Distractions and Struggles...

Feels like I've been avoiding posting.  Hell it's nearly been a month.  I was actually supposed to be done with my round 2 of P90X last week...  I'm not.  My train hit a bit of a derailment.  At the time a couple weeks ago, it felt huge.  I was getting upset with myself and getting sort of discouraged.  Then I'd sit and think about it a bit and realize it wasn't all that bad.  I ran into a series of distractions.

First and biggest:  Moving

We got a new place and moving was a bit of a pain.  Moving's always a pain.  Especially when you have routines.  It disrupts the shit out of routines.  We actually did a fairly good job of moving everything.  We got all the big stuff done in one move, and pre-empted things by moving a lot of little stuff before hand.  It made for a somewhat easier transition that we've dealt with in the past.  The big issue was all the little things I needed for P90X.  I kinda let laziness set in.  I didn't really "feel" like going all the way over to the other place just to pick up my pull up bar, or my chair.  Things like that.

Then Dead Space 3 came out...

So between the move and my friend hounding me to co-op through Dead Space 3, I let a week slip past.  Not doing a single P90X routine.  It was bad.  And let's be honest, I'm not blaming my friend's peer pressure for me not doing the work.  I could've just as easily told him to chill.  In fact I did, because I had a bunch of other crap I needed to work on too.  There was just a lot going on.  By the following week's weigh in, I was worrying that I'd somehow magically put on all the weight I lost back.  In one week.  You start going nuts about these sort of things.  There's certainly a very thin line between healthy and unhealthy obsession with weight when you're working on it that's for sure.  The results were I largely stayed the same.  I lost like maybe 1 pound and I was friggin' ecstatic.

Then Aliens: Colonial Marines came out...

Now, I AM gonna blame my friend for this one.  He basically pressured a group of us to drop down and preorder this thing and we were all ready to go at midnight sharp on release night.  Unfortunately(thankfully) the game turned out to be complete and utter shit, so it was short lived.  Back to the P90X!!

I had a really sporadic final resistance week of P90X and I was feeling kinda bummed about it, but at least I was starting to get back into action and that's what mattered. Last week, I'd stayed about the same in weight.  Maybe another .4lb loss.  Still happy I was maintaining.  This week was my first actual gain.  I came in nearly 2lbs up over my prior week's weigh in.  You would've thought by the way I was feeling about that week of inactivity that I would've just been devastated.  Nope.  Not one bit.   I guess with every weigh in week, I was more relieved that I hadn't somehow magically jumped 10-15lbs.

I think it may have been because either tues or wed (my weigh in day) I stumbled upon this chart:

I feel like at that moment, everything sort of fell into perspective.  I definitely feel like I'm in the Endomorph body type.  It figures it's the one that has to work the hardest, but whatever, it's just a matter of perspective.  I guess it just means that I actually AM more badass when I look more badass because I have to put in the work for it.  Ok, I can live with that.  So when I weighed in on wed, it didn't feel bad at all.

I started my final rest week late.  Like Tuesday, and I'm still happy about how much I've improved.  The new place affords a bit more space for me to work out so now I can actually do ALL the moves for every routine.  I'd been limited with some of the moves in Yoga X, and in Core Synergistics simply because I didn't have enough space.  I was basically doing all my workouts, hell, all my living in one room.   This final week, I'm just concentrating on getting it done no matter what.  If I have to miss a day, I'll make it up the next day.  If I have to stop early, I'll resume and finish later if I can, or just do the routine over the next day.

I also still need to decide what is coming next after round 2.  I've got a crew signed up for the Seattle to Portland Classic this year.  There's going to be 4 of us in total and we're all rocking the TRON suits!  It's gonna be dope!  I'm most proud of my wife Zulema, and friend Leah for jumping in with me and Joel this time around!

I finally got back on the bike Sunday and did a quick run around the river.  I hadn't actually been on a bike since some time in October or November.  It was cold, and a bit slow at first, but once I got the rust knocked off, the speed picked up a little.  It's amazing how tuned P90X made me.  15 miles in just over an hour and didn't even feel winded.  It actually just felt like I was warmed up and ready for a ride haha (just kiddng, I totally got winded once or twice :-P)

So there's definite bike training that has to start soon.  I'm eager to get out there and get going.  That's definitely something that I can get more people involved in and makes it a lot more motivating for me to keep up.  Since, it seems I'm this Endomorph body type, it might be a good idea to do bike rides every day in addition to P90X.  So a round 3 might be happening.  I'm still not to the point of doing pull ups without a chair so there's room for improvement.

Juice Fast 2013: The End...

I'm calling the Juice only today.  I've felt pretty great for 31 days of juicing, but I'm worrying a bit about not getting enough full protein in for the P90X stuff.  Juice fasting is great when you're not doing a lot of heavy impact activity.  Basically, you need to be walking, jogging, or bike riding and you're golden.  You'll burn calories, fat, and you'll end up burning up some muscle tissue.  It's just the name of the game.  It's generally not recommended to do any sort of heavy resistance training while on a juice fast.  Your body is just simply burning through too many calories, and if you're not compensating, well, it can't be too good for you.

I started out pretty strong.  I was adding spirulina and wheatgrass which I think was helping provide complete protein and giving my muscles what they needed, but as the month progressed, I started getting that stuff less and less.  While I was improving in some areas, I was falling short in others.  For instance, I could do 20 Incline pushups monday during Chest & Back... That's the most I've ever done in one set, but I couldn't do 30 standard pushups which is something I was totally able to do before I started the fast.  I'm not quite sure why that difference occurred but it has and I sort of have to take that into account.

I'm basically in my last real week of P90X resistance, then I'll be on to my final rest week the week after next.  I then have to decide where I'm going from there.  Am I going to try my hand at a round 3?  Am I going to go for P90X+?  I have Rev Abs now, should I give that a go for 90 days?  My focus is on trying to see abs at the moment, that's part of the reason why I did the fast this time around anyway.

So, moving forward, I'm going for a modified juice fast where I'm juicing mostly.  I plan on doing basically one meal a day where I can get in some complete protein combinations and basically incorporate some nuts, beans, and seeds.  I'm keeping it plant based for the most part and this should hopefully yield some pretty cool results.  I figure I'll keep this going for the month of February, and if successful, I may continue through March.