Hubby As Guest Blogger

Paul Speaks - Part 2

SHAKEOLOGY

Now that I have a weight goal in mind I knew that I needed to change how I was eating. Insanity comes with a nutrition plan but I didn't really look at it and still haven't started to follow it. But I did change my eating habits. Junk food is cheaper than healthy foods and that is why Americans are so overweight. We decided to start to eat more and more veggies and fruits. I also cut down the portion sizes I was eating at each meal and eat SLOWER, that way my brain knew my stomach was getting full. In July Carrie got me a bag of Shakeology for my 42 birthday. She was using this as a meal replacement and was preaching the wonders of the ingredients to me and once again I was SKEPTICAL! Well now I have my very own bag and she volunteered to make me a delicious shake. I have this bag of powder so I might as well have a chocolate smoothie. I told her sure and let her make me one. Well I have to say it tasted great! I have been drinking this for breakfast since last July. My overall cholesterol has gone down 30 points and my blood pressure has gone down as well. I attribute this to the exercising everyday and the healthy shakes every morning.

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

So I am in my daily workout routine with Sunday as my day off. I actually get frustrated if there is a day I cannot exercise due to work commitments or if the family's schedule does not allow me. I am seesawing between 150 and 153 lbs and trying to figure our how to get the weight to stay at the lower number. If I have one fault, I have the ability to really focus on something to reach my goals. So I am committed to getting to where I want and won't stop until I have reached it. The one big thing I notice is that I feel really great and that I am sleeping better and the biggest thing is that I haven't gotten sick this past winter season. Every year I usually get a whopping case of the Flu  that takes me out for at least three days. I attribute not getting the Flu to the regular exercising and change in diet to include larger portions of green veggies. I have always loved steamed Broccoli and would eat this every night as my vegetable if the family would let me!

Paul doing the "Heisman" as part of the INSANITY warm-up

Carrie called me at work one day in February of this year and said Shaun T is coming to Gillette to conduct a workout with people. I thought absolutely! I've been doing this for almost a year I can workout to any Insanity routine he throws at us. We each paid a fee of $100 and decided to make a weekend out of it!
  

 MAY 13TH

Meet and greet booth - May 13

Carrie and I arrive at Gillette the evening before the event. The local Beachbody coach Kevin, who arranged the event, has set up a meet and greet with Shaun T and a couple of Patriots cheerleaders at the Patriots Place shopping mall area. We walk to the area where the table is set up and we stand in line and notice that everyone in the line is a young male and they want to get their picture taken with the Cheerleaders! We got to the table and said to Shaun T "We're here to see YOU!" His face immediately lit up and asked if we have been doing INSANITY?  We both said yes and he got up came around from the table and talked to us for a while about the workouts and what it was like filming them with all the people in the videos. We asked him what Saturday's workouts were going to be like and he said he hadn't decided yet put it was probably going to be pretty tough. Great I thought. We took some pictures with him and me with the cheerleaders. I had to take a picture with them, they're pretty cheerleaders after all and wasn't going to miss that opportunity.

Shaun T meet and greet May 13

The "must have" photo op with two pretty Patriots cheerleaders

Stay tuned to hear more from Paul...............

Hubby As Guest Blogger

Paul Speaks - Part 1

(It's a long one so will have to be in a couple chapters!)

It's been two weeks since Carrie and I worked out, twice, with Shaun T at Gillette stadium on Saturday May 14th. My exercise workout journey has been developing over the course of many, many years. First off I am going to emphatically say "I HATE TO EXERCISE" I would rather sit and read the paper or watch some worthless mind numbing TV show. Now having said that, I now LOVE the Insanity workout DVD program. My exercise journey got a big jolt of energy last June. I had been a member of a couple of gyms and had really let my exercise regimen slack. Carrie had mentioned this infomercial about a DVD set called "Insanity" and like everything, I kind of shrugged it off. Who wants to exercise in their basement? I also said to her "those things don't work in the long run. Its just a money grab" and "I will never look like those people as they have trainers and nutritionists that are looking over their every move in order to get them to look good to sell the DVDs!" Because I am a very frugal person, cheap sometimes, I agreed that this was a more worthwhile investment than two gym memberships that we probably won't use that often. Plus, Carrie was very very excited about it. What did I have to lose I thought? Maybe some weight!  I remember Carrie either emailed me or called me at work to tell me that the INSANITY box had shown up. You would have thought it was Christmas at our house! I can be a very skeptical person at times and hadn't really bought into this exercise program but wanted to support Carrie because of her excitement. We watched the very first DVD called Fit Test. This judges where you are through a series of different exercise moves. You are to log your results, how many of each you were able to do, and then do it again some weeks later to see how you improved. 

THE JOURNEY BEGINS:

Day 1 of INSANITY - June 7, 2010

I vividly remember the night I began this exercise program because I thought I was going to die. It was a Monday night. Carrie went off to work. I put the kids to bed and changed into some workout clothes and headed for the basement. I put in the fit test DVD and started the routine. Now I have run 5K and 10K road races and used to run on average 3 - 5 miles a day. So I believed I could do just about anything. I did this fit test and at the end of it fell to the floor leaning against the couch and thought to myself this is the day I die. I was not only winded but my muscles were shaking. Folks, this is not the exercise program, this is a fit test to gauge where you are at. I hadn't even put in one of the DVDs that you actually exercise to!!! My only thought was Carrie will come home in a few hours and find her husband dead on the playroom floor. I sat there for a half an hour. Then I got mad. "This thing was not going to beat me" I said to myself. So, I started the next evening with the first DVD. At the bottom of the screen is a time line of how long each exercise move will be along with the overall time for this particular DVD. I looked and it said something like 39 minutes. I thought to myself "I got this". So it works like this. You do a three cycle rotation of warm up exercises. Each one is three minutes long before you get a break. So you do the routine for three minutes with each round getting faster than the last until the nine minutes are up and you can take a break. So I decided to relate this to something I know, running, guess what, it is not like running at all. It is not one thing you warm up with. You run and then you do jumping jacks and then something called Heisman and then two or three other different moves until you repeat the whole thing again. After three minutes I am ready to call 911 again. Now you get a 30 second break in between.

30 seconds is really long most of the time but when your exercising it is really, really short. I now have 30 more minutes of this!?!?!? Well I got through it and Carrie asked me how I liked this move or that move. I think I complained but still wasn't going to give up. She was very encouraging and was glad I was doing it.

DAILY EXERCISING

About two months into doing Insanity I notice that my pants are getting looser on me. I now have to wear a belt to keep them from falling down! OK so now I am seeing some results. Carrie had taken some before pictures in June and now wanted to take some more pictures in order for me to see the transformation that has taken place. Now I didn't think I looked bad back in June, because I think very highly of myself, but when I saw the pictures from two months later I realized just how chubby I was. In June I was around 168 - 170 lbs. and in August I was down to about 155 - 156 lbs! Not bad I thought. I now decided on a goal weight. The lightest I have ever been in my adult life was 147 lbs around the time I got married and that was probably for only a 1/2 an hour that I was at that weight. So my new weight goal was to get to 150 lbs.

December 2010 - about 6 months into the program

Stay tuned to see more of Paul's INSANITY transformation story....... 

Crazy Train!!!!

This past Saturday, I had the amazing opportunity to spend the day working out and hanging out with Shaun T and other incredible Beachbody Coaches and customers.  We got to spend the entire day at Gillette Stadium (yep, the home field of the New England Patriots) for what was to be one of the best experiences of my life!!!!  As a reminder, Shaun T is the (extremely buff) trainer from the INSANITY workout program.  Here's a delightful little sampling of his madness and the true INSANITY of this workout program!

Our workouts on Saturday were similar to the ones from the dvds in that there were many familiar moves and I was used to his style of teaching.  There was, however, no pause button and by the end of the first workout, my husband and I were drenched in SWEAT!!!  Nice, don't you think?

Here's a little of how I felt about the whole experience:

Two full workouts (one hour each), over 150 in attendance, 5 bottles of water consumed (by me alone), 5 clothing changes, several pounds of sweat, estimated over 1200 calories burned and suffice it to say, it was one of the best days ever!!!  Now, let me make this clear (and this may surprise you - ha ha)......working out is not always fun for me, nor is it my most favorite thing to do!!!!  I do love the end result though - the feeling of euphoria knowing I did something that I did not think was possible!!  Eating right is also a struggle and a full time job for me.  There is no "finish line" with this!  It's an ongoing process of making a daily commitment to myself (no matter how difficult it seems or how tempting the alternative may be).     

I will be posting more about this awesome day and all 

the wonderful experiences in the days to come.  Until 

then, I plan to keep plugging away in The Asylum!

~Cheers!

  

You Think No One's Watching, eh?

I've been working out regularly using Beachbody programs for almost a year now.  I had no idea the influence I am having on my children, particularly, my 6 year old son.  You see, he's in school only half a day and is home with me the rest of the day, so he's there with me when I eat and when I work out.  On most days, he watches me exercise and has, on many occasions joined me.  He is slightly obsessed with Shaun T., loves to make comparisons between my muscles and Shaun's (as though there is any comparison at all!!), and he frequently enjoys checking on his own "stomach muscles" in the mirror.   Ever since I began using INSANITY last June, he became my little accountability buddy and loves to participate in the warm up and stretch.  Here's a photo of him doing a yoga stretch from the INSANITY warm up.

Here's one of him doing a "switch kick" - how awesome is that??

A couple of months ago, when my package containing P90X arrived, he was as excited as I was!  He made me a poster in celebration of "OUR" new workout program.

So, this week, when I began The Asylum, of course the little cutie decided to join me.  It was the greatest thing!!!  He took off his shirt (to be just like Shaun T and the other fellas in the DVD), grabbed a set of 3lb dumbbells and worked out alongside me for a good amount of the 45 minute "Strength" segment.  He even said to me "Mom, this is SICK!  I like it as much as INSANITY."  That made me chuckle!!  I thought I'd also mention that he thoroughly enjoys the fact that I drink Shakeology on a daily basis.  He begs for a taste (saying it is just like chocolate milk).  Yesterday, when my most recent shipment arrived, he grabbed it from our postman and ran to the house announcing (the entire way up the driveway) "SHAKEOLOGY IS HERE!!!  SHAKEOLOGY IS HERE!!"


Ever since I became a Beachbody Coach, he's been asking for the Shaun T's Fit Kids Club DVD so he could do his own thing at home.  This week, I bought it (shhhhh, don't tell him) not only for him, but also to share with the new Fit Club that I am beginning soon (more on this later).  

The moral of my story is, if you think no one is watching you, think again.  Our children watch every move we make (good and bad), and model their own behavior and develop their habits after our own.  If you are a parent, I challenge you to be the best possible positive role model you can be for your little audience. 
~Cheers!  

A Swift Kick In the Rear!

Sooooooo, it's been a while since my last post.  Sorry for that.  I've been dabbling in all things Beachbody since I last wrote. Let's see......I did a few weeks of P90X.  Whoa - what a workout!  If you want a buff bod in 90 days, this extreme workout is the one for you!  It requires weights, and a pull-up bar (along with loads of flexibility for the 90 minute Yoga piece).  The Ab Ripper X is a KILLER too!  If you want washboard abs for summer, do this one every (or as Tony recommends, every other) day (along with a healthy diet and a regular cardio routine) and you will get there in no time.  You'll be sweating and shedding fat in the blink of an eye.    


I thought I'd also mention that I did a one day sampling with Chalene Johnson and Turbo Fire (just to see what it was all about) and it was fun, energizing, and a super workout! Chalene is a teensy little firecracker and boy can she move!  I wish someone would bottle and sell her energy and enthusiasm - it'd be better than O.D.ing on caffeine on a daily basis, for sure!  I will definitely come back to Turbo Fire when I am done with my next endeavor........


My next endeavor you ask?  Well, as I spent the last month dabbling in Beachbody workouts, I felt myself longing for my first Beachbody love.....the one and only Shaun T.  I missed his drill sergeant ways, the sweat dripping into my eyes (and clouding my vision), and being so tired at the end of a workout that I'd collapse in a heap of mush.  I kept going back for more INSANITY abuse on the days I should have been doing something else (what a nut, huh?).  So, to curb my Shaun T addiction, I purchased his latest and most difficult workout to date called 


INSANITY - The Asylum!!!!!

Here I am, looking like a total goofball, welcoming the arrival and Day 1 of my journey into The Asylum.

The Asylum is a sports-drill-specific workout, geared toward improving speed and agility and get one performing and looking like an elite athlete.  Take a peek at this video to get a taste of what the workout is all about.  It is all shades of awesome!!!!  It's been said that The Asylum is like "taking INSANITY, dousing it with gasoline and setting it on fire."  Apparently, I've gone off the deep end because I can't wait to be a part of it, finish the 30 day challenge and qualify for the "I committed"  tee-shirt that I WILL get at the end of it all.  Thus proving, once and for all how cuckoo I really am.  I love a challenge, I love a super-intense workout, I love to sweat.  Follow along in the days ahead to see my progress!


~Cheers!