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?