My Journey

It happens time and time again. We all get caught up in our daily schedules from work or other household chores that need to get done and lose all motivation or care to exercise. Things happen, activities change, and it's easier to give up on a routine once it's challenged. For me, it was working 2 jobs to provide for my family. I let my fitness take a back seat because in my mind, I couldn't "waste" any time working out when I needed to spend that time productively and work any overtime hours I could or put that time towards a second job to make sure my family didn't have to go without. These moments happen and we need to make the best of them. Jump ahead a few years and the pattern continued. I was able to find a better job to where I didn't have to work so much but since I was already in the mindset of leaving behind any fitness goals that it didn't matter to me anymore. Besides, I wasn't that big. Well it took until I saw this picture of me that was taken recently during our vacation to one of the beaches in North Carolina.

Summer of 2009

This is me when I weighed around 230lbs! I wrestled at the 140lb weight class in high school. Darn near 100lbs in 6 years! That's an average of 15lbs a year since I got out of high school. Something had to change. My first step was to start working out. I got a couple of workout bands I read about in a Men's Health magazine, bought a pull up bar, and some running shoes. Worked out every other day for a month and saw some results, but nothing too exciting. I never changed my eating habits so I was eating a bunch of empty calories and hardly putting any effort into the workouts. Back to the laziness.

One day, after I was about to fall out from a "food coma", I was laying down on the couch and saw the P90X infomercial. I thought the concept was great but didn't like the fact that it was a workout DVD and they kept talking about "committing" to the program for 90 days...bleh. Not something I was totally sold on. But then I saw the infomercial again the next week. And then again a few days after that. Was my TV turning on me and trying to send me a message? For some reason, it all started to make a little more sense. So I bought it. Not only did I buy the program, I bought the pull up bar, the Results and Recovery Formula, and probably a few other things that I wanted and got caught up in the excitement. Well, the day came and the package arrived and I was all excited to get started. First attempt, mid 2009, made it a few weeks but my work schedule was just too tough to fit it in anymore (excuse). Tried it again a few months later, lasted a few weeks longer and even changed some eating habits and saw great results, but then I hurt my ankle playing sports with some friends. Took a long time to go back.

Jump ahead to spring of 2010. A buddy of mine mentions another Beachbody program that's out called Insanity. My first reaction to this program was, "there is no way my fat self is doing all them jumps and running in place." (excuse) Nevertheless he let me try it out and another buddy of mine and I were doing the workouts during our lunch break at a park close by. We did those workouts for a few weeks and both loved it, but between poor eating habits and improper injury prevention we both ended up "on the DL" and stopped doing the workouts.

Now we jump ahead a few more months to the end of the summer. My wife and I just had our second daughter and I've been really wanting to do something about my health. We went out of town for Labor Day weekend and when we got home, I decided to make the commitment.

I started off with a Hybrid of the P90X workouts and the Insanity workouts for the first month. I started eating better and working out everyday. The last week of the month my schedule got completely thrown off and I couldn't get a workout in at all, but I continued to eat better with only a few cheat days.

The next month I convinced myself to take Shaun T's Insanity Challenge and for the next 63 days I promised to eat right and exercise 6 days a week. Here's what happened after those first 30 days.

So that's where I'm at as of the creation of this blog. As time passes and more months go by I will update and add to my fitness goals and accomplishments. I already have my mind set on doing the full 90 day Hybrid workout when I finish the Insanity Challenge in early December. It's going to be hard to wait.

And now... the results are in... from 215-220 lbs....

 

 

178 lbs!

It was tough, but I kept pushing play with the help of my 3 year old to keep me in check on my form. I have a week to rest and then I start my hybrid training. I'm going to continue my endurance training with Insanity, but I'm adding in the weight training of P90X. 3 and a half months from now, I'm going to be ripped!