I had a blood test a fews years ago (sometime in early-mid 2008) for life insurance and was told that since my results were a little questionable, they would deny my claim. Before that, I didn't think too much about my health because I thought as a young guy in my twenties, I was invincible when it came to being healthy.
At the time I was unemployed and living in my parents' house. I'm not exactly sure how much I weighed at the time, but since I knew there was something wrong on my insides, my weight wasn't helping me either. My "official" weight during my blood test was 165, but that was after I tried to lose weight. Prior to that I was already big for my size, so I considered myself unofficially 180 pounds. At 5'3"-5'4", I was medically obese according to BMI standards.
I made a plan to find a job that pays well so that I could move out and concentrate on eating better and exercising. I was able to follow through with that plan and moved into my own place in late 2008.
Once everything in the apartment was setup, I purchased a exercise bike and a scale. I had a lot of weight equipment already so I fashioned my workout station in the corner of my living room. The scale told me that I was now 175 again. Shows like The Biggest Loser were a big inspiration to me as I saw it was possible to lose weight. It was also a great show to ride my exercise bike to. I thought to myself, "If I could get to 155, I bet i'd feel a lot better."
I started off slow and only biked for 45 minutes or so 2 or 3 times a week and started to eat healthier. I stopped eating out as much and cooked my dinner. Shortly after, I checked my scale and I was down to 165 pounds. It was good seeing progress, but I was sure I could be doing better. So I decided to add in weight training. I'd start to do mini circuits consisting of curls, bench presses and sit ups. 3 or 4 sets of 10, nothing too much so I won't get injured. At the start I'd alternate days between biking and lifting. After a while I would do both. I did this for a while and I saw a drop of 10 more pounds on the scale. 20 pounds and goal reached!
I would continue this routine for the next few months. Frustration started settling in as I didn't see any changes to the scale or my body. Plus it wasn't exactly like I felt any more athletic.
I'd put on a previous blog that I was interested in completing the p90x program. I figured it would be a good time to jump start my physical activity. I'd just returned from vacation and decided to get started. March 26th, 2010 is when it all got started.
P90x actually fit in my schedule very nicely. I would come home from work, go through the routine and have dinner shortly after. I should've planned things a little better food-wise, but I chalk that up to being a novice. I didn't wanna go through all the hoops of prepping my meals so I just tried to follow the guidelines. Too bad I realized I'm a health idiot. Phase 1 calls for 50% of your daily intake to be protein and the other half is 30% carbs and 20% fat. So my meals consisted of boneless spare ribs and chicken and broccoli from the chinese food place. (Protein is protein, right?)
Eventually I buckled down and started eating better and saw results. My scale would tell you otherwise, but that's another story. While on the program, I would use my set of 3 resistance bands and gradually moved up until I used the heaviest resistance band for every exercise. I would also choose to do the high rep counts in the videos so it would promote fat loss.
My results were phenomenal compared to my dinky bike, lift, situp routine. I was a little upset that I only lost 2 pounds out of the whole thing. I knew there was more since I didn't have the much sought after 6-pack abs. At this point I decided I wanted to do something to keep up my fitness level, and that something was Insanity. This would have to be the one thing I do to get me over the top. Improved fat loss and phenomenal cardio.
I was a little worried because I read reports of people losing their strength gains from p90x and I figured it wouldn't happen to me. I'm about halfway through, noticing much improved cardio and I think I've lost some body fat too, but I tried doing a pullup and could barely lift myself up. It happened. I hit the wall.
So, in comes this blog. I decided to write about a hybrid program consisting of p90x and Insanity. One of the things that got me through p90x was reading other people's thoughts and blogs about the program. Maybe I can inspire someone else to keep going or at the very least have somewhere to write all my dumb ideas that I notice in the videos. I can also probably look back and see how far I've come from day 1 to 90.
