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.......