The last time I posted about my workout regimen, I was afraid I might not be able to complete the Insanity workout. Well, I pushed through, and I’m now “certified insane.”

Oh my God! Insanity is hard. It’s not even fun, it’s so hard. The P90X workout was extreme, but Insanity is just brutal. After each P90X workout, I felt good, on an endorphin high. But the Insanity workouts are sheer punishment to be endured; afterward, I was just completely worn out. But there is no denying that it can make you fit, super fit. Both regimens work well for getting real fit, real fast. (If you’re interested in learning about them, go look them up. I’m not selling or representing for the company. I’m just a very satisfied customer.)

See these pics for my results:

The thing that really surprised me the most about this whole process was how much fat I had on my body. I knew I was a bit overweight; I figured I could loose at least 10 pounds, maybe even 15 pounds. But at the end of my first 13-weeks round of P90X (the 1.0 pic above), I had lost 18 pounds of padding. I could tell I had more to loose, but I thought maybe just 4 or 5 more pounds.

After finishing about 8 weeks of a second round of P90X (the 1.5 pic above), I had lost a total of 24 pounds — 6 more beyond the 1.0 round. I was astonished at how much fat I had apparently been carrying around on my frame. I never thought I was 20+ pounds overweight. But still, I could tell I had a little more fat to shed to find my six-pack abs. But I seemed to have hit a plateau in my fitness climb; I went some weeks without loosing any fat weight.

I really, really wanted my six-pack abs. A simple desire to “get into shape” became a hard drive to get ripped; it had become the object of my mid-life crisis. Some men buy a sports car, some men pick up a girlfriend, some men run off to “find myself.” My MLC took the form of wanting a hardbody — a body as good or better than the one I had at half my current age. I wanted to be able to keep up physically with my young sons. I wanted to be able to run, jump, and climb faster, easier, and for longer, (without it costing 6 million dollars).

So in hopes of breaking my plateau with P90X, I started Insanity. Taking on a regimen of straight cardio did, indeed, overcome my plateau. In the 9 weeks of Insanity, I lost another 15 pounds for a total loss of 39 pounds. Look at those pics above, again: the “P90X 1.5” pic is 15 pounds heavier than the “Insanity 1.0” pic. That floors me. When I was at the “P90X 1.5” stage of my effort, I would have thought 15 less pounds would make me just skin and bones.

In the couple of weeks since finishing Insanity, I’ve lost another 2 pounds just because my metabolism is much higher revved than it used to be. Human physiology just amazes me.

I’ve lost 41 pounds of fat. Forty-one pounds! That’s three to four times more than I expected. And I’m not skinny — I’m lean. P90X and Insanity are not “just” weight-loss programs, they’re full body fitness. Hell, half of the P90X regimen is weight training to build muscle mass.

I feel freakin’ fantastic! I don’t want to sit on the sofa and watch TV, anymore. I want to move. I want to run, jump, and climb.

But I feel kind of weird about all this. At my core, I’m a nerd, a gamer geek. Have I turned into a jock? Well, I’m still not particularly interested in sports — watching or playing. I still like to read comic books, play RISK, and watch Star Wars.

I don’t have any urge to throw a ball, but I do enjoy push-ups. I haven’t a clue what the infield fly rule is, but I do know how many carbs I need in a day.

I want to play Dungeons & Dragons, but I don’t want to consume the Mountain Dew and Doritos that stereotypically go with a game. I’ll buy a comic book, but I’ll also flip through a fitness magazine for a couple minutes.

Well, whatever strange culture mutation I’ve become, I kind of like it. I’m having a great mid-life crisis.

Bullgrit

I’m not really on a “diet,” in the old sense — I don’t go hungry — but I am attentive to what I eat nowadays. I always have “good” meals and snacks near at hand, and I eat something every couple of hours. My metabolism is in high gear with all this exercising I’m doing. I’m constantly fueling my system.

My desk drawer and one corner of a shelf in the break room fridge is full of fruits, pretzels, protein bars, and non-fat yogurt. Whenever I have even a tinge of hunger, I can grab any of this stuff and I’m never tempted to visit the candy machine or run over to a fast food restaurant.

I’ve also checked various local restaurant menus online for their nutritional information, so when I do occasionally go out to eat lunch, I know how what the least bad stuff is on the menues. If I’m ever caught hungry while away from home or work, I have a good idea of where and what I can eat out.

I even keep a journal of what I eat and the calories, fat, carbs, and protein I take in with each meal and snack. I don’t have to do this, but it does help me keep tabs on my intake. It’s just a little confirmation each day that I’ve done well.

Yesterday I got hungry after leaving work, (late), and before getting home. I didn’t have a snack with me, so I started looking and thinking around for some place I could get something “not bad.” There’s a Bruegger’s bagel/deli shop nearby, and I knew from their online nutritional info that I could get something “not bad” there.

A Bruegger’s turkey bagel sandwich, (with honey mustard and lettuce), has:

• 440 calories
• 8g fat
• 64g carbs
• 26g protein

Not bad. I try to keep my daily numbers at around 2000 calories and 40 grams of fat. I’ve actually managed to keep my daily fat grams below 30 for a few weeks. That ain’t easy, so I’m fairly proud of this.

Anyway, yesterday: I was standing in the Bruegger’s order line, waiting my turn, and looking at the menu board. I saw the turkey chipotle club sandwich — turkey, bacon, lettuce, chipotle mayonaise. Bacon? My mind put that in the “protein” category. Unfortunately, because I was originally thinking of honey mustard on my sandwich, the “mayonaise” in the list of ingredients didn’t register with me. I read it as “chipotle mustard,” I guess.

I ordered the turkey chipotle club sandwich. It’s a bit bigger than the bagel sandwich, but I was hungry and just shrugged my shoulders. I ate the sandwich in my car and my hunger and taste was satisfied.

Later, when I went to write it in my diet journal, I had to look up this new sandwich on Brueggers.com.

• 800 calories
• 51g fat
• 57g carbs
• 31g protein

Holy shit! 51 grams of fat!? The 800 calories for a turkey sandwich is itself enough of a shock, but the 51 grams of fat is freakin’ astonishing. Fifty-one grams of fat!

It breaks my heart. It really does. I’ve been so good for so long, and been proud of myself for managing my diet so well, and then I do this. I stared at the nutritional info for a minute, just thinking, It was a turkey sandwich. It was just a turkey sandwich.

This is what happens when I go off my known menu. This is what happens when I let myself get hungry: I get mentally sloppy with what I choose to eat.

51 grams of fat in one freakin’ sandwich. A turkey sandwich. Hell, I could have just eaten a big burger or a slice of meat-lover’s pizza. What the hell kind of concentrated fat crap is in that chipotle mayonaise? It was good, but it wasn’t super good. It wasn’t almost-two-days-worth-of-fat-intake good.

Bullgrit

I’m two weeks into my Insanity regimen, and last night’s workout had me really wondering if I can actually make it through all 9 weeks of this thing. The second month, (weeks 6 through 9), takes the whole thing up another level into the “Max” workouts. I’m still in the beginning Insanity workouts.

The freakin’ warm up exercises are hard. I’m panting and sweating after the first 20 minutes, and then, (after the stretch time), the real workout begins. So far I’ve been able to do every exercise without skipping, but I haven’t been able to completely keep up with hot shots in the video class. Sure, many of them take short breaks like me during the work outs, and they’re wiped out like me at the end of the program. But they’re all in their 20s.

I don’t have the high after the workouts like I got after the P90X workouts. I don’t feel “good” after all that work, I feel like I just had my ass kicked.

And I’m not seeing any change in my body yet. Granted, I’m just two weeks done, and I was already leaned down from the P90X work, but something has to start showing soon. It’s hard to keep up this pounding without something visual to show for it.

Insanity is hard. Really hard. I mean, “Oh my God!”, hard. P90X was hard, especially in the beginning weeks. But I never doubted my ability to keep it up. Now, though, I’ve had my first doubts about my ability to keep at it.

With P90X, you can see the level of the regimen in the first couple weeks. If you can get through the first couple weeks, you know you can perform everything through out all 13 weeks. You just have to keep pressing play, every day.

But Insanity cranks it up a level in the sixth week. If you’re struggling in the first four weeks, what’s going to happen in the last four? I haven’t looked at the videos for the second month, yet. I’m kind of scared to. At this point, when I’m struggling through the beginning workouts, should I take a peek at the next level? I don’t know. I don’t want to break my will by seeing something that might overwhelm me. I don’t want to kill my spirit so soon.

I’m going to continue, for now. I’m not going to quit during the beginning stage. Although they totally kick my ass and leave me a worn out puddle of sweat and fatigue, I at least know I can get through these first month routines. But dear God, what will the next phase be like?

Bullgrit

Thirteen weeks of P90X got me here. I was as fit or more than I had ever been in my life. Several more weeks of the regimen got me here. Though I was in the best fitness and shape of my life, I wanted more. I had worked hard enough, for long enough, that I felt I deserved that damn six-pack ab section. I wasn’t satisfied with just “wow, what a transformation” and “better than ever.” I wanted to take my body all the way to “hot damn!”

But I’ve apparently been on a plateau with P90X, for several weeks, now. So I started giving consideration to another Beachbody workout regimen called Insanity. Several aspects of this regimen sell it to me:

• No equipment — no more pulling out and putting away my weights and pull-up bar nearly every night.
• 30-60 minute workouts — quicker than the 60-90 minutes of P90X.
• Sixty days — even faster than P90X.
• “The hardest workout ever put on DVD” — after taking on and beating the P90X challenge, I want to test myself on this, too.

From all I’ve read about this workout set, it’s not really a next level up from P90X, it’s just different — and just as extreme. P90X has a lot of weight training and muscling up; Insanity is all cardio and leaning down. After my rounds of P90X, I’m muscled up as well as I want, (I was never going for the Schwarzenegger look). Now I just want to lean down a little bit more.

Before I started P90X, I never would have thought I would reach 170 pounds and think, “I need to loose another couple pounds.”

So, I ordered and received my set of Insanity DVDs. I went through the first fit test and found the effort exhilerating. Here’s a Youtube video of the fit test exercises, (this is not me; this is Brad Gibala —  http://workoutjourney.com/):

The info in the Insanity set doesn’t give a goal for the fit test, but here’s what I “scored”:

Number of reps in 60 seconds, for each exercise

• Switch Kicks: 58 (two kicks = one rep)
• Power Jacks: 40
• Power Knees: 72
• Power Jumps: 25
• Globe Jumps: 7 (series of four jumps = one rep)
• Suicide Jumps: 9
• Push-up Jacks: 20
• Low Plank Oblique: 28 (two knee ups = one rep)

Most of those exercises I’ve never seen, much less performed. That beginning test was last Sunday. I’ve now completed my first week of Insanity, and I can say, “Wow! Holy &%^#^*&!” The workouts are incredible. Harder than P90X? I’d say, “Yes, but not because the individual exercises are harder.” The main difference is the intensity and pacing.

I couldn’t conceive of a more intense or faster paced workout than P90X before I started Insanity. But DAMN! Even the cast in the Insanity videos have to stop from time to time and take a breather in the middle of some exercises. It actually helps me get through when I take a break, hands on my knees, sweat dripping from my chin, lungs pumping like bellows, to look at the screen and see that a couple of the twelve or so cast members are also taking a pause. After a few seconds, I get back into the workout, so do the resting cast members — but then another one or two break down for a few seconds.

Whatever my results after this 60-day regimen of Insanity, I’ll be done with the daily workouts. Whether I get that set of washboard abs or not, I’ll just drop back to, and keep up, a good, solid maintenance workout schedule — 3 days a week. This is my promise to myself and my family. If I can’t get that ultra lean, totally ripped body with all this, then it’s just not going to happen for me, now, over 40 years old. I can accept that, but only after I’ve tried to get it.

Bullgrit