Insanity: "Pushing Through" Days 7, 8, 9 of 60

Whew!!  First, this weekend blew by.  Second, I feel like I ate somewhat poorly.  Third, I think I worked out and exercised so much that I may still have run a calorie deficit.

I did the AbRipperX routine on Friday morning and had my usual Pizza Friday dinner and a small cup of ice cream...it was my Insanity 'off' day.  Saturday, I did Cardio Power Resistance, did an hour in a Kayak, and did two hours of yardwork.  Ate real well and real clean on Saturday.  Sunday, I did Pure Cardio and another two hours of yardwork.  I did, however, have pizza again for dinner and another small cup of ice cream.  Monday (today), I did AbRipperX, a little basketball in the yard, cleanup for the Memorial Day party, Plyometric Cardio Circuit and 25 minutes on the treadmill.  I ate clean as usual but had a small piece of cake with a scoop of Ice Cream again to celebrate my son's birthday.

No more ice cream for a while but I seriously burned so many calories that there were times I was feint.  I sweat through more articles of clothing than I can count.

So holidays like Memorial Day come with their own challenges.  It can really mess with your discipline.  With me, it severely breaks up my routine.  I will obviously be right back on it tomorrow but it always brings mixed feelings.

I am keeping it very short tonight...just wanted to catch up.

I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend!

Happy Memorial Day!!

Insanity: "Control" Day 6 of 60

My energy this week has been at an all-time high.  It might be the Insanity…it might be the addition of AbRipper and two Muscle Routines from P90X in the AM…it might be the treadmill.  All I know is, I am bouncing off the walls.  My day job, and yes, I actually have a day job (many think with the amount of exercise and blogging that this is ALL I do!), is spent with a colleague that I have gotten close to over the past year.  I don’t think he reads my blog, and I don’t think my work colleagues read it, so I don’t think I am blowing any secrets.

Without going into too much detail, at my high energy frequency this week, he has been laughing at me when I come into the office.  He says I am nuts.  We were talking about exercise and eating right.  Like 65% of all Americans, he has his challenges with his weight.  He is far from alone, in fact, he is one of the vast majority.  In a nutshell, he said, “I know I have to do something, but I’m depressed.”

“I never had a weight problem my entire life.  I was always the one all my friends envied.  I actually modeled when I was thirty-five.  Then, I stopped smoking.  I started taking more vacations.  And here I am.  Now, every morning when I get up in the morning and look in the mirror, it depresses me.  When the job is stressful, I get more depressed.  Everything bothers me.  I’ve never been this big.  I actually have a gut.  A gut.”

This was not someone just making excuses.  This was from the heart.  I really connected and felt his pain.  I will be honest, I know I can help him.  I know what it feels like.  I could have just shook my head and walked away.  We are all very comfortable when people pretend to give you emotion and fake an honest response.  It’s like playacting a dialog.  But when someone is truly letting you inside their emotional wall, for many, the first response is to just shake your head and silently leave them to their pain.  That, however, is not ‘how I roll.’  So I spoke up.

“Listen, it’s all about control.  And you can do this.  Four years ago I was in that same place.  Not only did I see it in my mirror, I saw it in my clothes, in my medical statistics, and in people’s eyes.  It wasn’t just my weight either.  My whole life felt out of control.  My work.  My relationships.  My future.  It all seemed like I was on some rollercoaster going wherever I was taken.”

“Four years ago, when I decided not only to lose the weight but to change my life and keep it off, something else happened.  I took control.  I decided to drive.  It changed me.  But it started with controlling my own health.  So many of us feel out of control because the things we do every day are affected by other people.  Your fitness and health is your first step.  I knew when I was doing it that it was all me.  No one affected it.  It wasn’t like work, where organizational dynamics and professional relationships can keep your projects from succeeding.  I just had to eat right and exercise.  It was MY thing.  I didn’t need anyone to bless or approve this.  I also didn’t need anyone to help me succeed.  I was dependent on just me and me alone.  When I finally looked in the mirror one day and saw what I had done, I knew I could control many other things in my life that I had mistakenly thought controlled me.”

“When I looked in the mirror one year later, it reinforced my belief that my life was driven by me.  I chose the right food.  I chose the right exercise.  The weight remained off and I felt great.  Then I decided to make changes in the way I approached my day job.  I modified my point of view and improved some personal relationships.  I then decided to write a book, and did.  I then decided that my job had become toxic to me (and I was now in a state where I could recognize the symptoms) and I found a new job…in fact, a better job!”

Taking control, I explained to him, gave me the courage and, more importantly, the confidence to change many other aspects of my life.  When you’re depressed and your life seems out of control, the first and best place to regain it is by cleaning your personal house.  There is nothing more rewarding to all other facets of your life than changing your health and fitness.  It starts out physical but evolves to something deeper than that.  Once you conquer that, you feel like you can beat anything.

He truly seemed to embrace what I was saying.  I will continue to be the one pushing the message.  It helped me in so many ways that it is often difficult to list.

Control.  It starts with you as the hub and, when you begin to experience those small successes, it extends to all other aspects of your life.  Very soon, it becomes BIG successes.

The answer to a depressed state is knowing that you can do something to change your situation.  Doing it once and repeating it gives you the confidence.

As we go into the Memorial Day weekend, I need to say two things.  Happy Birthday to my son Nick, who turns 15 on Memorial Day and thanks to all the veterans out there, in particular the ones still serving, who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom and safety.

Maybe one last thing, lots of salad and fresh fruit and vegetables…with the barbequed meat cut up into bites and sprinkled on the salad.  Chew it a lot before you swallow and savor it.  Watch the nutrient shallow carbs like white bread and pasta.  And not too much booze!  Ha-ha.  It weakens the resolve and makes you crave more carbs…like dessert. 

All the best and Happy Memorial Day!

THE WORKOUT

Friday is my ‘break day!’  I love making the break day Friday.

P90X: "Controlling Your Fate" Day 60 of 90

The great thing about P90X is the level of control you get over your physical condition.

Life comes at you.  

'Life' is simply a series of events and interactions that you have to deal with on a daily basis.  How you handle those things, and how well you prepare for them, will ultimately determine your state of mind (from happiness to fear) and the outcome (success or failure).  The best way to ensure that you are happy and successful is to have a game plan on how you are going to control the situations you are faced with, or how to avoid them successfully.

No one likes to avoid all the confrontations we will face in life.  It feels a bit cowardly.  If you go through life never learning how to control certain situations, you are at the mercy of those situations.  Every situation has the ability to get out of hand and go bad.  Some things can go very bad.  Depending on the situation, and the possibility/severity of the bad outcome, you could run the gamut of emotions from nervous, to depressed, to outright fear.  This is the result of feeling like you cannot control the outcome.

On the other end of the scale, if you feel like you can control a situation, depending on the possibility/severity of a bad outcome, you could experience emotions from happy, to strong,  If you are going to experience a bad situation,  a physical confrontation for example, and you are strong physically, maybe you are a big person, or maybe you have a skill at fighting or self defense, then you do not feel much fear about the situation.  Depending on the possible severity of the outcome, you could feel very strong about facing the situation.  If you think your outcome will be victorious because your skill to control is that well developed, then you feel very strong.  Your skills allow you to control the outcome to such a degree that it offsets a lot of the fear tied to it.

All situations in life, be they expected or unexpected, will cause you stress and duress if you are not capable of handling/controlling them.

There are three primary types of control. 

There is physical control.  As mentioned previously, it is the ability to take care of oneself through either peak physical condition or defense.  It could be anything from being physically fit enough that you can handle physically stressful events to being able to defend yourself with brute force. 

There is social or behavioral control.  Maybe you have the ability to control social situations because you have learned how to influence people in positive and negative ways.  Being able to take the temperature of a room emotionally and navigate those situations is a skill.  It is learned over time.  Those who appear to have it naturally were not born with it.  It was simply learned at a younger age than it was for most.

There is intellectual control.  Many outcomes will be determined by how well you prepare intellectually to meet a certain situation.  Think about a crucial test or exam that carries the weight of 50% of your overall grade.  That one exam will determine whether you pass or fail, regardless of the body of work you have done up to that point.  That can be very stressful to think about.  But, if you prepare for that by studying and working, the more confident you feel that it will all be fine.

The times in your life when you feel the most successful will be those times that a difficult event was expected and you came out of it victorious.  Those times will be preceded by a level of preparation that allowed you to control the outcome.  It is in those moments that you realize that your success and the resulting happiness was all due to you and your hard work.

When you fail to do the work and prepare for situations, you feel like you ‘dodged a bullet.’  We’ve all had those situations too.  Something happens we either expected and didn’t prepare for or, worse, something happens unexpectedly and we were not prepared.  If it comes out okay, we were lucky.  When we think about the possibility of that happening again, we are nervous and fearful.

I believe that our happiness and success in life comes from our preparation and readiness for the situations we will face.

As I begin to turn the corner to ‘being old’, the possibility of debilitating illnesses, be they permanent injury, cancer, or simple ‘rust’, can rob me of the Quality of Life that I would ideally like to experience.  P90X has helped me handle the physical events that I feel could be out there facing me.  Physical condition is probably the biggest issue humans face as they get older.  As you age, you begin to realize that you may be as smart as you are ever going to be.  You may continue to learn, but you pretty much ‘are what you are.’  You also have developed social skills that are either working or not.  You can change them late in the game, but it isn’t easy because many have already been exposed to you and expect you to behave in certain ways.

The one thing you can change with effectiveness and result is your physical condition.  That one thing is completely in your hands and is pretty much resistant to what others may think or feel about it.  When you improve that one area of your life, you feel measurably more strong and confident because you are not worried about physically debilitating events.  You also are much better playing the intellectual and behavioral game because the physical worries are an afterthought.

P90X has given me strength in many ways physically, but has also been a tremendous benefit to my ability to focus on and control other areas of my life.

It will do the same for you.