P90X Challenge - Day 7

I've made it through a whole week of doing the P90X! I'm not quite done yet - I've still got my KenpoX video to do today, but other than that I've done all the workouts and I've actually survived. Barely. I swear, I was so sore yesterday by the end of the day. I feel a lot better today. I actually rode my bicycle this morning, and that's my next phase of my challenge. In addition to all this yoga and exercise, to ride my bicycle around the neighborhood instead of the car or the scooter. That means that soon, very soon, I am going to brave the big hard world out there and ride my bike up to Whole Foods to go grocery shopping.

I've wanted to do that for the 2 years I've lived here, but there have been 2 things stopping me: once you cross the pedestrian bridge over the river, you've got 2 big obstacles when you're a scaredey-cat girl like me, and that's the traffic on Lamar and the HILL you have to climb. In traffic. There is a sidewalk, but it's not a wide one, and that makes me nervous, too. So I'm going to have to walk my bike up the hill, which increases the overall walking time of the trip, but I suppose in time it will get easier. I'd love to be at least a little more like DurianRider and say "this is my car" and point to my bicycle with a trailer hitched on back. In time, in time.

I had some weird cheats yesterday, speaking of DurianRider. He'd never cheat. I wonder what his transition process was like? He seems like the kind of extremist who can go 100% no problems. And I'm not saying "he's an extremist" in a negative way, I totally admire the dude, I think he's incredible - he just seems to have that hard-core personality type that doesn't need socialization and external affirmation and comforts, and who can look at his emotional struggles and just say, "eff it, I don't give a f_-_" and man, there just aren't a whole lot of people out there like that. Most of us need it a little easier, a little softer. So I'm sure that DurianRider would look at my cheats yesterday and he'd be like, "what the f_-_ did you do that for? that's not FOOD. That's garbage and not fit for human consumption!" But it did taste good. lol.

So I'm still doing tiny cheats, but not for long.

Day 6 update

I'm really tired. Like, mega, mega tired. It's the 2nd day of my cycle, which may have something to do with it. It's been an intense week. I'm choosing to make today my rest day instead of tomorrow. I thought I'd have way more energy this weekend, and I just don't. I did good to take my walk. I'd like to get to bed early and get up nice and early every day and get more early morning time in; that's more productive for me.

I allowed myself some food "cheats" today. I don't really know why, I just did, and that hasn't helped anything. I feel better when I keep it clean.

P90X Challenge Day 6

I'm wrapping up this first week of the P90X - 811 challenge, and I feel GREAT. I really do. I'm still sore, but nowhere near as incapacitated as I was the first few days. Yesterday I did a power yoga class in addition to doing the Legs and Back vid for the first time - 2 new things, both fairly leg-intense, both about an hour of fairly leg-intense work - and then attempted to walk about 2 miles to go to an outdoor concert. Ummmm... Nuh-uh. My legs turned to jelly. I felt like I was walking through water. I felt like I was riding a bicycle, without the bicycle. It was weird. I needed to go home, be boring, and not move my legs for awhile.

So what I'm doing now with my P90X challenge is that I'm doing yoga every day, not just on the yoga days or the rest days. I'm doing this for a few reasons. 1) because doing yoga is what I do, or at least it has been, and the reason I'm doing the P90X is to help improve my yoga practice. So it's like an athlete doing strength work. I want to be an athlete - a yoga athlete. 2) my muscles naturally go tight, and so by doing extra flexibility work, I'm hoping to counteract any shortening and tightening of the muscles. 3) Tony talks about "X-ing it up" in the videos, so to me, that means you keep doing the rest of your physical life! You don't just stop because of the P90X, you keep going. So if you're a runner, keep running. If you're a dancer, keep dancing. In order to be able to do the P90X anyway, you've got to already be in pretty good shape, so keep going. Keep it up.

What I'm noticing now, after the initial deep soreness and tightness is wearing off - big improvements already. I can squat deeper, lunge deeper. I'm moving more into my range of motion. I think my recovery time is speeding up - I don't feel super sore this morning at all. And I feel like my flexibility is improving.

And! Saturday morning is weigh-in time! Woo-hoo!

Last week (pre-P90X, still eating cooked): weight 120.5, bf 25.5%
3.20 (Day 6 P90x-811 Challenge): weight 117.8, bf 23.5%

2.7 pounds lost!!! bf dropped 2 whole % points!

When I was setting up my scale, I couldn't figure out what one of the little icons meant, so I just set it. Got on, weighed myself, and it came up with 14% bodyfat! holy moly! I thought my scale was defective, and then I realized that my scale thought I was a Man, baby!

P90X Challenge Day 5

Yesterday was Day 4, and it was an "off" day, sort of. The only workout I had to do was yoga, so that was just normal! And fun. I put together my own practice and did it at home. I thought I would go to a studio, but I wanted to try out what I had composed, and I liked it very much.

This morning, I am running out the door to hit a Sunstone class - I want to try their 90 minute Earth class, and this is the only only only time! rats!

P90X Challenge Day 3

To put it mildly - I am sore. Like, OMG am I sore!

So yesterday I did the Plyometrics video, and the Plyometrics video did me! I can see how it will be fun in the end, but it's tough - lots of jumping, leaping, hopping and lunging. And it completely destroyed any ego that I might have around the ability of Bikram yoga to get someone into peak fitness. Forget about it. Bikram yoga is an excellent therapeutic and healing yoga, and if someone is far away from baseline fit, it will do wonders for them. If someone is dealing with injury, it's amazing stuff. But I cannot pretend anymore that it will do for anybody the same thing that this P90X stuff has the ability to do. I'm thankful I've been doing yoga for years - I have good flexibility, good range of motion, good cardio endurance - but ZERO upper body strength, and almost no ability to actually move my legs. I can hold my legs still, but I cannot move them.

So - today I am going to yoga - checking out Sunstone Yoga. I'm not crazy about the idea - their website is very slick and shiny, and franchise yoga is uninteresting to me. And to an outsider, it's confusing. Which is fine, outsiders don't need to be able to "get it." But it's a turn-off. I'm glad they are doing well! I'm just not convinced that this will be the yoga for me.

811 - I love it. Yesterday was such a good day. And I am HUNGRY. It's amazing. Yesterday I ate:

Green smoothie with 3 bananas and spinach (about 4 cups)
3 large mangoes
an entire large personal sized watermelon
a huge salad made with an entire head of romaine, a cucumber, 1/4 bell pepper, and a mountain of sunflower sprouts.

That might not read like much, but the watermelon blended up to just over a half-gallon of watermelon juithie. And that's a LOT. A lot of liquid. And I drank the whole thing. Waking up this morning, I'm about to go do yoga, so no food yet, but I'm hungry waking up and that's unusual for me. I normally don't want anything until 11-ish.

Today I'm going to do some research on Doug Graham's site about recovery, because I've heard claims from him that proper diet can reduce muscle recovery time down to 22 hours. I'd like to know more about that.

P90X Challenge Day 2

Ooo-fa I am sore today! Seriously! I haven't lifted weights like that in awhile, even though I didn't go full-on hard and heavy, I did what I could and now my body is sore sore sore! Can't wait to get out on my walk in the sunshine and work it out.

I also stuck with my 80-10-10 eating yesterday! It was so much easier with a structure around it. Why would I want to jeopardize my first day of working out by not honoring it with my diet? Besides, all I wanted was my good, clean food. I had a huge amount of watermelon, followed by 2 big mangoes and 2 bananas, and then a big salad for dinner with my amazing lemon tahini dressing. I was at a party last night, working as a model/actor/interactive entertainment at a multi-media/interactive convention. Sort of. It was a weird combination of vendors and performers and visitors. Anyway. We were at an "events center" and I knew that there would be no food for me, so I made sure to pack my own. My friends were jealous that I had good food and they had lousy event center options.

On schedule today is: Plyometrics! Watermelon! Mangoes! Sunshine!

SUNSHINE!!!

I'm so happy. After what feels like weeks and weeks (in all, about 10 days or so) of gloomy, cloudy weather, today the sun is UP. It was up before I was! Bright and glorious, a gorgeous day ahead - what could be a better way for starting out my amazing new routine?

I set my alarm to get up very early. I wanted to. But last night I was up and wired until after 1am, which is incredibly late for me, and 6am just wasn't happening today. But now it's a beautiful day, and as soon as I finish with this, I am out the door and in the park for my walk, then come home, do the P90X first routine (Chest and Back!) and then feast on watermelon.

I'm nervous about the Chest and Back. Why? Because it's an entire hour of workout doing the 2 things that I, as a GIRL have the hardest time with - pullups and pushups. Seriously. But watching the video, there's this girl who is about my size, only leaner, and she's cranking them out. Pushups on her toes, and pullups without assistance. Sometimes she uses a chair to assist the pullups, which I'll be doing as well, of course, but still. If there was anything in the world that could indicate progress in my body, it would be an eventual ability to do even one unassisted pullup and even one full pushup on my toes.

The fun thing is that now I have friends doing this too! My friend Q is already starting it with her husband, and my friend H is going to join in from across the pond. This is pretty cool.