Last week I started thinking about getting back on track with my plans to get in shape.  It’s been more than a month since I’ve put P90X on hold an I want to get back on it.  I haven’t yet decided when I’m going to start back up, but in the meantime I’ve been taking some smaller steps to get back on the bandwagon.

A week ago my wife and I went for a 75 minute walk, and this past weekend I also did about 3 hours of gardening on Sunday.  It’s not much but it’s a good start to get my body moving.

I actually haven’t weighed myself in the last month, but I just did and I’m at 207.8lbs and my Body Fat is at 26.2%.  It looks like my weight dropped a bit but I think it’s all been muscle.  That’s a bit depressing, but I have been on a break for a month and haven’t worked out at all so it’s to be expected.

One thing I definitely want to figure out very soon is my diet.  I think it is crucial to be eating properly if you’re going to be on a fitness program.  My problem is not knowing what I should or shouldn’t be eating, but making it a priority in my life above all the other things I’m working on in my life.

On another note, does anyone else here live in Canada and have any interest in becoming a P90X coach?  They are currently not accepting Canadian applicants, but if you contact me I have a contact that will be speaking to BeachBody in the next while who’s trying to get the Canadian market opened up.  If you’re interested, contact me and I’ll provide more details.

As I’m sure you guys have noticed, I haven’t been updating the site in the last week or so.  I’ve been going through a life planning process and really getting clear on my values and goals in life.

As part of this process I’m really re-evaluating my goals in the Fitness and Health category of my life.  As some of you who have been following this blog from day one have seen, I started off my plan on February 9th and for the first 30 days of the plan I was following the P90X fitness plan pretty much exactly as laid out in the system, and I was following the diet part about 80%.

In the second phase of the program (After day 30) I went back to eating my normal diet which isn’t as healthy as I’d like it to be, but continued on with my exercise plan.  Surprisingly, even though I ate crappy I actually lost some fat weight in the second phase of the program, but probably not as much as I could have lost if I was eating healthy.

I’ve been getting really busy with some projects I’m working on for my businesses and it’s been putting a strain on my workout schedule and eating patterns.  In the first phase, I was mostly doing my workouts during the afternoons but lately I haven’t been making time to do my workouts until well after midnight which makes it really hard to stick with the program.

Probably the most frustrating thing has been that I’ve been working so hard on the exercise part of the program, but because my diet sucks I haven’t been losing as much fat as I’d like to and as much as I know I can, so it just feels like I’ve been getting “bigger”.

I need to do something about my diet.  It’s just getting too hard to keep exercising when I know that my diet is not up to par.  It feels like all the hard work I’m doing during the workouts gets wasted with the crappy foods I eat.

I think I need to work out a diet that’s not as strict as the P90X diet, but not as “loose” as what I’ve been doing lately.  I need something that’s going to give me the energy I need to complete the workouts.

My biggest problem is my addiction to sugar.  Almost everyone I know has this addiction to varying degrees.  I’ve gone off of sugar in the past a few times and always experienced “withdrawal” symptoms during the first few days very similar to those that drug addicts experience when getting off of drugs.  Most people don’t believe me when I tell them this, but that’s because they’ve never tried getting off of sugar before.  Some of the research I heard on white sugar suggests that it’s actually more addictive than Cocaine.

I’ve tried reducing my sugar intake before, but I find that it’s actually easier to just completely go cold turkey and just survive the first few days and then you’re no longer craving it at all.  Now, when I say “Sugar”, I don’t just mean the white sugar you put in your coffee or tea.  I’m talking about ALL types of refined sugars, like white breads, corn starches, breakfast cereals with sugar in them, white pasta, white rice, artificial sweeteners like Splenda or Aspartame etc.  Basically the only kind of sugars you’re allowed to eat is the sugars you find in whole fruits and vegetables.  It’s not easy to do this, but it’s a really good way to lose fat weight.

Anyway, I’m still working on deciding if I want to do this, or if I want to just gradually cut down on my sugar intake and just work on making sure I eat healthy foods in my diet and allow myself to eat crappy stuff too if I want, but only after I’ve had my nutritious foods.  For example, if I want dessert, I could eat an apple first and then if I still want some ice cream after then I can still have it but only after I eat my apple.

I’m working on figuring all the “mental” stuff right now, and in the meantime my workouts are on hold for a few days.  Also, the last few days I’ve been feeling like crap.  I’ve been waking up with a sore throat and feeling lethargic.  I hope I didn’t create a flu in my body with the crap I’ve been eating.  That’s another reason I wanted to take a few more days off, to let myself rest and recover from whatever this thing is.