Twitter Images
Is P90x Unhealthy?
The question is, is P90x unhealthy?
I have been asked that three or four times in the last month only because people have noticed a physical change. They think P90x is a combination of starving and working your butt out. I usually tell them there are days where I feel like I am going to die, but for the most part, I love it. This, however, doesn’t address whether P90x is healthy or not?
When I think about this question I usually take the opposite argument.
Is sitting on your butt healthy? Is having your hand stuffed in a bag of potato chips healthy? Is watching the P90x infomercial rather than doing it healthy? Probably not.
P90x can indeed be unhealthy if you continue to workout despite injury. It can be unhealthy if you cut more calories than reccomended (if you follow the diet to a “T” you will feel like your eating more). P90x will certanily be unhealthy if you expect to get dramatic results in one week. It takes 90 days folks.
P90x is whatever you make it, just like anything else.
P90x:MC2 Muscle Confusion 2
If P90x isn’t enough for you the Beachbody network will be releasing MC2 aka muscle confusion part 2 for the P90x Graduates.
I am 2 days away from Phase One and just finished a Tony Horton One on One exercise in addition to the scheduled workout this evening/morning (it’s 3am) and was wanted more. I cannot get enough. I came across MC:2 serendipitously and cannot wait until 2011.
The above links take you to the “official” page and an email sign up.
Good Luck folks.
Totally Inappropriate
But a good song!
What is your Purpose?
While browsing the internet the other night I came across a pretty good clip on Youtube from a motivational by Valerie Waugman aka “Siren” from American Gladiators. The clip is below and it is quite short, only 10min to watch the entire thing. The point of her speech is how she found “excellence” specific, fitness excellence. Valerie explained to the people that she was speaking too that she only became “Excellent” when she specifically identified her “purpose.” Once she clearly outlined her goals did she realize her own personal pathway, which was to be a fitness model. A few points form the clip:
I. Have a Journal
- Write down your goals, weekly, monthly, yearly
- Write down daily workouts and “status updates”
- Reflect on your day and how you can improve
This journal is yours and for your eyes only. Don’t write it with the mentality that your grand kids are going to read it. They might, but for the time being it is for your you and yourself only. It is a tool for you identify your goals on a day to day basis via the written word.
II Have a Purpose- in order to reach our goals we need to have a reason. Any goal, anything that is achievable can be planned out and can be obtained by anyone. Imagine any thing you would like to do and you can formulate a plan. The hurdle, is actually doing those things to achieve your goal. Valerie says they way to get over this hurdle is to have a purpose. “Why do you want to do it?” Asking yourself the question and identifying the answer will help you work towards the goal vs having. If your goal is to run a marathon in a specific time, then ask yourself why? Record it down. Focus your goal.
III Identify Roles- The third part of her little motivational speech is figuring out who you are to different people and different arenas in your life. For instance, my rolls would be a physician, husband, son, brother, dog owner. The second step is taking each of these roles and having them work towards your goal. How can being a better husband play into my goal of being in better shape. The way I rationalize it is that I would be a happier person that I am in better shape, I will be healthier, I will live longer, I will be more confident around my wife, and I will be more delicious for my wife 
.
IV Make them Visible- The last component of her speech is visibility. Valerie says that you would not be afraid to vocalize what your intentions are to other people, to yourself, to the world. Write your goals down on signs, on the fridge, on the computer screensaver. By doing so, you are ALWAYS thinking about them. Cover all your senses with your goals. In addition to writing them down, smell them, feel them, see them. Saturate every sense of your body with them so they are apparent all of the time.
Now I gotta get to work on figuring out the “ME” in myself!
Posted in Motivation, P90x
Tagged beachbody, coach, Focus, goals, motivation, siren, speech
Leave a comment
Why you shouldn’t get fat. Ever.
Getting fat is the worst thing you can do to your body.
Let me explain some physiology- some simple physiology.
Muscle Cells- they do not multiply, the get bigger (hypertrophy). When we work out and pump iron the muscles get plump. When we don’t– they atrophy.
Fat Cells- significantly different from muscle cells. Why? They (1) Hypertrophy and (2) MULTIPLY. (hyperplasia)
Think about it. When we gain weight the fat cells fill up with fat to the max. When there is no more room they just decide to make more fat cells and multiply! However one important tenet of life that I have learned is that things want to live when they are created. So picture this. When you gain weight, your 10 fat cells turn to 100 fat cells that are slowly filling up with fat. When you want to loose the weight your not battling 10 cells now, your battling 100 cells- and those cells are going to starve before they will let you destroy them.
Gaining weight makes losing weight more and more difficult.
Dear Diet Coke
Soda is something I drink every day. Diet Coke in the morning, afternoon, and night. It is a bad habit, an unhealthy habit. Chemicals in a diet soft-drink are not natural and include addicting qualities. Diet soft-drinks are difficult to quit due to the caffeine and other ingredients they are infused with. This was gracefully proven by my wife when she tried quitting. She suffered the worst caffeine withdrawal headaches of her life to the point where we had to visit the emergency room a few years ago.
Soft-Drinks are a relatively new-phenomenon for me. Growing up in Montana, the child of two immigrants, the whole “American/Western Diet” wasn’t something I wasn’t fully exposed too simply because my parents didn’t adopt a western diet. My mother, being from the West Indies, would usually give us either juice or water to drink at the dinner table and would never buy a soft-drink simply because she didn’t have the taste for it. My father, from Switzerland, didn’t have time go to the grocery store so he ended up drinking mostly water or a Mickey’s beer on a rare occasion but certainly never a soft-drink.
I first learned about soft drinks as when I hung out at my friends houses and started to raid their fridges. One of my friend’s mother, Joan, drank a soft-drink named “Tab.” Tab is a soft-drink released in the early eighties by the Coca-Cola company in the early 80’s primarily marketed towards women who want to be “physically fit.” Initially Tab was a hit because it was targeted so well. It was feminine, came in a pink can and had a simple font and was only one syllable…. “I would like a “Tab”.”
The image of Tab has burned into my head and is remembered at a “first encounter.” I remember it being a foreign object, a pink metal can that had soda in it that was only for her. It became desirable because it wasn’t for me- it was for “adult women that wanted to loose weight.” This magic can provided soda, which I considered a liquid candy at that time. Tab started my fascination but I only started drinking soda on a regular basis a few years later. My little-league baseball team was sponsored by “A&W Root beer.” As you can imagine every game in the dugout’s we had more than are fair supple of soda! After the discovery of the Root beer float it was all over, my addiction for high-fructose syrup carbonated water was tapped. I started to order it at restaurants, at the Dairy Queen, and at school. I didn’t drink it ofter, maybe twice a week, but it became a part of my diet.
Fast forward to now, a 30 year old man in the year 2010 writing on his blog. At this moment in my life I drink more Diet Coke than plain old water. I am rarely satisfied or hydrated by it- as evidence by my insatiable need for more and more Diet Coke, and I am now convinced it isn’t safe.
I feel like P90x is like Lent. You sacrifice during these 90 days to become a better person. In an earlier post I stated that I will cut down to a minimal amount of alcohol, now I am publicly stating that I am cutting down on soda. I will take a look at the scary ingredients in a soft-drink at a later time in a later post.
P90x and Alcohol
I don’t drink alcohol (EtOH) often but when I do I can absolutely say my day is screwed up. All it takes is one Cuba Libre or Gin & Tonic and then my day thereafter is shot. I am not sure what is involved in the alcohol but I loose complete motivation to do anything but would rather sleep or play Limbo on my X-Box 360.
How does Alcohol Affect Muscle Development and Recovery? I am not going to address the chronic drunk or an individual that drinks more than 5 drinks a week, I am writing this to people like me, drink casually and rarely if ever get drunk.
One thing you should know, we drink everyday- we just don’t know it! Bacteria in our digestive system produce around 3g of ethanol that is absorbed into our system. I hope the bacteria in my system are not from Pabst Blue Ribbon but from someplace with quality alcohol like Hendrick’s or something.
Why is alcohol so bad? Well, in a sentence:
Alcohol can reduce your strength, endurance, recovery capabilities, aerobic capacity, ability to metabolize fat and muscle growth. Alcohol can also affect your nervous system and brain.
That hard workout you just completed, all that sweat, grunting, and possibly split blood is completely negated due to the effects of alcohol. On a cellular level, alcohol will diminish protein synthesis resulting in a decrease in muscle build-up but worse–> it can impede muscle growth. Alcohol damages muscle directly. Alcohol Toxicity causes inflammation to the muscles so rather than getting a pumped up feeling from working out, you essentially get a pumped up feeling from the swelling and water retention!
Alcohol is basically a sugar, it is a 2-chain carbohydrate. First thing that happens when you drink it is that it gets broken down on the liver. What does it get broken down into? Alcohol is essential for fatty-acid synthesis. It is not made into fatty acids, but the components of Ethanol allow and promote fatty acid synthesis. This doesn’t mean it causes a fatty liver. A fatty liver is caused when ethanol levels get so toxic that it kills the liver cells, fat cells are damage control, they just fill in the space so you have more fat in your liver and less liver cells working (hepatocytes).
No need to address beer, we all know the ramifications of drinking a cold brew. Ethanol, which is also in mixed drinks has calories in it even if you didn’t mix it with anything else. The higher the proof the alcohol content the higher the caloric content. There are many websites that help calculate the caloric content of each drink. Either way, mixed drinks have a lot of higher caloric things mixed into them which are the main culprits in weight gain.
If you gong to be serious about loosing weight then you simply have to give up the booze. There are no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. Try it out during your P90x attempt and let the proof reveal itself in your abs! I will be an example. Watch my updates as this blog goes on. I will have a six pack and this will not be manufactured from alcohol. Mark my words.
Today, for the next 61 days I am going to do my best to have no more than one drink a week. The reason I am not going to say zero is because I have a few trips scheduled over the next 60 days where there will be a celebration or two… so saying no, although possible, actually isn’t possible if that makes sense.