Real Life Fitness – Getting Fit With Brent

So I’m settling into this diet more and more and starting to feel less of the effects of low carbs already.  I’m not completely over the hump yet, but compared to day 2, I’m much more awake overall, feel less crabby, and generally feel happier.

No, I’m not perfect yet, mainly because I’m still struggling with variety of food choices and figuring our what is best.  Lunch will always be the hardest meal for me since I prep my meals and take them to work with me (the disadvantage of where I live is it is too far to drive home to cook lunch).  Breakfast variety must get better.  I cannot eat eggs everyday and expect to stay sane!

And today was definitely an exception-to-the-rule type of day.  I overslept.  As in, my alarm was set for 5:30am, I don’t think I heard it, and slept until after 7am.  That’s never a good way to start the morning, much less when you have food prep to do.  Needless to say, my P90X yoga session had to get put on hold until the afternoon.

But I survived and got things pull together well.

After yoga this evening, it was time to do something I’m trying not to do:  Track calories.  But more than tracking calories, I needed to see where my carb in take was.  The Primal Blueprint calls for 50-100 for “effortless weight loss” and 0-50 for faster weight loss on a limited basis.  I figure I’ve been playing near the 50 mark and possibly below, but wanted to make sure.  So I tracked.  Here is what all I had today:

Breakfast
4 slices bacon, crumbled in a 3 egg omelet with onion, bell pepper, fresh chopped cilantro, some cheese, topped with salsa.  Had about 1/2 cup of strawberries to go with it.

Lunch:  Around 3 cups of homemade chili with 1/8th cup of cheese, and somewhere between 1-2 servings of pork rinds.

Snack:  1 gala apple with around 1 tbsp almond butter

Supper – 9 oz ribeye with a cajun butter sauce on top, with some veggies cooked in a bit of butter (pictured at the top of this post)

My totals look like this:

January 4th Food Diary

So, 59g of carbs falls well into the range.  I was shocked at the protein intake of 176g.  My goal for protein should be much lower (.7-1g per pound of lean body mass, which means 152g should be my max).  I guess 24g over is not too bad.

There is still one major obstacle I’m going to have to face:  Kicking my workouts up a notch.  Sure, Plyo X was tough, and it took a toll on my with my second day of low-carb.  But I’m going to have to work harder overall on getting more workout in (with the blessing of my therapist, of course).  Tomorrow is a therapy day, and then Friday will be a doubles of sorts (Legs and Back, Ab Ripper X in the morning, therapy in the afternoon).  I’ll up my carbs slightly that day, and probably increase my overall intake as well.  I may need around 2,300 calories that day to make it.

Until tomorrow…

Got a question about Primal eating and/or P90X?  Ask in the comments sections below!

Brent P90X, Primal/Paleo Eating P90X, p90x yoga, paleo diet, paleo eating, primal blueprint

This is going to be short and sweet:  Did FOY Yoga for P90X instead of Yoga X.  My wife joined me.  This routine pushed me today, but in a good way.  I focused on form, depth, being uncomfortable, and worked up a great sweat.  There are parts of it where I need to improve but I’ll get there.

Last night was a rough night sleep wise (not to mention today was a rough day work wise), so heading to bed early tonight to get some extra rest.  Legs and Back come up tomorrow and that routine is NEVER easy.

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Today was P90X Day 4 (round 2).  I chose to do Fountain of Youth Yoga instead of the full Yoga X.  Yet another rough night of sleep with the girls as storms blew in overnight.  I just couldn’t wake up at 5am to do it, so woke up at 5:30am and did the shorter one.  Still a good workout and good stretch.  Next week will be Yoga X for sure.

Nutrition was good, until tonight.  Had a meeting at church where they were providing a meal.  Thought I’d be safe but showed up to…..PIZZA!  Love me some pizza, but decided that since I would only have 2 moderate slices for around 500 calories.  Not bad.  Just not great, and definitely not filling enough.

I’m way under on my calories this week, which means next week will become important to step it up.  I need to hit right at 2,400.  My body operates best, performs best, and burns best on this amount.

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Playing some catch-up here.  Had a fun weekend spending time talking to my friends about fitness, life, and everything else, and just did not get a chance to post.

On Friday was Kenpo X.  Good, solid run through it.  Just under 600 calories burned on that one.  Nutrition was solid until supper lol.

Today was FOY Yoga.  I was a bit tired.  I almost didn’t feel well.  I was REALLY not motivated.  Dang, I was glad I did though.  I instantly felt better after doing it.  And I’ve felt better all day.  My nutrition today has sucked, though, and I won’t even pretend like I was close to where I needed to be on what I ate.

So I won’t review what I ate.

On Wednesday – Friday of this week, I’m doing a Shakeolgoy 3 day cleanse inside of this recovery week.  I’ll be posting more info (again) about the cleanse, it’s objectives, etc.

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Ahh…end of P90X phase 2.  Finished off with Fountain Of Youth Yoga.  Cannot believe this much time has gone by with this round of P90X so far.  Crazy…seems like I had just started and was getting upset at how much strength I had lost.

But now, phase 2 is over, and there are 5 weeks left in this round.

So, it is reassessment time.

Tomorrow, I take measurements:  Full body, body fat, weight.  Weight today is 173.8, a mark of 10 pounds lost so far this round of P90X.  That was after eating my pre-workout snack, so that number may be a bit high.

For phase 3, I am making an adjustment.  My goal with phase 3 is to just blast fat, and blast it as quickly as possible and as much as possible over the 5 weeks.  So instead of focusing on 8-10 reps, I’m going to slightly lower my weight and aim for the 12-15 rep count on all exercises involving my Select Techs.  Push-ups, pull-ups, and other non-weight exercises will still be max reps.

After I take measurements I’ll figure out what my goals are for Phase 3.

Today’s nutrition is barely halfway there since I am writing this early in the day (plan to spend time with family tonight).  With the exception of supper, things are known and looking on track.  I won’t list details here since I have no idea what I’m eating for supper, but going to keep it clean.  Tomorrow is a cheat meal.

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I’m at a bit of a loss today for what to say.  Maybe it’s exhaustion.  Maybe it’s because I don’t want to sound repetitive.  But my P90X workout today was the Fountain Of Youth Yoga, and it was intense!  I won’t reiterate my love for Yoga…if you follow this blog, you’ll see me way that enough.

Nutrition was pretty good.  Not going to list everything today.  Shakeology should be in tomorrow or Friday and I’m REALLY looking forward to that.

I do want to end with this thought, and I’ll probably make an entire blog post out of it later:

Focus leads to discipline.  Discipline will lead to accountability.  Accountability will lead to results.

Brent P90X, The Abs Diet P90X, p90x yoga, The Abs Diet

Ahh, a yoga day.  Love yoga.  P90X Yoga X…long.  Fountain Of Youth?  Perfect amount of time, great stretch, great ab work, and not 92 minutes!  I’m going to do Yoga X again soon.  One of these Wednesdays I’m going to wake up early enough and do Yoga X all the way through.

But I love Fountain of Youth.  It’s a great challenge.  When I did the September Super Saturday with Tony Horton in Dallas, parts of this routine were in there.  That was a fun yoga workout.

Today’s nutrition…identical to yesterday, minus some chips and salsa I had before supper (got off work late, and while the chili was warming up).  Not enough to derail, but enough to where I’ll keep my evening snack down a bit.  So I won’t post the full nutrition plan for today, just know that it’s close enough to the same.

Just a couple of of days left in the first week of phase 2.  The first week of each phase is always the toughest.  My biceps are tight and sore from yesterday.  I’m sure legs will be sore after tomorrow.

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Today for my P90X yoga workout, I decided to do Tony Horton’s Fountain of Youth from his One-on-One series.  Where Yoga X is 90 minutes, this is only 48.  It is to the point Yoga, taking a lot of the moves are from Yoga X with a few different ones.  It hits all the major points:  moving obstacles, abs, stretching, cool down.

And I rather enjoyed it.   Of course, I’ve become one that really has come to like and enjoy yoga.  I’ve figured out the big thing about yoga is helping get rid of soreness.  It works…really, you should try it.

Nutrition today was very good:

Breakfast – Smoothie

Snack #1 – Rest of smoothie

Lunch – Turkey sandwich (low sodium turkey this time)

Snack #2 – 1oz almonds, 1.5oz raisins

Supper – Spaghetti with whole wheat noodles and a salad (romaine lettuce, cucumber, tomato, a bit of low fat cheese, and fat free dressing)

Snack #3 – Low sodium turkey, low fat cheese

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If you noticed I did not blog P90X Day 21.  I took it as a rest day as I was trying to get over this persistent cold.  Its going around strong around here, and doctors have said that with our kids it could last up to 5 weeks off and on.

But today I PRESSED PLAY and brought it!  P90X Yoga X was amazing today!  Yes, there are still a lot of things that I simply cannot do or do well, but I fought through everything that I could do.  My feet felt like they were going to cramp up some in downward dog, so I need to work on that and focus on keeping them flat as possible.

Having pushed through Yoga I felt better today than I have in a while.  I was more relaxed at work, able to focus, and just had a pretty good day.

I’m in what is considered a recovery week, which simply means no resistence training (i.e. no weights).  Tomorrow is my first time doing Core Synergistics (not sure if I spelled that corrrectly).  I’m excited to see a new routine.

Today I easily hit all of my portions with the exception of the protein bar.  If I could ever find one that wasn’t horrible tasting I’d be a lot better off.

See you tomorrow for Day 23!

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P90X day 10 had me on Shoulders and Arms and Ab Ripper X.  I increased the weights I used on a couple of the bicep curls which gave me a bit better workout.

For Ab Ripper, I set a goal of no less than 12 of each rep, aiming for 15.  Only 2 of the exercises did I not make it, but that’s okay.  There’s always Friday.  My goal is by the end to get all 300+ reps in.

Diet was fairly good today, although I’m about to really hone it in….get the calories I’m missing, eat cleaner, and get leaner.  I’m missing a protein bar from my plan, which is something I’m working on finding something that is good (most protein bars taste like crap, to be honest).  I had a suggestion that I’m trying out this weekend.

Shoulders, bi’s, and tri’s is one of my favorite workouts.  Its lengthy (around 60 minutes) but really pushes my upper body, which is an area I want to build strength.

And I found a short-term goal for appearance.  A couple of summers ago my mother-in-law bought me a shirt that was, well, too small.  It was an XL, but this company’s XL’s are about mediums to larges.  I tried it on tonight and almost, ALMOST looked good in it.  So I have a goal to work for:  Look good in that shirt!

Tomorrow morning is Yoga X and then vacation (yes, I’m still going to BRING IT while on vacation).  This to me is the toughest of the DVD’s, and having a better idea of what to expect, I’m going to push myself pretty hard tomorrow to get it right.

My next blog will be from Dallas, Texas….check in tomorrow to find out how badly Yoga X kicked my butt.

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