn't you be working man? It is interesting to see how many other of these P90X bloggers have found and linked to my blog and it is also amazing how many people out there are doing this with good results. Finally my main motivation is that my kids see me and my wife committed to eating healthy and exercising. It is apparent that they are picking up some healthy ideas from all of this and I want to continue that influence so hopefully they can maintain a healthy lifestyle throughout their lives and possibly avoid becoming part of the out of shape blob of a populace I see all around me.

As far as the program itself goes I am very happy so far. The workouts are interesting and change often enough to keep my interest, I am even starting to enjoy Yoga. The nutrition plan was a little difficult at first but as I said before the more I see the results the more I want to stick to it. I have not cheated at all yet and I don't plan to even though we will be doing this through the holidays. I initially did have cravings for things I shouldn't eat, like sweets, but that has mostly gone away now and I am pretty used to the nutrition plan and it is just common sense. I have no problems now with going out to eat with someone who is eating not so healthy or with being someplace where there is free pizza or something which early on was a little more of a struggle, I don't even want to eat that any more. I was recently at a full breakfast with a bunch of people from work and there were piles of bacon and sausage and eggs and the works. I just waited a few minutes and watched and eventually a huge fat guy went up and started piling eggs and bacon on his plate and that was all I needed to see to be turned off to it, I had oatmeal and a cup of black coffee, motivation for me in this case came in a huge disgusting gelatinous package. This wait for a fat ass to show up technique to staying on track is great because you can practice it any place in this country without having to wait long to be grossed out by some jaba the hut looking slob stuffing their face and usually washing it down with a diet coke, as if that is going to help anything. I really don't think I am going to have any problems maintaining the healthy eating habits once the program is over either, it is amazing how much better you can feel simply by eating the right things. I will not stick as strictly to the eating plan as I am during the 90 days but as I mentioned I don't even want to eat junk at all and when I see some greasy pile of crap that I used to eat it almost makes me sick to think about trying to gag it down. One thing I am noticing this week is that I seem to be more hungry now that I have started phase 2. This seems a little strange to me given that I have added some more carbs but it has also only been a couple of days. I am going to keep an eye on that for the rest of the week and see how it goes. Not sure what I will do if it continues but we will see, any other P90Xers out there have this happen to them and if so what did you do?

Another nice benefit for me has been the smoking thing. I mentioned in my first post on why I was doing this that I had "mostly quit smoking. Well I had quit on January 2nd of this year with the help of Chantix (I highly recommend it to anyone by the way), this was again largely motivated by a desire to get back in shape and more importantly not have my kids see me smoking. Up until starting P90X I had quit except for when hanging out drinking beers with my team after ice hockey games and since starting I have not done that either. My current thought is that if I can go the 90 days of this program without smoking at all I should be off that habit for good. I really don't want to do it at all now that I am eating right and exercising this hard every day, this is similar to the food I just don't want to put that crap in my body any more and I can't believe I ever did.

Finally it has been nice that Sarah and I have done this together. This has been something that we needed I think, to do something together other than sit on the sofa and watch TV. It is hard to do things together with young kids other than things with the kids and this has been helpful in that regard I think. I think it has also made us much less lazy in general if for no other reason than we need to get off our asses and get things done so we can be in bed in time to be up at 5:30 every morning. We now do grocery shopping together some which did not happen much before, as well as meal planning and preparation. This may not seem like much but I think it is good for us in general not to mention we both look and feel better than we used to.

I have recently found a few blogs that appear to be critical of the P90X program claims at success and try to discount some of the things it claims it is doing (i.e. muscle confusion) such as this blog. Well this guy may have all the science down and the facts on his side as far as the latest research goes but all I can say is this program is working for me and my wife and as far as I can tell it is working for a lot of other people as well. When I say it is working I mean we are getting in better shape and eating healthier, spending more quality time together, getting more done around the house, and setting a reasonably good example for our kids. So I don't really care about your science or your studies or if muscle confusion is bullshit, all I know is we are getting a lot out of the program and we are being motivated by it to make some positive changes and that is really all that matters. I have also started thinking about what comes next after this 90 days and I have some thoughts but nothing solid yet. I will post more on that as I come closer to the end.

I still need to put pics at the 30 day mark up and I will try to get that done tonight.