Author: steve

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Fear of falling back into old habits

I wouldn’t call it exactly a “fear”, but, wow, I am really not interested in falling back into my old habits, which include:

  • overeating
  • overdrinking
  • oversittingonmyass

all of which lead, of course, to being

  • overweight

I may tend to obsess about this. I measure my waist at least once daily. If I go more than a day without working out, I get nervous that I may enjoy sitting around too much. When I indulge myself by occasionally feasting on crap food I used to eat all the time, I become concerned that this indulgence will become the norm.

And I think those “fears” are the key to keeping the old habits at bay.

As soon as I don’t care any more, the moment I no longer feel at least a twinge of guilt for engaging in relatively unhealthy behaviors, that is when I will have a problem.

But as of right now, it’s all good.

I can have that night where I eat every carb in the house, knowing that the next day I will scale back to meat and veggies only.

I can go to the occasional party and drink too much of my homemade limoncello, knowing that I will not drink again for a week after that. (Well, unless it’s a multi-day party, in which case, all bets are off ;=)

I can skip a couple workouts in a row, knowing that I’ll be at it hard the day I come back, probably with an extra few minutes for good measure.

And all this is based on a fear of falling back, a fear of being fat again, of being out of shape again. Yes, it is, I think, after all, a “fear”.

But it’s a healthy one that I think I’ll keep at the front of my mind.

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How about eating right half the time? Will that work for you?

Look at yourself. Take a good, hard look. Do you like what you see?

Maybe you do. Congratulations!

pizzaBut maybe you’re disappointed you’re not in better shape. Maybe you’ve been trying to break the fast-food habit, but aren’t sure how to start. If so, this post is for you!

Our body composition is primarily — 80% — determined by what we eat. Sure, we need to exercise to build muscle and get fully fit, but we can’t get away from the fact that we can do the most good for our bodies by eating properly.

Now, I know, we’ve all been on diets that failed. We just can’t seem to stick with them. Even if the results are good, our lives make dieting challenging, especially if those diets are particular restrictive, like the ones that allow only 1000 calories a day or that totally disallow anything with sugar in it.

Because of those kinds of eating plans, people often get wrapped around the diet axle. It’s too much of a commitment. It’s too hard to avoid all those “bad” foods.

Think of all the workplace dietary health hazards, like birthday cakes, donuts and breakfast tacos someone brings in, cookies someone baked. Heck, it’s downright impolite to refuse to eat those things!

Yeah, it’s tough to stay on a healthy eating plan.

But if you really are disappointed with your choices, it’s time to make better ones.

So here’s an idea. Instead of stopping all your current dining habits completely, and jumping into some diet that you know you’ll never stay on, how about you eat healthy, say, 50% of the time.

Half the time. Half your meals — healthy. Just half.

So, then, 4 days a week — healthy eating. The other 3 days, you eat whatever you like.

(Yeah, I already moved your half up to 57% with the 4 out of 7 days thing, but you can live with that, right? It’s just so much cleaner and easier to keep track of that way, instead of having to factor in a half-day there somewhere….)

Your first inclination might be to make your days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — the weekend — but you may want to rethink that. Do you really need to let go on Sunday? Heck, that’s the start of a new week and a good day to get back into the swing of things.

Thursday through Saturday? That might work for you. Or Monday and Thursday and Saturday. Or change them up every week depending on what’s going on. Up to you.

The whole point of this post is to remind you that you don’t have to be 100% health-conscious 100% of the time. I threw 50% out there, but, seriously, any number you can use to help yourself get more fit — 10%, 25%, 50% — that’s all good. Anything’s better than 0%, right?

Hopefully, once you get into it and start seeing positive results, start looking and feeling better, you’ll decide to add another day of healthy eating, and another day. Six out of seven days of healthy eating would be 86%. That’s pretty good.

But, um, I wouldn’t go beyond that — you have to leave room for the occasional pizza binge, ya know?

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How Does Insanity Affect Upper Body Strength?

When I started Insanity in early May, I was concerned about what it might do to my upper body strength. After all, the workouts really emphasized lower body and abs, and while there was some shoulder work, there was not a whole lot of concentration on the chest, arms, and lats.

I had toyed with the idea of adding some pullups to the workouts, but, what the heck, I figured I’d go ahead and experiment on myself yet again, and see just how Insanity affected my upper body.

And let me caveat this for any of you who think I am knocking Insanity — I’m not. I loved Insanity and recommend it to everyone!

Shaun T's InsanityNow, as you may know, I completed Insanity a couple weeks ago, took last week off to do only yoga, and started today with my favorite gauge of upper body strength: 30/15 from Tony Horton’s One-On-One workouts.

30/15 is a workout that alternates 12 sets of various pushups with 12 sets of various pullups, so it was measuring what I wanted to measure.

The results?

Pushups were barely affected. Prior to Insanity I was doing 26 pushups per set. Today I cut that back to 25, expecting to have to cut it further as the workout progressed toward the end, but, happily, I didn’t need to drop below 25 at all.

I did have to cheat a bit during the last couple sets, not going down quite all the way, to get to 25, but finish I did. I was pleased with that result. It won’t take long to get back to 26, and, in fact, I expect to be fully back next Monday when I do the 30/15 workout again.

I suppose this was to be expected. After all, Insanity does incorporate quite a few pushups in month two, so the chest and triceps are not totally ignored.

However, let’s talk about the lats.

During the pullup sets of 30/15, I do as many reps as I can do in one minute. Pullups are my weakness, so I try to maximize my workout by putting a time on it, instead of just doing them to simple failure.

My pullups were off 20% to 30%!

Again, this was to be expected. There are no pullups and no real lat work in Insanity, plus, my pullup numbers were not that impressive to begin with. Still….

To anyone who is concerned that Insanity will affect your pullups negatively, I can say that, if my experience is any indicator, then, yes, it does. You should add pullups and chinups to your Insanity workouts, or else expect to lose back strength.

Pushup strength is only mildly affected, so no worries there.

As I read through the literature that came with my freshly delivered copy of The Asylum, I saw that there is a pullup bar incorporated into those workouts, so I’ll be looking forward to that. My current plan is to start The Asylum in about a month, but we’ll see how that schedule holds up.

Right now, I am enjoying developing a Tony Horton’s P90X and Insanity hybrid, because the ones I’ve found online that others have created aren’t floating my boat. I’ll be incorporating Tony Horton’s One-On-One workouts into my hybrid. Look for that program here soon!

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Be accountable to yourself!

A fitness friend of mine recently retweeted something along the lines of “Write down your fitness goals, then share them with someone. That way the person can hold you accountable.”

WHAT?

I am familiar with this concept, and I guess it helps some people, but what is going on in the world when we need to make someone else hold us accountable for our own fitness? I am the one who needs to be fit, these are my goals.

I am accountable only to myself!

As a matter of fact, the only reason anyone besides my brother and my wife knew I was doing Tony Horton’s P90X when I first started it, was because my wife had told people at work, when P90X came up in conversation. I didn’t tell anybody. None of their business.

Now, I didn’t mind that my wife had told people, but I’m less social. Honestly, I never brought it up to people, because I didn’t want to have to converse about it. But I certainly didn’t need them to hold me accountable. I knew I was ready to get fit, and that I was going to get up and press play every day for 90 days. And I did. Accountable to no one but myself.

I am not on a soapbox here. Different strokes for different folks. If telling someone else about your goals helps you, please, by all means, do that. Anything that helps you stay on track is great!

But I will share with you my response to that original tweet from my fitness friend: “Grow the f*ck up Hold your own damn self accountable!”

At some point in our lives, we all need to figure out how to hold ourselves accountable. If we don’t, well, that’s how we get into trouble. We try to get away with stuff. We figure no one will ever know if we [insert something you should not do here]. Then, of course, at some point, someone does know, someone does find out, and … trouble. Divorce. Financial struggles. Legal problems.

I guess this has ended up being more of a rant than a fitness lesson, but, seriously, think about how well you hold your own self accountable for your actions. Live a strong life, hold yourself to high standards, and you will certainly sidestep a multitude of life’s problems.

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Insanity completed. Now what?

I finished Insanity. Didn’t bother with the final fit test. I had a big day scheduled for Sunday and didn’t really feel the need to record the final results. If you looked at the results of my last fit test, you can see that I had tremendous improvement from the start of the program, so I’m satisfied knowing that.

Now what?

Well … hmmmm … I ordered The Asylum.

I had not thought I would order it, but that’s because I didn’t understand what it is.

I had originally thought, “Insanity is hard enough. I can’t even do those moves all the way through. Why step it up with The Asylum?” Well, The Asylum focuses on preparing for sports — rather than just generic aerobic fitness, it adds some resistance training with weights, it only lasts 30 days, and, heck, it just looks interesting.

So I ordered it.

First, though, I will take this week off. Well, I mean, I’ll make it a yoga-only week. After the intense training and body pounding of the 9-week Insanity program, my body really needs a good rest.

I will follow that with two to four weeks of some kind of hybrid of P90X, One-On-One, and Insanity. I am not sure what that will look like yet, outside the fact that 30/15 will be part of it — I need to get those lats working again, and I can’t wait to resume doing pushups with my power stands.

Then I will enter … The Asylum.

I have been thinking about how I feel having completed Insanity. At first, I really felt a sense of accomplishment. I am sure that the vast majority of people do not make it through this program, so I do have an emotional boost, just having completed it.

But I’m over that. Can’t rest on that.

This whole quest for fitness I’ve been on keeps me wanting more, wanting to keep moving, pushing my body further.

And, dammit, I still have some fat to lose. Shaun T — the trainer who leads Insanity — really knows abs, and my abs are in great shape. Still wishing I could see them better.

I believe The Asylum also includes a new diet plan, so I will probably try that out for the 30-day span of the program. Maybe that will be the boost my body needs to lose these last few pounds of fat!