P90 Masters Wrap Up & What's Next

I did it!  I finished the P90 Masters Series on December 27th.  It wasn't all rainbows and puppy dogs, but it wasn't exactly horrible either.  I definitely didn't get the dramatic visual results I got with last year's Raise The Bar Challenge, but my clothes fit better and I feel much stronger and healthier, so it was definitely a worth while endeavor.

I only lost about 6 pounds, but I've gotten strong enough to do the majority of my push ups on my toes - something I wasn't able to do before.

My body fat is only down 3%, but somehow I have lines in my abs that I've never seen before.

I may have only lost a few inches off my hips and waist, but I'm more flexible than I was when I was practicing yoga on a regular basis.  That's something I didn't realized I missed until I got it back!

(source)

Now onto why I think I didn't get such visually dramatic results this time:

• After Raise The Bar, I mostly stuck with the healthy eating plan, so I didn't have as much work to do to clean up my diet and thus, since my body was already used to eating pretty well, I didn't drop weight simply from dropping junk food.

• Stress.  My stress levels have been through the freakin' roof for the last few months and that kind of stress is obviously sub-optimal for losing weight/building muscle/etc.  Unfortunately, I don't get paid to workout, so there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it.  A girl's gotta work!

• Cheat meals.  I let myself off the hook a little more during P90 Masters than I did during Raise The Bar.  This was probably not the best thing I could have done as far as maximizing results, but I truly believe it's a big part of what got me to the 90 Day mark instead of making it to about 65 Days.   I got off the "Dieting Merry-Go-Round" a long time ago and I'm not about to get back on it!

So that leads to the big question: What's Next?

I'm giving myself a short break (about 4 weeks) from any formal program.  I'm indulging in some less-than-clean eats and doing whatever sort of workout I feel like doing.  After that, it's on like Donkey Kong because on January 26th I'll be starting the 63 days of torture known as The Insanity Workout - a.k.a. The Hardest Workout Ever Put on DVD.  Oh yeah...I definitely think this one is going to hurt and I'm already looking forward to it.  Stay tuned!

Sourced from Pinterest

Have you ever tried Insanity?  Would you?  What would you like to see included in my Insanity posts?

The New Challenge (P90 Masters)

Remember last year when I started the Raise The Bar Challenge just as #HellMonth was beginning at work?  Yeah...I did something similar this year.  On September 29th I started a second round of Les Mills Pump.  After about 2 weeks of feeling completely unchallenged by the workouts, I switched gears and moved over to the P90 Masters series, an at home boot camp-style workout.  P90 Masters consists of 7 DVD's used over the course of the 90 day challenge.  It also happens to be the precursor to the wildly popular P90-X workout, so needless to say it's definitely a big, sweat-inducing challenge - which I'm all for.  I'm not kidding...some of the workouts have left me lying on the floor of The Cave in a puddle of my own sweat!  I'll get into the specific workouts in a future post, but let's just say these make Pump look like a walk in the park.

I wasn't quite in the same shape I was last year when I began my challenge.  I sort of let myself go a little a lot after the Pewaukee Triathlon so I have a little more work to do this time.  I'm also not being quite as strict about the nutrition program as I don't have a beach vacation/black-tie wedding looming on the horizon.  Instead of eating clean 7 days a week, I'm allowing myself one cheat meal (and the occasional after work cocktail).  That cheat meal seems to do wonders for keeping me on track the rest of the week.

It's worth being good so I can be bad!

I'm not going to post Day 0 and Day 30 progress pictures at the moment, mostly because I'm really not in the mood to crop/blur my face, but so far, I'm down about 3 pounds (stress can really wreak havoc on weight loss), 3.5% body fat, and I've lost about an inch and half off my waist and hips.  I'm also finding that I feel much stronger in general, which is never a bad thing!  Hopefully now that life is slowly returning to normal, I'll see the weight and fat loss pick up a little bit.  Maybe I should schedule a beach vacation for a little extra motivation?

Have you ever tried an at home workout program?  If so, what was it and did you love or hate it?  If not, what would you like to try?