Dani, Doubles, and Dieting!

Day 0 vs. Day 30
Would you believe there is not a single pound lost between these two photos?!


So I have been neglecting this blog a little bit, and for that I am sorry. The reason is, I got DAMN frustrated about a week and a half ago! 2 1/2 weeks of dieting hard, and training harder, and I hadn't lost a single pound. Not. One. Pound. I didn't think I had set a very lofty goal to lose 12 pounds in 13 weeks, but apparently, my body disagrees. I mean, I am a personal trainer. This is what I do for people! Help them reach their goals. So why was I so stuck with reaching my own?

There were a couple things I believe to be the reason:

1. Diet. Man, I'm just going to say it. That p90x diet sucks. I see what they're doing, and I think it's a valiant attempt at universalizing a basic "cutting" diet so that anyone can figure it out, but I don't think it is a one-size-fits-all kind of deal. The problem for me personally is that this diet has very very very few carbs, but theyre all in one serving, so for one meal of the day, I feel bloated and heavy and uncomfortable, and the rest of the day I am starved. The other thing is that they push so many of their products into the diet (i.e bars, recovery drink, shakeology etc) that don't line up with the food groups they are otherwise telling you to eat....it's kind of confusing. And overall, I found it to be too low of a calorie diet.

2. I've been getting stronger. With few exceptions, you can't get stronger without gaining muscle. So I've been GAINING muscle, which means I must be losing fat in order for the scales to stay the same. To say how much or how little is too hard, but it explains the scale not moving.


Now the scale is not my number one concern, my bodyfat percentage is, so overall, I have moved closer to my goal. Huzzah! But I still have a ways to go, and here's how I am going to do it:

I can't keep doing the p90x diet. Although it is working really well for giacomo, it was making me really uncomfortable, and leaving me with no energy to workout. I know what works for me, I've done this before. So I have changed my diet to roughly a 40/30/30 diet (carbs/fat/protein) and it is at roughly 1600 calories. All of this is divided up into 3 meals and 2 snacks, and every meal has a little carbs, protein, and fat. The fat, overall, is a little bit higher than it is when I'm not dieting, but fat allows me to feel more satiated (think PB&J Smoothie...mmmm) and makes it feel like I'm less hungry in between meals. My last meal of the day is just veggies and protein, and if I'm really hungry later in the evening, I have a piece of fruit. Oh and I'm drinking a ton of water. I record everything I eat religiously into the Sparkpeople App on my iphone, but they also have a website that is even more awesome, but less portable ;-)

The other thing that I am doing differently is that I have decided to do p90x doubles instead of p90x classic. This means that on lifting days, I am doing TWO workouts--lifting and also doing the CardioX workout, which I actually really like. The biggest pain so far has just been the amount of time it takes since cardio is in the am and lifting is in the pm. I feel like I live in sweaty gym clothes on those days, but I can feel my cardiovascular capacity increasing which is a HUGE deal to me! But I am constantly sore ;-)


Giacomo and I are flying to NY next week and we'll be visiting his family in Brooklyn, and then going to Massachusetts to visit my family for a total of 14 days (I think), so traveling and keeping this up is going to be damn tricky. We did buy a good set of fitness bands on ebay, and we're both looking into getting passes to our old gyms, but we likely won't have the best transportation, or the ability to do laundry and will have to rely on the food we are served more than we'd like to, AHHHHH!


So, we have to go into this with a plan! And that we will!

Recapping Week 2!

Dinner at the Vegan P90X house

veggies, roasted potatoes, and gardein "chicken"

Week 2 has come to an end! WooHoo!!!!

I think Giacomo and I would both agree that week 2 was way harder than week 1. We were really pushing it through all of our workouts, and SO looked forward to every single gram of carbohydrates that we ate. Giacomo actually mowed the lawn this morning, and the smell made him think "mmmm wheat grass juice....sugar". hahaha. So that should give you an idea of how we are feeling.

We did every workout, although we switched up our rest day with a cardio day, but we got them all in. And week two of no cheating on the diet. UGH! We're both starting to feel the effects of this "Fat Shredder" phase, which is both good and bad. By this I mean that if either of us goes more than 4 hours without food, we become cranky, confused, sort of angry for no reason, and just overall sucky human beings. The reason this is good (glass half full people!!!) is that it means that our metabolisms are picking up speed. Before we could go 6-8 hours without food (although that didn't often happen), sans side effects, but not anymore! So our metabolisms are definitely revving up, which is cool! But still, when we hit this point, which we are constantly aiming not to, we should be in separate cages and fed through a slot in the door. Seriously.

A snake I found wriggling across the street on our run!!

I put him in the grass

Giacomo has shown great signs of a fired up metabolism, and has already lost about 9 pounds. give or take. The same cannot be said for me, as far as numbers on the scale go, which I find to be a little weird, since I have been dieting hard and working out just as much, with no cheats. I have come to grips with the fact that 140 is where my body likes to be, and I know it will fight me tooth and nail if I try to change that too much, too fast. So I am o.k with slow, steady, long lasting change.

I did notice that my clothes are already fitting me differently, so sweet. But MOREOVER, I am getting stronger again; I can feel it and I can see it. So I figured even if the scale isn't moving, my body composition is changing, so I checked it out, and BOOYA! 19.6% body fat. Which is down from 21 point something to start. I don't really trust body fat measurements a whole lot because there are just SO many variables that go into calculating that, but I know for sure mine has gone down, at least a little, and that is making me happy. :-)

At Laughing Planet where we went for dinner.

Yup, that's a T-Rex eating a corn chip.

No, we didn't do it. We found him like that.