I posted a while ago that I was embarking on the P90X lean journey in order to get fitter for Kota Kinabalu. Well, I’m now into week 3, ‘tho mind you, I am not following it religiously - how can someone with any life at all follow an exercise program that calls for you to manage an hour to an hour and a half of exercise 6x a week?
I’m not the 5:30am wakeup call for exercise kind either - I tried that a few years ago and just felt awful the entire day. However, I am keeping it up as much as I can (exercising most evenings) ‘though its probably going to be closer to a P150X programme for me.
I also haven’t followed the diet plan religiously ‘tho I have consciously tried to eat low fat/high protein as far as possible (difficult when Asian diets are pretty much carb city).
While I haven’t lost a tonne of weight (0.5 - 1kg depending on the day I take it), but my body fat percentage has been showing a very nice and consistent drop with every week I’ve been on the programme and is now hovering at 26.7% (having started at 29.8%). Measurements have dropped too and I have halved the size of my incipient beer belly.
I have to say the programme was torturous at the beginning - I could only do 40 minutes of the 1 1/2 hour YogaX programme on my first try and less than half of all the ab exercises, but it’s been getting much more doable and I am now pretty much keeping up with the guys onscreen through about 80% of the workouts as a whole. I’m still not doing pullups and relying on the bands tho’ - I hope I’ll be able to graduate to pullups by the third month on the programme.
In short, if you can stick with it, the programme does seem to work - I’m hoping that I can keep it up through 2 business trips to Korea and China starting from next week…. Found that ripping the videos to MPEG and sticking them on my mobile phone seems to work.
One thing I’ve stuck to is low-fat chocolate milk immediately after workouts and it really seems to make consecutive days of exercise easier. I drink more if I feel really wasted after the workout and less if it doesn’t seem warranted - really seems to cut down on aching muscles and tiredness.
Related articles by Zemanta
- My First Week with P90X (thebeautifulheresy.com)
- Review of P90X Fitness Program (balance-your-health.com)
