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P90X3 is coming December 10th!

REPRINTED FROM TEAMBEACHBODY

Dec_Hero_P90X3All good things come in threes, but be warned: P90X3 is far from a trilogy. No, P90X3 is NOT the kid sister workout. It’s the workout that took notes from it’s siblings, then condensed, and accelerated to become the most dynamic and fastest workout yet.

The ultimate excuse buster
Time is the biggest excuse. P90X3 solves that. Every workout is 30 minutes and the clock starts the minute you push play. Before you can say “drop and give me 10,” it’s over and you are one workout closer to the six-pack of your dreams.

Muscle acceleration explained
Many P90X fans were hooked on the science of muscle confusion – which introduced variety to the workouts and prevented plateauing. P90X3 takes a hint from that success and from studies showing the most dramatic body transformations happen within the first 30 minutes of exercise. Enter muscle acceleration, a Tony Horton-approved highly-structured schedule with an incredibly high level of intensity and an unprecedented variety of moves. The gurus behind P90X3 combined exercises and added some twists to maximize your time and keep every muscle challenged for a full 30 minutes.

Say goodbye to boredom
Which brings us to the fun-factor. Host, world-renown fitness ledgend, Tony Horton does not disappoint. With his witty one-liners and can-do mantras, he’ll simultaneously have you laughing and fired-up to bust out that final rep. Along with the constant entertainment, P90X3 has the most workouts of any Beachbody program. With 16 workouts in the base kit, they switch it up before you have a chance to consider boredom. From cardio to strength to pilates to MMX, there is something for everyone.

The ideal P90X3-er
It may seem lofty to proclaim, but P90X3 is indeed a workout for everyone. Everyone searching for tighter abs and leaner muscles, that is. But fitness novices and experts need not be afraid by P90X3’s come-one-come-all invitation. You don’t have to have any previous P90X experience in order to get killer results. For the beginner, the variety of workouts in P90X3 is the perfect place to discover their fitness style. If the move can be modified there is a cast member showing you how. But don’t expect to be an expert on day one. (Yes, fitness veterans will still be challenged.) As Tony says, ”You don’t get off easy, you just get to finish faster!”

It doesn’t stop there
And of course there are some bells and whistles too good to ignore. First off, the Coach exclusive: If P90X3 is purchased through a Coach any time from December 10th – 31st (including Challenge Packs), the customer receives an exclusive P90X3 baseball cap. What better way to spread the word about this revolutionary program?

And last but not least, we have the app: Yes, now for the first time the P90X app is available on Android and iOS
The app includes P90X guided workouts, tools to track your reps, weights and progress. Launching soon, is the P90X3 addition – which brings you workout specific tracking modules, scheduling options and the motivation you need to power through the 90 days. P90X3 scheduling and tracking will be available on the app for Android on 12/10 and is coming soon for iPhone. Check out the app and get ready to bring it!

Sign up for a FREE Beachbody account to be the first to know when X3 is available.

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Dandelion root tea instead of coffee?

Traditional Medicinal Roasted Dandelion Root TeaTraditional Medicinals.

It’s a brand name, but it’s also a cool phrase to describe drinking health-inducing tea, because, yes, our diet should be the first place we look when we suffer from a chronic illness.

Let’s face it. Our medical professionals do a great job when dealing with acute trauma, like a broken arm or an accidental knife through the hand (don’t ask…).

However, when it comes to treating us for things like high cholesterol or hypertension or type 2 diabetes, well, doctors tend to reach for a drug from one of their pharmaceutical partners and be done with it. Sure, they may pay some lip service to “you should really eat better and get some exercise”, but then they write the scrip, and the patient’s human nature takes over.

That thesis is pretty much the overarching theme of this website. We must take control of our own health and fitness, and we should start with our diet.

So, I’m not going to harp much more on that here.

What I really want to say is that I have recently rediscovered roasted dandelion root tea. I say “rediscovered” because I’d bought it last year and tried it a couple times in the evening. I didn’t really care for it.

Recently, though, I did this cleanse thing, and it prescribed a cup of this tea in the morning. In that context, I found roasted dandelion root tea very enjoyable.

I suppose I could focus on the health benefits of the tea. Livestrong tells us how dandelion root tea can help keep the kidneys and bladder flushed and healthy, and also how it may help increase healthy digestive tract bacteria. The box says something about healthy liver function, but I don’t know anything about that.

Here’s what I do know about Roasted Dandelion Root tea: It is a suitable substitute for coffee.

BLASPHEMY!

Well, that’s what I would have said to anyone who dared offer up something as a suitable substitute for coffee. After all, coffee is one of my food groups. It’s a necessary nutrient in my diet.

And I’m not talking about that adulterated junk some drink and call “coffee”. Coffee with anything added to it is no longer coffee. It’s a completely different beverage.

Black, unsweet coffee, which is what I drink, is the nectar of the gods, so for me to proffer something as a substitute for coffee, well, that’s a pretty big step. But I’m taking it.

I still love coffee. What I don’t love is caffeine headaches when I don’t get it, and that is what prompted me to try alternatives.

You may ask, “Why don’t you drink decaf, Steve?” While I have found a decaf or two that taste pretty good, nothing really matches the flavor of real coffee for me. Plus, drinking decaf does nothing to deter the desire for real coffee, right? Kinda like fake sweeteners do nothing to deter the desire for real sugar. But that’s another discussion for another time….

Also, let me make this perfectly clear: roasted dandelion root tea does not taste like coffee. I am not saying it does, because it doesn’t.

However, once I realized that drinking it took away my desire for coffee, I explored its flavors. There’s is obviously a roasted element there, and dandelion root tea also has the slightly bitter hint that is always present in a great cup of coffee. I don’t know if the flavor profile is the reason dandelion root tea satisfies me, but that seems like a logical conclusion.

Anyway, if you are looking for a way to break the coffee habit, maybe try roasted dandelion root tea. Works for me.

And, please, let me clarify: I am not giving up coffee. I love the stuff. But a single-shot americano once a day — maximum — is an amount that works for me. Supplement that with some tea, and I’m good to go!

 

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Stop obsessing about your weight!

We need to stop obsessing about the numbers on the scale, and those on the tape measure, too, if truth be told.

If we are a bit over that elusive “goal” weight, but are in good health — not on meds, bloodwork and vital signs are great — maybe it’s time we accept our current weight.

health at every sizeI mean, let’s face it: Everyone is not built to be as thin as many of us strive to be. We see the beautiful people the media throw at us, and we think we need to try to look like them.

Okay, first of all, if I made a living being beautiful, you can damn sure bet that I’d have the time and energy to get and stay that way. Second of all, I don’t make a living being beautiful. End of story.

Trying to make a round body fit into a square hole does not seem like a very productive use of time. In the final analysis, if we eat right and exercise a bit, say a half-hour a day, we should live a long, active life, even if it may be with some “excess” baggage.

How did I reach this conclusion? I looked at my experience with trying to get and stay thin, along with just-about-everyone-else-I-know’s experience with trying to get and stay thin. Have you looked around? It just ain’t happening.

Now, yes, I am a lot thinner than I used to be. People might even perceive me to be thin. Some do, I know, because they make unsolicited comments about it. However, when I look in the mirror, when I grab the extra fat around my belly, I know that I am not as thin as I want to be. I want to see those abs!

(My abs, btw, are in great shape, beneath that fat, because of Shaun T’s Focus T25. That guy knows how to work abs.)

I’d already reached the obvious conclusion that my body is just going to do what it wants to do. I eat very well, and I exercise quite a bit. My bloodwork is beautiful, I am not on any drugs, and I am very fit.

If all that is true, why would I possibly be concerned about a little extra pudge around the middle?

Why, indeed!

Not only that, but as I reached that conclusion, I stumbled upon a book by Linda Bacon, Ph.D., called Health At Every Size. In this book, Dr. Bacon demonstrates, using convincing scientific data, that overweight people are often, in fact, not unhealthy, and they also often, in fact, live longer lives than “normal weight” people.

Hmmmmm….

Definitely something to think about. Read the book and decide for yourself.

Regardless of whether you buy into Dr. Bacon’s arguments, please realize that spending time fretting about how many pounds we weigh is not a healthy way to live.

Put away your scale! Eat right and exercise, and your body will take care of itself. Trust it.

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You can’t go from couch to marathon overnight!

GET IT DONE: IN 25 MINUTES A DAY!You may have read the title of this article and said, “Duh.” I mean, who’d be stupid enough to think they could go from being a couch potato to a marathoner without at least a few months of training?

This logic also applies to half-marathon, 10k, and even 5k races. There are scads of websites devoted to helping people build up their bodies to the race they want to run.

We know this. It’s obvious.

Well, then, answer me this question: Why is it that I will turn people on to a high-intensity program like Shaun T’s Insanity or even his 25-minutes-a-day program, Focus T25, and they’ll do day one and then quit because … “it’s too hard”?

OF COURSE IT’S TOO HARD! YOU ARE OUT OF SHAPE! YOU HAVE TO WORK UP TO BEING ABLE TO DO IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH!

(I don’t mean to shout, but this attitude gets me riled up!)

If you were to decide that you have a goal to run a 10k (6.2 mile) race, you wouldn’t schedule the race for next weekend, would you? Hell no! You’d schedule it for 3 or 6 months down the road. Then you’d start training by running short distances, gradually increasing your mileage until you were ready to successfully complete the race.

That is the same approach we need to take to a high-intensity training program.

Take it slowly at first. Add extra breaks. Pause the DVD. In fact, I recommend that — at least at first — you do NOT pause the DVD. Just let it run. Take a break and jump back in when you are ready.

Don’t be discouraged if you can’t complete an Insanity routine. I’ve been doing Insanity for more than 2 years now, and I still cannot make it through even one of the DVDs at full intensity without stopping. I get closest to that with the “Pure Cardio” DVD, but still haven’t made it yet.

I remember the first time I did P90X’s infamous “Plyo X” workout. What a killer! But you know what? The day I was able to make it all the way through that workout without modifications and without stopping gave me a great feeling of accomplishment. It let me know that I really was getting into shape.

You are not going to go from couch to marathon overnight. Don’t expect that with your Beachbody program, either. In fact, I would suggest that any workout that a couch potato can complete all the way through right away is not really much of a workout. Stick with the stuff you can’t do now, because that is the only way to make yourself stronger and better.

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Are you on the later-when-I-have-more-time fitness plan?

Nobody has any extra time these days.

We go from one job to the next, we work with volunteer organizations, we take college courses, we attend luncheons and birthday parties.

Oh, and if we have children — I really don’t know how people with kids do it — we have all the activities related to them.

Not only that, but all these cool electronic devices we have — you know, the ones that are designed to make us more efficient — have kept us so connected that we barely have time to finish one conversation before starting another.

Hell, last night I was carrying on three conversations at once — one via Facebook chat, one via Google chat, and one via text. And I just wanted to relax!

So, yeah, even our free time is taken up with activities that weren’t possible 15 years ago, and that leaves us with less free time than ever.

What can we do about fitness, then?  We know we should get into shape, but we promise ourselves we’ll do it later. You know, when the kids are grown and out of the house. When we can finally quit that second job. When our favorite tv shows go on summer hiatus.

We are busy. How can we possibly squeeze a workout into our daily routine? This is a dilemma.

I hear some people say, “Just get up earlier,” but these people are often the amateur coaches whose idea of a motivational speech is screaming “YOU GOT THIS!” Hey, come on, we can only get up so early. Trying to get into shape on only 4 hours of sleep every night is not going to work for the vast majority of us, and, anyway, there is evidence that lack of sleep makes us fatter.

We could work out shorter. After all, even a daily 10-minute workout can help improve our health.  But there are surely psychological barriers to this, because, really? 10 minutes? And while it might improve our health, it’s not going to improve it nearly as much as a longer workout, so we may just think, “Why bother?”

Ultimately, how to fit a workout into our busy day comes down to the applying the same method we use to fit other activities into our busy day: prioritization.

If we don’t fit exercise into our day, it’s simply because we don’t put enough priority on it. If we prioritized exercise higher than watching tv or going to a movie or working late — all of which may, indeed, deserve higher priority in your life — then we’d skip the tv, movie, and work, in order to get our workout in.

I remember my first post-superfat exercise program. It was walking. Simply walking. Not much of an exercise, to be sure, but at least it was something. I had a pedometer and tried to get 15,000 or 20,000 steps in every day. I have a sedentary job, so I had to devote a lot of time to walking. And I did! Most days I was walking for several hours.

The point is that I did have other things I wanted or needed to do, but I prioritized my walking. Hitting that goal number of steps was important to me, so spending the time to get it done was a priority.

That went on for quite some time, but, as you might expect, I didn’t see a lot of results from walking. And then I got busy at work. I could no longer walk for so many hours. I had to find a way to fit exercise into a shorter amount of time. That’s when I started P90X, which takes only about an hour a day, and that’s when my life changed.

Sure, you can be on a later-when-I-have-more-time fitness plan. But the fact is that for most people “later” never gets here. There will always be activities to fill our time.

So, if we don’t make time for fitness now,  give it the same priority we give to eating and sleeping, then it’s difficult to add it later, because our bodies deteriorate to the point where exercise is almost impossible.

I would encourage you to make “later” today, and start exercising now. Even if it’s just buying a pedometer and counting steps, you never know where those steps might lead you.