P90X Day 34: Kenpo X

Slept in. Hectic weekend with the picnic and siblings visiting. The weather is glorious. Playing Broomball yesterday made me realize I really like to play sports. More!

Calves are a little beat up, but the strength gains are real. The key will be to continue pushing myself without overdoing it. Plus fixing my bike and amortizing meal prep.

When there are so many things that could take your time, focus on the core. Make sure you keep it.

I've thought of sleep as "regenerating" lately. It's nerdy and I like it.

P90X Day 33: Legs and Back, Ab Ripper X

It's crucial I get my bike tire fixed this weekend. There's too much time lost to commuting otherwise. Similarly I should amortize a big pot of some kind and of food. Thankfully I've been able to stay on this morning workout schedule.

P90X Day 32: Yoga X

My plyo landings on Tuesday were a little rough on my ankles. I felt that today. Yoga by morning, Simpsons by evening.

The key with plyo is to focus on the landings above all. Otherwise it's so, so easy to sabotage progress. Especially that jump knee tuck. No shame in skipping doubles to land softly. No glory in a high-impact landing that affects you later in the week.

P90X Day 31: Back and Biceps, Ab Ripper X

Pull-ups! Brutal pull-ups! Also, 30 days. Time for some progress photos. Workout successfully moved to the morning for today. Must do it tomorrow for Simpsons Night also.

Time for some 30-day progress photos! And why not some graphs, too?

I'll update this post with the good news and the far-too-evident impact of the wedding in Houston. Luckily I'm definitely stronger, with therefore a higher basal metabolic rate. This really underscores how important diet and sleep are compared to exercise when it comes to weight. Exercise's chief role is as a keystone habit for encouraging good eating and sleep patterns.

P90X Day 30: Plyometrics

Plyo is here again! At night, again! Houston messed with my sleep schedule in spite of being on central time. Tomorrow I'll move back to morning workouts. I must. Otherwise I can't do anything after work any more.

P90X Day 29: Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps

These block 2 workouts are intense: they hit the same muscles going the same direction rather than the complementary pairs from block 1. It's definitely going to be and adjustment for this new schedule and it's clear why these are only introduced after almost 30 days of P90X.

P90X Day 28: X Stretch

Another hour of stretching. Feels good, but definitely rushed without the DVD, just like my other exercises while in Houston.

To say Operation: Dad bod to Rad bod took a vacation during my break is to understate the case. 60+ days remain in this round of P90X, and I figure any weight gained during the wedding festivities will only add resistance to hasten my inevitable triumph.

P90X Day 27: Yoga X

Good wedding prep. Made it to NASA today also. The Mythbusters and Angry Birds: Space exhibits had me worried that the visit would be like Fry's visit to the Moon in Futurama (where the Moon is a giant theme park in the year 3000).

A very hot day at NASA.

P90X Day 26: Kenpo X

Pakistani weddings are crazy! The events start on Thursday, scheduled start time at 8, but don't start for 2.5 hours after that, then after the official event ends after midnight you hang out in the hotel lobby playing board games until 4am.

So in addition to taking the weekend off from my clean eating, now my sleep schedule is messed up. I shall return to Seattle with the pendulum swung decidedly back.

Also it's friggin' hot in Houston.

P90X Day 25: X Stretch

Easy to do this one on vacation in the hotel room. Done by the book, no DVD player.

P90X Day 24: Core Synergistics

Done after work. Catching up before the Houston trip. Definitely not an easy workout, especially with only a day of yoga in between on this changed schedule.

P90X Day 23: Yoga X

My front bike tire is flat. This is more than doubling my commute time.

My body is starting to feel like a G. I. Joe as far as range of motion is concerned. That's yoga during the recovery week.

Have you seen the news lately? Do we really live in a society which has transcended the need for Thou Shalt Not Murder? #BlackLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatter, and #AllLivesMatter seem to me woefully inept substitutes.

P90X Day 22: Core Synergistics

Got this done in the morning, but forgot to post.

Core Synergistics has a lot of planking and seems to hit the same muscles moreso than the other P90X workouts. It's definitely not a day off. With my altered P90X schedule for Houston I did it today and will do it again Wednesday. Yoga tomorrow. Bedtime now.

P90X Day 21: X Stretch

Field trip for today's exercise: The Seattle to Portland finish line. I didn't ride this year, but while waiting to meet up with friends who did ride I realized I had time to get in my stretch. Good thing, too, since I just got back to Seattle at 11pm. Tomorrow starts my permuted recovery week with Core Synergistics. It's more a core week than a recovery week. No ab ripper. No pull-ups. Few weights. See you tomorrow.

Also, 7+ hours in a car...yuck. I-5 North traffic was unpleasant. The rest stops and gas stops were welcome breaks at the halfway point. I'm not ready for a sedentary life. The standing desk at work has me spoiled.

Being at the STP finish line did make me wish I was riding again. I don't want to do it at the same time I'm doing P90X + operation dad-bod-rad-bod. The main reason there is I'm staying strict paleo for this P90X round and that just doesn't play well with supported bike ride food. I think you're perfectly healthy if you eat the STP food while doing STP, but then I'm just not incorporating my paleo half of the experiment into the mix.

I also don't want to do STP on a commuter bike again with minimal training. Next time is probably where I break down, get an actual road bike, actually train...maybe even single-day it. The riders couldn't have asked for better weather this year: low-70s + overcast. 16-18 hours of riding followed by an unapologetic burrito and a beer garden beer in Holladay Park with a Sunday to enjoy Portland sounds pretty good to me.

P90X Day 20: Kenpo X

Morning cardio on a Saturday is a great way to start the weekend. Good luck to all of my friends doing the STP ride this weekend.

Next week I'm in Houston for the weekend and will have to rearrange the recovery week workout schedule to accommodate. I'll have to workout away from home on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and maybe Sunday, and I'd rather not pack weights.

My training weeks start on Mondays, and the recovery week sequence is Yoga, Core, Kenpo, Stretch, Core, Yoga, Stretch. This is almost fine by default, except that second Core falls on Friday and uses weights. I'll be rearranging my recovery week as follows:

Core, Yoga, Core, Stretch, Kenpo, Yoga, Stretch. With that sequence, my weights can stay at home.

No coffee after noon is a good system.

P90X Day 19: Legs and Back, Ab Ripper X

Slept in Friday morning and worked late; did this Friday night.

With this workout I'm over the hump of the first block of P90X. The rest of the week is less intense, and the week after is the recovery week leading to block 2. There were significant improvements in my pull-ups and in the ease of handling the Ab Ripper.

P90X Day 18: Yoga X

So my P90X posts have mostly become sleeping posts. What I've had absolutely the most trouble doing is getting to bed on time to get up early enough to finish my workout, blog, shower, and make breakfast before going to work.

I drink a lot of coffee at work. Let's limit that to caffeine before noon only and see what happens.

P90X Day 17: Shoulders and Arms, Ab Ripper X

Pushing yourself on this workout really puts the "EERGH" in "P90X! EERGH!!"

Work until it works.

P90X Day 16: Plyometrics

The biggest advantage of doing Plyometrics this time around is that I know how to land softly. The first few times you really want the intensity of doing the moves and keeping up, but to really keep going you need to land softly and save your joints, especially your knees.

Also: A straight back when working out is so, so necessary. I think a lot of the reason people with poor posture shy away from working out is that slouching during workouts will be working the lower back the entire time in a very uncomfortable and unhelpful way.

To straighten your back, stand up tall. Now imagine you have hooks around your ribs about 4 inches below your nipples. Now imagine those hooks are attached to wires pulling you up and forward at a 45-degree angle. Now you're standing up straight. Whenever you think you might want to straighten your back, think nipple hooks.

Having a straight back is important for working the muscles that should be working during a move. Something I love about the P90X workouts is how they seem designed to really go muscle group by muscle group and deliberately strengthen each.

If you've never been this healthy before, you should try it. It's wonderful.

P90X Day 15: Chest and Back, Ab Ripper X

Just gotta push play and show up. This is the last I'll see of this workout for a little over a month, since next week is a recovery week and phase 2 starts the week after.

BeachBody no longer sells the P90X Results and Recovery formula. This makes me sad. It tasted great and really helped keep me going. I was less sore and more energetic when taking it after the tougher workouts. I ordered some Mike's Mix off of Amazon, which seems to be what P90Xers have migrated to. It's not the same. :-( I had to dump it out. I think there will be a lot more hard-boiled eggs in my future.

P90X Day 14: X Stretch

Stretching--good stuff. Alarm went off about the same time I was going to wake up anyway, yet I snoozed out of spite. One's behavior can be a mystery even to oneself.

P90X Day 13: Kenpo X

Weekends are a great chance to sleep in. I'm a bit annoyed with myself for spending time on my phone before getting out of bed. So dumb, and seemingly driven by social motives.

Life tip: When you're eating super-clean for two weeks, a dried date tastes like a friggin' Snickers bar. At ~70 calories, it's got about the same calorie density. The bonus is it's much easier to stop after one or two. Somehow your body is okay just eating a couple.

P90X* is a great keystone habit. "Keystone habits" are good habits that beget other good habits. Intense, inescapable workouts drive healthier food choices. Working out first thing in the morning drives better bedtimes. Or at least, in my case, it tries. On the other side of the spectrum you can have eating what you feel like, staying up with the computer, and moving in a way that never makes you uncomfortable until you collapse of a heart attack. For most of the time, for most people, you don't have to live either of those extreme examples. But if you haven't tried dedicated, regular exercise with eating habits rooted in recent lessons (NOT the old FDA Food Pyramid, for goodness' sake) and sleeping well, it's worth giving it a try to find out what you're missing. I recommend you try feeling awesome.




*If it's been forever since you've exercised, replace P90X with Power90. I wouldn't be where I am today if I started out from where I was by trying to make P90X work.

P90X Day 12: Legs and Back, Ab Ripper X

Well clearly I just need more sleep. My Ab Ripper X performance is increasing rapidly.

P90X Day 11: Yoga X

YOGA GOOD

LATE BEDTIME BAD

Luckily, I'm taking the morning off work to spend some time with family--still, this bedtime theme is a little bothersome. It's hard to let go of a day.

P90X Day 10: Shoulders and Arms, Ab Ripper X

Posting during breakfast today instead of right after my shower--the reason, again, being that I stayed up too late last night. I was working on some stuff for work, which is a most dangerous thing to do after work since it leaks so readily into bedtime--especially when you're not sure you have time to do it during the workday.

Which is itself a problem.

When you feel a deep, urgent need that something needs to be done at work, so urgent that you're willing to work on it at home to make sure it gets done, why would we feel it's impermissible to work on such a thing during the workday? It's bizarre that this should ever be the case. If it is the case, it suggests changing things at work. If it's not the case, I need to readjust and make the most of my 9-5 hours by including items such as this. This also underscores the importance of trust in the workplace: trusting that higher-level direction is being set appropriately, and trusting individual devs that they're working on problems that have real business value in terms of improving the system in important ways or in making it easier for future work to take place. There's also trust on an intellectual level, which can be established over a handshake, and real trust, which takes time and tests.

So why was I working after hours when I wasn't even getting paged for oncall support or working on a legitimately immobile and uncompromising deadline? Because I found something, and I wanted to see it through, and I haven't redeveloped yet the level of trust that made me feel comfortable not working on it. Fake-it-'til-you-make-it could apply here, but that's already a leap, itself an act of trust. I'd like to make that leap of trust--but I'd also like to hedge my bets.

I've had a go-to-bed alarm set on my FitBit for over a week. I should listen to it--especially when I'm already home and not entertaining. Shoulders and arms feel awesome. Yoga tomorrow.

P90X Day 9: Plyometrics

Late start due to fireworks last night. I clocked a mere 6 hours and 39 minutes of sleep, and that's with letting the snooze go a little bit. There are three prongs in Operation: Dad Bod to Rad Bod:

1. P90X
2. Paleo diet
3. Get enough sleep

The list above is ordered from easiest to guarantee to hardest to guarantee, but in order of importance as far as results are concerned, it's probably:

1. Get enough sleep
2. Paleo diet
3. P90X

Facing P90X every day is a nice focal point to ensure I'm getting enough sleep and eating right, plus it's been just great for my health in its own right.

I was a little surprised at how easy a time I had with Plyo today. I expected the first time to be easy and the second time to be a little tougher, but that wasn't the case.

P90X Day 8: Chest and Back, Ab Ripper X

Happy 4th of July!

The first repeat workout has arrived. Round 2 definitely showed some improvements in form and performance. It reminded me of how, when I finished P90X the first time, I merely had to command my body to move in such a way and it would obey. Gripping a pull-up bar, if I wished to rise, would rise, and so forth. I'm not 100% back in that state yet, but a taste of a return to that sort of relationship with my body came far sooner than I expected.

I enjoyed some very gracious hospitality this weekend full of options to stray from my nutrition plan. In one way, I resisted successfully, in that I didn't have anything off-plan, but in another way, I didn't resist nearly so much as you might think necessary. A riddle, no? How could I resist and yet not resist?

Here is the trick: The wine, the doughnuts, the cheeses, the crackers, all graciously offered and gladly enjoyed in other circumstances--I did not resist them. Rather, I pretended they were ghostly apparitions of such. This made the refusal easier on my part and less guilt-inducing on my honorable hosts. And truth be told, I suffered little. One living on broccoli, eggs, berries, and crab is hardly starving or needing pity in any way.

P90X Day 7: X Stretch

Feels great. Just an hour of stretching. I don't think my FitBit noticed, but it would have been a mistake to skip it.

Went easy on myself as far as snoozing goes today, but there's really no needs, since a lot of the stretching you could almost just do in a dreamlike state.

The body needs time to recover and rebuild. Omelette time.

P90X Day 6: Kenpo X

You didn't think I'd given up after 5 days, did you? It's Saturday and I didn't mind sleeping in one bit. I wouldn't want to make a habit of it, though. Like I wrote last time, the key to getting enough sleep is never catching up on the weekends, but getting to bed early enough.

Another welcome relief of a workout. I've really put my body through the paces this last week, and after that the cardio and ballistic stretching of the Kenpo X routine is almost restorative.

I've talked a lot the last few years about my "before body" and my "after body." While my starting position for this round of P90X is nowhere near the "before body," it does perhaps merit a label, which I'll borrow from one or two years ago: the "dad bod." Normally I would hate such a label, but check this out: this means I'll be going from dad bod...to rad bod.

I'll keep my day job, thank you.

In mid-June of this year This American Life had a show about fat people "coming out" as fat. It's called "Tell Me I'm Fat," and you can listen to it at thisamericanlife.org. The show is about fat people accepting themselves as fat and embracing it as part of their identity. There is one woman who loses over 100 pounds and keeps it off, but is then disgusted that her husband wouldn't have shown interest had they met before her change. Her story ends with the reveal (spoiler alert) that she still occasionally takes speed to stay thin and has problems sleeping at night.

These stories are heartbreaking, and editing them together is disgusting. The show seems to be pushing a point of view that obesity is a part of a person's identity. That is true if you are Santa Claus. For everybody else (even Penn Jillette [before/after]), that's not the case. It's not something that changes quickly about a person, and it doesn't entitle anybody to mistreat someone who is overweight, but to accept it as something that is unchangeable...I can't think of anything the 1/3 of obese Americans [source: CDC] need to hear less than that it's part of who people are and on its way to becoming a protected characteristic.

The fact is that obesity does cause you to miss out on so much of life. As somebody who has been on both sides, let me assure you: it makes a big difference. This can be either good news or bad news, depending on the following: If you believe that obesity is a fixed state, something that is part of you, from which there is no escape, even in spite of what we've learned even in the last 10 years about diet and exercise (paleo + Power 90 + get enough sleep), then that's terrible news.

If you believe your obesity is a part of you, then saying that there is an unavoidable price to being obese and inevitable benefits to achieving a healthy weight hurts deeply. I know. But it's the truth, and building the plan for your life on a foundation of lies is far more cruel than heeding the truth. And there is another truth: obesity is not part of you. It is not who you are. It is hiding you from so much of the world. It is not something to accept. It is not something to celebrate. By all means, enjoy life, and enjoy the present to the fullest, but don't be fooled by skinny, kind-hearted platitude peddlers [source: TAL's host, Ira Glass, is not obese] into trivializing a condition that robs you of so much happiness.

This post is too long. I'm hungry.

P90X Day 6: Kenpo X

You didn't think I'd given up after 5 days, did you? It's Saturday and I didn't mind sleeping in one bit. I wouldn't want to make a habit of it, though. Like I wrote last time, the key to getting enough sleep is never catching up on the weekends, but getting to bed early enough.

Another welcome relief of a workout. I've really put my body through the paces this last week, and after that the cardio and ballistic stretching of the Kenpo X routine is almost restorative.

I've talked a lot the last few years about my "before body" and my "after body." While my starting position for this round of P90X is nowhere near the "before body," it does perhaps merit a label, which I'll borrow from one or two years ago: the "dad bod." Normally I would hate such a label, but check this out: this means I'll be going from dad bod...to rad bod.

I'll keep my day job, thank you.

In mid-June of this year This American Life had a show about fat people "coming out" as fat. It's called "Tell Me I'm Fat," and you can listen to it at thisamericanlife.org. The show is about fat people accepting themselves as fat and embracing it as part of their identity. There is one woman who loses over 100 pounds and keeps it off, but is then disgusted that her husband wouldn't have shown interest had they met before her change. Her story ends with the reveal (spoiler alert) that she still occasionally takes speed to stay thin and has problems sleeping at night.

These stories are heartbreaking, and editing them together is disgusting. The show seems to be pushing a point of view that obesity is a part of a person's identity. That is true if you are Santa Claus. For everybody else (even Penn Jillette [before/after]), that's not the case. It's not something that changes quickly about a person, and it doesn't entitle anybody to mistreat someone who is overweight, but to accept it as something that is unchangeable...I can't think of anything the 1/3 of obese Americans [source: CDC] need to hear less than that it's part of who people are and on its way to becoming a protected characteristic.

The fact is that obesity does cause you to miss out on so much of life. As somebody who has been on both sides, let me assure you: it makes a big difference. This can be either good news or bad news, depending on the following: If you believe that obesity is a fixed state, something that is part of you, from which there is no escape, even in spite of what we've learned even in the last 10 years about diet and exercise (paleo + Power 90 + get enough sleep), then that's terrible news.

If you believe your obesity is a part of you, then saying that there is an unavoidable price to being obese and inevitable benefits to achieving a healthy weight hurts deeply. I know. But it's the truth, and building the plan for your life on a foundation of lies is far more cruel than heeding the truth. And there is another truth: obesity is not part of you. It is not who you are. It is hiding you from so much of the world. It is not something to accept. It is not something to celebrate. By all means, enjoy life, and enjoy the present to the fullest, but don't be fooled by skinny, kind-hearted platitude peddlers [source: TAL's host, Ira Glass, is not obese] into trivializing a condition that robs you of so much happiness.

This post is too long. I'm hungry.

P90X Day 5: Legs and Back, Ab Ripper X

So now that I'm paying more attention, the part of this new routine that I'm the worst at is getting enough sleep. This is due to getting up at a certain hour, which is based on being at work at a certain hour and working out beforehand.

This would all be fine, except that I'm a bit more open-ended about when I go to sleep. There are often very good reasons for staying up late, and the aim is to normally have a surplus, if anything, of sleep so that I can absorb the bumps a little better. That's not how I've been operating. I busted by alarm today by half an hour and now my day is shifted. One way that we're poor at negotiating with ourselves is that you can always think "I'll catch up later." Catch up now. Be clear about your priorities and stick to them.

If you're overloaded, you're going to drop something whether you want to or not (often in the form of "catching up later"). Be mindful of your load and make a conscious decision of what to drop. Unfortunately, I think I'll have to drop my participation in Coursera's Parallel Programming course during this cycle.

As usual, the start of the workout was the hardest part. By the time I was done I felt great. I stuck with lighter weights than last time I did it because I didn't want to make it too difficult to continue. Opportunities to push yourself when you realize you have a bit more gas than you thought you did are great, but committing to a certain burn that you might not be able to back up on that day could cause problems. Working out harder one day doesn't mean your week's routine will be more effective.

Late to work, time to go.