Day 8

Ok, so today I have changed my eating and been working out for 8 days. I haven't started P90X3 yet, but that will be on Monday. I have most everything in place for my start. I have my resistance bands. I have gone through (sort of) the food in the house and replaced bad for good. I think I am ready. Oh, wait... I need to post my before pics and measurements. Sunday!!

The P90X3 nutrition guide suggests that I take in 3000 calories. I was going by memory and what myfitnesspal.com had me set at from my P90X days at 2400 calories. Now with my weight at what I estimated at 350 lbs (which after weighing I was pretty close) and my maintenance calories were  around 3400. I have not been taking in that much. My calorie counts in order starting Friday 13th are as follows: 2867, 2576, 2764, 2645, 2623, 2198, 2227 and today 1816. I know that for my first week it looks good, and it is only my first week. The counts for each day are pretty accurate, but there may be a discrepancy here and there, mostly on amount more based on an estimate vs what is real.

Although there may be some difference from reality to what actually took place, I am pretty confident that my measurements were very close. The catch here is that the better I eat, the more I eat and the fewer bad calories I get. I am eating as much as the first day, but not as bad. When you clean up your intake, you find you can eat a ton more food, lose cravings for junk food and increase your energy level. The main difference in my eating today was my breakfast. I try to do my workout prior to eating so instead of a traditional breakfast, I had a Shakeology shake with skim milk and frozen strawberries in it. That breakfast netted me 290 total calories with 41g of carbs, 2g of fat and 25g of proteins. Now the breakfast from the day before was 522 calories and it was a cereal with milk, a banana and 5 hard boiled egg whites.

The total of what I consumed with both breakfasts was almost identical. Infact, I almost couldn't finish the shake as I was getting full. I have noticed too, that with eliminating the late night snacking and abundant eating, I have also reduced the amount I can consume at one setting. This is another benefit of eating clean. Diet is crucial to how your body reacts to what it takes in. That statement is not some sort of illusive epiphany. I believe that is one of those "no shit" statements. Even so, it seems that most of us ignore it and actually assume they can eat how they want because "their metabolism" will deal with it or they could do this when they were a fit 18 year old and now as a moderately obese or just over weight 50 year old they think it will be just like then. I'm sorry to say this is not the case. Yes, some people have the ability to eat whatever they want and I hate them. Ectomorphs!

I really began to appreciate diet during my first round of P90X and I was vigilant and very strict on myself. During my second round of X, I slacked off a bit, allowing less clean food more so as I rationalized it as a test to see what will and will not work for me. I still lost weight and I did get below 300 lbs, however I could have done better and lost more and maybe kept up on at least my diet. I know what I have to do. I have the tools to make it happen and I have the support system allowing me to succeed instead of fail. Now it is up to me to do it. I hope I can keep up what I have started this week and more over do as well as I start the workouts of X3.

Good luck to us all!!!

and...

Bring it!!!!