How to keep going when life takes over

This is my craziest time of the year. I have a big project at work for our CEO with a tight deadline. As the deadline gets closer I know I will be working nights and weekends to get it done. Just because this big project is going on doesn't mean that everything else goes away either. So how does someone keep working out with even less available time in the day? The answer for me is commitment.

I have made a commitment to do my workouts and I am going to stick with it. That doesn't mean that I might not have to switch some workout days around or modify things a bit, but I will get my workouts in. I'll do it at 10 pm if I need to. As Jeff Hill said on one of the Team Beachbody Coach calls "Once you make a commitment, the decisions you make will be surrounded by that commitment."

There's a reason I started the P90X2 program. I want to to be healthy and energetic. I want to look good and feel good. If I forget that then I am simply going through the motions to get to the end. If I remember my "why" and focus on it, I can push harder and use that as my motivation to get through the tough times. Life rewards action.

I'll leave you with a couple of quotes today.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Wayne Gretzky

"Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." - Jim Rohn

The cooking experiment

I've been trying out some new recipes lately in an effort to help with the dinner around the house. I also wanted to make sure I am incorporating some P90X2 friendly meals for dinner. So far I have tried three recipes from either teambeachbody.com or the P90X2 diet guide. One has been moderately successful with the family and that was a breakfast frittata. The other two did not go so well.

Normally we do pretty well for having healthy dinners. My biggest problem is that I am a pretty picky eater, especially when it comes to things that are good for you. I could eat cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and pizza every day. But I have to choke down a chicken breast or most vegetables, especially cooked veggies. The rest of the family likes them, so that leaves me to either force myself to eat them or grab something else for myself.

So I picked out a few recipes from the P90X2 diet guide that I decided I would make. My first attempt was fish tacos. Now I'm sure that when prepared by someone who knows what they are doing these are probably delicious. The problem is that instead of someone who knows what they are doing, I attempted to make these. Needless to say they did not turn out so well. My son keeps reminding me of the time that we had fish that didn't taste like anything.

As I mentioned, the frittatas turned out well. For the kids I cheated a bit. What they got was more of a ham and cheese omelette. Mine was completely egg whites, but for theirs I still used some yolks. It's hard to mess up eggs too much and I have been making omelettes for years, so it's a small victory.

Yesterday I made up some chicken bacon ranch wraps. It's one way that I can eat chicken and enjoy it. It also has a good mix of vegetables inside that I can make up to bring to work. It's a complete meal all wrapped up in one convenient package. My son didn't like that there were onions in it and my daughter took all of the insides out and just ate the tortilla shell. My wife ate hers, but only wanted a little bit because she was not very hungry when we started to eat.

So I guess the moral is that I can still make up these foods for my lunches, but maybe I should stick to homemade whole wheat pizza when I cook for the family. I know they like that.

First few weeks P90X2 impressions

Normally I like to put out a post after a week on a new program of my impressions. This time I thought a week was not enough. I officially started P90X2 on January 2, 2012, although I had done a walkthrough of some of the videos prior to that. The thing I noticed about many of the exercises that made P90X2 different from P90X was the learning curve.

P90X2 workouts involve a lot more balance and stability than I am used to. It has taken me a little while to get the hang of some of the moves, or to be able to do them without falling over. It can be discouraging, but I had the exact same feeling when I did P90X YogaX for the first time almost two years ago. I got better and eventually learned to embrace the things that are difficult. It's more rewarding to accomplish something that is hard than to do something that is easy from the start.

The length of the workouts is roughly the same or shorter. Yoga is about 30 minutes shorter, and the Ab Ripper routine is only on the schedule once a week for the first level. There is a greater emphasis on core strength through the normal workouts so there is not as much need for a specific ab routine more than that.

The one big thing that I notice is that the workouts seemed easier to me than the original P90X when I started. Now I see that it was more a matter of me trying to figure out the moves instead of just doing them. Once I started getting the moves down I found that I was trying to keep up with the folks in the video for reps and it was not so easy anymore. I could also increase my weights on the exercises that use them. This is also level one of three so it is going to ramp up. I'm looking forward to starting up level two in a week or two.

What I've been up to this year

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I haven't updated in a while, so here's a brief recap of what's been going on in this new year.

At the request of my Beachbody Coach I finally put together a YouTube video talking about my transformation journey. That took a fair amount of time to edit so I've been taking it easy on the blogging and updating at PromiseToBeFit.com since then. Here's what I put together for my transformation video:



After posting the video I was asked to write a guest article for Pledge 2 Stay Fit talking about my story. Here's a link to the article: How Team Beachbody and P90X Changed Pete Haack’s Life. It's also been picked up on a number of other sites as well, so I've been busy lately answering a lot of questions about my nutrition and workouts and helping others get started on their transformations.

I've also officially started P90X2. I'm about a week and a half into it. I had Lasik surgery two days ago so I had to take a couple of days easy, but I should be back to normal workouts soon.

Last Sunday I ran the 200 and 400 Meters at an indoor track meet. My 200 was almost identical in time to my previous meet a few weeks ago. My 400 did not go very well. I got out slow and never really figured out my pacing. I let myself get behind another runner and couldn't commit to whether or not I was going to pass him until it was too late. Indoor 400s are just difficult for me mentally to keep from relaxing too much on the first lap and leaving way too much for the end. I'm hoping to get one more meet in this year so I can at least post a decent time.

It was an all-ages meet so my son ran at the meet also and did quite well. I think I get more satisfaction from watching my kids accomplish things than I do for myself. So while I was disappointed with my performance, I was excited to see my son break two of the meet records. He cut about 25 seconds off of his previous 400 meter time...while I can't even cut 1/2 second off of my time. Oh, to be a kid again.