In The Home Stretch...and My New Way of Eating

I am in week ELEVEN of P90x! It will all end in just two and a half weeks! This week I moved from doing my pullups with resistance bands to doing them on my Fluidity Bar. Those are still nowhere near full pullups, but I could only do half as many as I have worked up to on the bands, and my back is sore from the shoulders down, so they must be working the right muscles.

I have never been tired of Tony Horton for even one teeny, tiny minute. Even the workouts I did less than specified I never got tired of - I just had to cut back the intensity some weeks and I won't cut out the weight work. I think in these last two weeks I am going to bring yoga back, but I am going to split it over 2 days - the moving postures on Thursday, and the balance/stretch postures on Saturday. That will make those workout days only 45 minutes instead of an hour, which I will appreciate. But the yoga does something good for my left side and hip, which give me a lot of problems, and I notice when I don't include them in my week.

I am so thrilled to have come this far in this program...I know I could die within the next two weeks and not complete it, but barring that or a similar tragedy, I know that I will soon be a P90X Graduate. When I first started exercising and I saw that in someone's signature line on the Video Fitness forum, I was in awe. I thought I would never be able to do something labeled "extreme" - and here I am, not even a year later, doing it! This has been good for so much more than my health and figure. It has been wonderful for me psychologically to see that I could set my mind to a fairly long-term goal, a hard one, and accomplish it. While that is not totally unheard of in my life, it is not the norm. I know that finishing P90X will give me confidence to attempt other projects that scare me or seem too difficult.

In my last post, I mentioned that I wanted to try to blast off my remaining pounds. I am just not a diet person, though, so if I had to be miserable eating too few calories or eliminate whole food groups, I would just hang onto the extra fat. Then I was browsing around in health and fitness websites and I came across an article called Ten Foods You Should Eat Every Day, and I knew that was the kind of eating plan for me! It would make sure that I was getting at least some healthy variety, and since it is comprised of all unprocessed, unrefined foods, it would make for a clean diet which is good for losing fat. There were a few foods on the list I don't like...fresh tomatoes and black beans. So, I substituted lean protein (chicken or turkey breast) for the beans and just left the tomatoes out. So, this is the list I have written on the white board in my kitchen:

Spinach
Yogurt
Blueberries
Oats
Carrots
Oranges or Fresh Orange Juice
Lean Protein
Nuts
Whole Grains
and I added eggs, but I have not included them every day

I have just been putting together meals and snacks based on this list...for example - grilled chicken from the fridge, on a whole grain corn tortilla with cilantro, pepper jack cheese and spinach, with either yogurt and blueberries on the side or a glass of orange juice. Or brown rice with shredded spinach and cashews, with some carrots on the side. I've been doing this for a little over a week and have already shed some fat in the most stubborn areas. I have been eating other things too, even some junk. But I think making sure I get my nutrients, and the fact that these foods make good, filling meals without oodles of calories is what has broken through the plateau.

That said, I am making almond filled danish pastries today! But I did find a way to make some more forgiving baked goods healthier...King Arthur Flour sells a whole wheat flour made from white whole wheat that is naturally lighter than the traditional whole wheat and ground more finely
The other day I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with this flour and oats, making them 100% whole grain...and nobody noticed! Plus the fact that I cut down the sugar, these were cookies that were "Good Tasting and Good For You", and I had no qualms about letting Moppet 4 have five of them!

Well, it's time to break out the weights for my last Shoulders and Arms workout in this P90X round.