I really enjoyed Plyocide today. Worked up a great sweat. Not much more to say.

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My TUY Cardio workout was tough. I thought that I was going to have to wring out my matt after the workout. It was one of those times that the mat got so sweaty and slippery that I had to use my awesome Yogitoes towel. I love that thing.

My nutrition is still right on track. I actually sat and watched my family eat lemon meringue pie for dessert and I did not have any. It did not phase me at all. I didn’t want any. I celebrated Fat Tuesday with fresh strawberries and a bit of whipped cream.

I can eat clean with no effort for months during the Winter. And then Summer comes and knocks me off track. How do I avoid this? I have fallen into this cycle for years now.

I guess I’ll just take it one day at a time.

Today marks my first 7 days straight of Yoga. Now let’s see if I can keep it going for another 101 days. The Ultimate Yogi program is 108 days of yoga.

Today was a welcomed rest. The P90X2 Recovery and Mobility was very restorative. I have only been using the foam roller for a couple days but I am already feeling the benefits. Muscles are starting to loosen.

And the TUY Mountain Pose series was nice too. Very relaxing. A nice finish to the week.

I am tracking my nutrition right now and it is a struggle for me to hit 1800 to 2000 a day. I am feeling great though.

If you noticed in past posts, I don’t like to use the word diet. It has connotations of calorie restriction, which I am definitely NOT doing. I concentrate on eating clean. Meaning, whole, natural, unprocessed foods that do not contain added sugar or salt. When I eat clean like this I actually have to work to get enough calories!

That’s it for this post. Until tomorrow… Bring it!

Well, once again I could not get up in time to do my morning workout. But today is P90X2 - X2 Yoga so I decided to skip TUY Detox Yoga and just do the X2 Yoga after work.

It was pretty good. I liked the pace. It kept my interest and the one hour flew by. I was not dripping with sweat when done but I did feel like I had a nice well rounded Yoga workout when done.

After my workout I went out and bought a foam roller. It is used pretty extensively in P90X2 and it looked like something that would provide me with a lot of relief. I tried it when I got home and WOW. I have some spots that definitely need some work.

My nutrition is right on track. I am feeling great.

Bring it!

I was up in the middle of the night last night with a bad cough and did not sleep well enough to get up in time for my morning P90X2 workout. So, I did my workouts back to back when I was done working for the day.

These workouts fit very well back to back. The TUY Yin Yoga workout is an “easy” practice where you hold deep stretches for 3 to 5 minutes. And after P90X2 Total Body I was ready for some deep stretching.

I am still letting the P90X2 workouts grow on me. Many of the balance moves feel very awkward. I understand that Tony is getting us to engage our core and other muscles while working the primary muscle, but wow is it awkward. I will go with the flow and trust Tony and let the results speak for themselves.

I have been doing great with my nutrition. No alcohol this week, no cigars, no sugar and no processed foods. I am tracking everything I eat. I feel better already.

During my post workout shower (where I do some of my best thinking) I was noticing how good I feel and that I don’t get the 2:00 sleepy time feeling in the afternoon. I know that when I eat good I feel better and have more energy. I have made this observation numerous times in my life. But for some reason I let myself slip into bad habits over and over again. These things creep up on you. Like that saying, “how do you boil a frog? Very slowly.” These bad habits, and the way they make you feel, happen so slowly that you don’t notice. Until it’s too late.

In your life and in your workouts… Bring it!

And still going strong! I’m feeling VERY good lately and I contribute 90% of that to my nutrition and 10% to exercise. But that’s just my wild guess. I have known this for a long time but so much of fitness is diet/nutrition. I have laser like focus on my diet right now and it’s really paying off. I feel so much better and I am losing body fat.

I read a great blog post by Tony Horton (P90X guy) the other night and I think that he is on to something. He wrote about how good his life is when he is eating right and exercising. When staying on track good things seem to happen. And not just good things related to fitness. Your whole life reaps the benefits. It’s a great read. Check it out here.

That’s all for now. I need to shovel some snow!

Till next time… Bring it!!

Yep, I’ve been a slacker! Two weeks ago was my Phase II/Phase III Recovery week. I worked out on one day that week due to travel. Then my first week back home (last week) I was all out of whack and took the whole damn week off. Ugh, why do I do this to myself? To make matters worse, I have been eating like crap.

But… I’m back on track now. Just started Phase III and I am COMITTED to eating right and keeping up with my workouts. I want to see just how much weight/body fat I can lose in the next 60 days.

However, I see one potential stumbling block on the horizon. Super Bowl Sunday. We are having some people over and I just know that I will eat and drink too much that day. I will try to lessen the damage by maintaining a 500+ calorie deficit this week and by eating very little the morning of the party.

The other thing that has me really jazzed is this application that I have been using with my new phone. The phone is a Motorolla Droid and the application is the Calorie Counter for the Fat Secret website. It makes keeping track of what I eat very easy. I love being able to scan the barcode on labels and have it automatically lookup the nutritional information. Too Cool!

Here’s my Fat Secret Profile in case you want to track me.

I’m pretty sore today, but I have done P90X enough times to know what to expect. The first week is always Hell. Lot’s of DOMS. And chopping wood yesterday probably did not help.
I held strong with my diet today. Still eating clean.
Mike French said something pretty cool to me on Twitter today. He wrote “Doug, it takes a bit of time. Make your nutrition as important as your workouts and the results happen FAST!” Awesome words!
So that’s what I am going to do. REALLY concentrate on nutrition. Make it as important as my workouts. And make them both VERY important. I’ve been in shape and I’ve been out of shape. I like being in shape sooooo much better.
So who’s with me? Let’s make nutrition AND our workouts close to the top of the priority list!
Bring it!!

We I have managed to completely lose all of my hard earned fitness and gained a bunch of weight as well. I’ll blame it on traveling for business. My derailment started sometime around last May. I was traveling a lot, eating junk, drinking too many beers, and not exercising regularly. I gained over 20 pounds and look and feel like crap.
I have a slew of minor medical aliments all related to diet and fitness. It's time to get my life back!
I started P90X again and am eating clean.
So here it is, another round of P90X… Let’s call it a Comeback!

About two weeks! Two weeks is what it seems to take to go from athlete to couch potato. I read that above quote years ago and although it is not exactly accurate it sure does hold true for me throughout the years. I find that if I take two weeks off that I have lost quite a bit of fitness. Luckily I can get back to where I was a lot quicker than a couch potato can.
So the past two weeks I have been traveling and completely blew my diet and did not stick to my exercise routine. I feel terrible. Both mentally and physically. My gut is bloated, my face is bloated, and I gained at least 15 pounds. I’m ready for a change.
I started my new P90X/P90X + hybrid workout today. I did not get up in time for a morning workout (was I trying to sabotage my workout?) so I did it after work. Today’s workout was P90X Plus Total Body. I felt like I was going to vomit when done. I lost a few reps on most exercises, my fat belly got in my way in some exercises, I felt like crap. I so want to get back to where I was just 2 short months ago. You see, for the past 2 months I have been away from home for a total of 4 weeks. And for me that means eating like crap and not exercising for what adds up to one full month.
It’s time for a change.
And I stumbled on a great Mark Briggs post about eating, I think I’ll try some of his ideas.
Wish me luck…
Till next time… Bring It!!

Back in the saddle again.. YES! Wow it is always great to get back into the real workouts after recovery week. I felt great and very strong during today’s Chest, Shoulders, Tris and ABX workout. One thing that I’ll have to watch is that I heard a little crunching sound in my right shoulder while I was doing (attempting) one armed push-ups. No pain, just strange noises. It scared me a bit but since there was no associated pain I think I’ll be OK.

I did great with my diet today and because of that I feel great too. And I got in a second workout today, a 4.8 mile run on the treadmill and now have a nice big calorie deficit going. If I keep this deficit going for 7 days I can be back in a deficit for the month. Right now I am 10,000 on the plus side for the month. Not good!

Till next time… Eat Clean and Bring It!!

This week was a recovery week for me and I did some recovery and some sabotage. I was traveling this past week and I have been finding it VERY hard to stay motivated while on the road lately. Despite my best intentions I eat terribly and don’t hit all the workouts with the commitment that I should. I will be traveling a bit more in the near future and I must commit to eating clean while on the road. That, and I MUST do better at getting the workouts in.

I did workout most days of this recovery week and some days I even did double workouts by getting in a treadmill run in during the evening but I was not as perfect as I wanted to be.

I’m tracking my calories lately and I am way over my daily allowance for many days in a row now. I must do better.

So for the next two weeks, before traveling again, I will really concentrate on double workouts, eating clean and burning what I eat.

I had a great Beachbody experience tonight. As I was catching up on email tonight I saw a Tweet come in from Perry Tinsley of the very inspirational Power Blast Podcast. The Tweet said “Join me in 45 minutes 6:00 CST for an online BB presentation!” so I clicked on the link and was treated to a very motivating conversation and presentation from Perry himself. It was pretty cool to talk to him directly as I have great respect for him and his dedication to his body, his diet, his podcasts and his Beachbody business. We chatted a bit and he went through a new Beachbody coaching presentation that he put together with his team. I am still on the fence about becoming a Beachbody coach but after that presentation I am leaning a bit closer to taking the plunge. It was great to talk with him and if you ever get a chance you should check it out. He does these once a week so follow Perry on Twitter at http://twitter.com/perrytinsley.

So till next time… Bring It!

Bad day all around today. First off, I’m sick. Like VERY sick. Like groggy, dry hacky cough, runny nose sick. I woke up at 3 am and could not get back to sleep because I was sooo hungry and felt so crappy. I have been famished all day. I can’t get enough food. And I made some bad food choices today. That seems to happen when I am sick.

So I skipped working out today and made today my rest day. I will do KenpoX tomorrow.

One more negative thing that happened today was that up until yesterday I was only at a 300 calories deficit for the week/month. I was trying to eat 500 calories a day less than what I burn in a day. And because I did not workout today and I ate a ton of food, some of it junk, I am 1443 calories over what I burned for the week. All that hard work for naught. And to further depress me I track a running total of where I should be if I actually did eat 500 fewer calories than I burn in a day and today I should be at –3500 for the month. I’m actually 1443 on the plus side so I’d need to make up (burn or not eat) 4943 calories to be back on track.

To turn this into a positive I’ll think about it this way.

1. This is EXACTLY why I needed to start tracking my calories. Without tracking I would have no idea where I stood and would just be wondering why I am at a plateau

2. I created an Excel spreadsheet to better track my calories eaten vs burned and now I will have an easier time figuring out where I stand. So all in all I am in a better place right now.

So now I know where I stand.

Until next time… Bring It!!

Day 14 was a scheduled rest day but I knew that I would be eating and drinking some high calorie/fat stuff at a Super Bowl party that evening so I decided to workout. Twice. I started with shoveling show and then ran 4.6 miles.

And then I totally went overboard with food and drink. I need to learn to splurge without getting totally out of control. Like did I really need a brownie AND a piece of chocolate cake both with ice-cream? I would have been fine with one scoop of ice-cream and a fork full of each of the other deserts. In the past I would have felt a little bummed because I knew that a splurge like that will set me back a bit but now that I have been tracking calories and see what damage I did on that splurge I think I’ll have a new outlook.

To make up for last night and get back into a calorie balance or deficit I now I have to limit myself to 2000 calories for the next two days and shave 200 calories off of the 3rd. Sheesh. I get it now! And that’s on top of my two daily workouts!

Today is Day 15 and I woke up on time (despite only getting 6 hours of sleep) and felt great. I think that all of the sugar and carbs I had last night gave me some energy in some way. Probably filled my glycogen stores. I had a ton of energy this morning and felt very strong, and added a few reps to many of the moves. It was not worth the extra calories but I sure did feel good this AM.

Well, gotta run, literally, and get my second workout of the day in.

Till next time… Eat Clean, burn what you eat, and Bring It!!

Today was a KenpoX day for me and I love that workout so it flew by pretty quick. My glutes are hurtin pretty bad from Friday’s Legs and Back workout but I was still able to “Bring It” during today’s workout. I still may do a second workout today but have not made up my mind.

I have started to do something new. Even though my Clean Eating manifesto states that I will not count calories I have started to count calories. I did my Clean Eating for 3 rounds now (90 days) and I am going to deviate just a little by counting calories. I hit a plateu and was wondering if I was getting enough calories per day, or maybe even too many. So I created a free account at Spark People and started tracking my calories. I tried quite a few online calorie trackers and found Spark people to be very intuitive for me and easy to add and modify foods. So I found out that I am getting enough calories. And with my occasional splurges I may be getting to many. So I have started tracking them just to get a better idea of where I stand. I am trying to get my body fat to a pretty low level and have learned 2 things so far. Number one, it can not be done by exercise alone. And two, it can not be done just by exercising and eating clean. I have always know this, and quoted it often, but now I am starting to really realize how true it is. And by “it” I am talking about this… In order to lose weight you must burn more calories than you take in. That’s it. Bottom line. It’s that simple. So that’s my next step. I want to ensure that I am burning more than I take in.

And if that does not get the job done I’ll begin watching my ratio between carbs, proteins and fats.

If you want to check out my Spark People  “Spark Page” here it is… http://my.sparkpeople.com/Dugrhill

Till next time… Eat Clean, burn what you eat, and BRING IT!!!

Happy P90X Birthday to me!! Today marks one year of doing P90X/P90X Plus. It actually does not surprise me that I have made it a full year. When I started I had no intention of doing this for just 90 days. I was ready for a life changing and life-long program. And wow did I find it in P90X! I can honestly say that I feel better than I have at any other time in my life. And I’m hoping that it will only get better.

I just finished up my second workout of the day and I feel great. Once again I had a terrible time getting out of bed this morning and because of this I only had time for one hour of YogaX. I skipped my least favorite parts of this DVD. But it was still a tough workout. And as a matter of fact I almost quit 15 minutes into it. I was just so sluggish this morning. But I stuck with it and made it through an hour.

I can’t wait until next week because I’m hoping that I’ll be over the DOMS by then. I’m just so sore everyday.

My second workout of the day was a 4 mile run on the treadmill and it felt great.

Till next time.. Eat Clean and Bring It!

I was a bad, bad boy. Week two of this round was a total wash and I am going to repeat it. I ate very poorly over the past 7 days, not my usual Clean Eating. I did run 4 out of the past 7 days bust missed 5 out of 6 P90X workouts. I could come up with excuses such as “I was traveling and the hotel gym was lousy” or “I was away on business and found it hard to find time to workout” but in the end those are just lame excuses.

The one high point of last week was that I was able to run outside on Thursday of last week. I was in Jacksonville, FL and on the last day it was warm enough for a nice run outside. I ran a bit over 4 miles and it felt terrific! It has been months since I had been able to run outside.

So that’s the re-cap of last week. Too much drink and bad food and not enough exercise. But I am back on track today and starting another 30 days of Clean Eating.

So this week will be a repeat of P90X week 2 and then I will press on.

Today’s workout was great! I did Chest, Back and ABX after work. I always have a bit of extra energy when I workout in the afternoon. It’s just too dangerous to leave the workouts until after work, things come up and get in the way too often.

Till next time… Eat Clean and Bring It!!

Day 5 was Legs/Back and Ab RipperX (ABX) and I had forgotten what a killer workout Legs and Back was. I got a late start and was unable to squeeze in ABX in the morning so I did it after work and then did 5 miles on the treadmill. After 30 minutes of snow shoveling of course. Shoveling is getting to be a daily routine. I even consider it exercise and have been logging it as such ever since last year.

Day 6 was KenpoX. Man was I sore today. I could barely get out of bed because my legs and glutes were hurtin from the Day 5 Legs and Back routine. I managed to get through KenpoX just fine and decided that it and the 30 minutes of shoveling that I did today were enough of a workout.

I’m still doing great with eating clean and I’m on day 17 of my 3rd 30 day rotation. (in other words 77 days so far)

Till next time… Bring It!!

Well, that’s a wrap. Ninety days of P90X Plus under my belt. I really enjoyed P90X plus, it helped me lean out quite a bit and it was a great change of pace from good ole P90X. I really slacked off quite a bit in the last 5 days and missed a couple scheduled workouts, and did not stick to my Clean Eating very well in these past 5 days either. I blame it on traveling. I REALLY find it hard to stick to my diet when traveling. I can usually stick to my workouts pretty well but the diet is tough when traveling. Unfortunately I have some more traveling coming soon.

I am due to post some pictures soon, I guess that I’ve just been too lazy to take them and then post them. I guess I’m also a bit frustrated because I was on such an awesome role before I left on vacation. I don’t regret vacation because it was awesome as well, but because of vacation and then business travel I lost a bit of ground.

But, not to fear! I am excited about starting a new round of P90X tomorrow. I spent some time today printing out all of my workout and food tracker worksheets for this round and am psyched about starting it.

My goal for this round is to put on some bulk while leaning out a bit more. This is no easy task as many people say that those two things are contradictory. But I will try my best and go as heavy as possible with the weights while Eating Clean as much as possible.

So that’s it for this chapter of P90X Plus. Tomorrow will be P90X Round 4 Day 1.

Till next time… Bring It!!

Day 86 - I was scheduled for PlyoX today but the hotel that I am staying in does not have a workout room that is very accommodating for Plyo. Too small and too crowded. So insead I elected to do 4 miles on the treadmill. Later in the afternoon I did another 4 miles on the treadmill as a second workout. 

Day 87 - Today's workout was Total Body Plus. I started out with a 10 minute treadmill run as a warm-up. Then I attempted to do as much of the workout as possible but ran into trouble because the workout room did not have a pull-up bar and was too crowded to do the workout. So after doing some curls and presses I went back up to my room and finished the workout the best I could. It was a pretty light workout but a workout non-the-less. 

I hope to get a run in after our classes this evening as my second workout of the day. I have been eating pretty clean this trip and am happy about that and that I've been getting in two workouts a day. One thing that I'm not too happy about is not logging my workouts into the WOWY gym this week. The timing has just not worked out.

Till next time... Bring it!

Ugh. My first day back in the Midwest and I feel like I’m coming down with a cold. I have felt like crap and have been tired all day. I planned on doing yesterday’s missed Kenpo Cardio but did not feel up to it so I just ran a little over 3 miles on the treadmill.

I’m traveling again tomorrow so I hope that I feel better in the morning. I must try to stick to my clean eating better this week, I have not been eating very clean the past 5 days.

Till next time… bring It!