- Do your workouts in the morning.
This is one of the biggest challenges for me. Last week I was experimenting with this. Doing the workouts at 7am right after waking up. I noticed that I just didn't have the energy to get the most out of the workouts. I read that you should wake up and just do it, but after an entire evening and night without food I don't have a lot of stored energy to workout. So I decided to use a trick I learned doing long distance cycling. When you do a 100 mile bicycle ride aka century you need to constantly refuel or you'll crash. Similar to when your doing P90X a big meal right before or during a century would be a bad idea. Of course for cycling there are all sorts of magical bars/gels to deal with this. My personal favourite are Clif brand Shot Blocks. They are square blocks of hard gel. 3 of them is about 100 calories loaded with carbs. I find that after eating these I am in much better shape to do the workout. They're really easy to digest so no worries about seeing them again during your workout. - Repeat a couple of days of meals until you get sick of them.
OK I admit it. I really obsess over my diet. I feel that my diet is one of the largest factors to my success or failure. I was really going crazy trying to do all the cooking in the meal plans. Even once I got good at the cooking and started using a grocery delivery service, it was still too much. I have been experimenting with repeating a couple of days from the meal plan. I do this until I'm sick of it and then pick another couple of days. This seems to be a good way of saving time and money. As a single person, if I'm eating a different thing every day for a week I'm almost certain to be wasting food. If your cooking a different thing every day it's harder to combine steps/remember ingredients etc. So next round I'll try this approach. This will hopefully help in the next observation. - Sleep and rest are just as important as exercise.
I wasn't getting nearly enough sleep during my 1st round. I was so concerned with getting my exercises, following the meal plan and trying to have a little bit of a life that I was lucky to get 6 hrs of sleep a night. This isn't good when you're doing that for months. So my third challenge will be getting a full eight hours of sleep a night. In bed my 11pm and up at 7am.
Wish me luck.
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2 comments:
I usually try to do my workouts in the morning, mainly to get them out of the way and to have that revved up energy the rest of the day. Like you, I found I was crashing in some of the workouts in round one. These days, I make a protein/carb shake with one scoop of protein powder, one scoop of Recovery Drink, and two scoops of that mass builder carb stuff and sip it throughout. Then after I have another scoop of protein powder and the other scoop of RD. And a bowl of fiber cereal.
As far as meals go, I ate the same damn thing every day for 7 months last year!!! Turkey sandwiches for lunch and poached salmon for dinner (plus snacks, etc.). I didn't use the nutrition guide so much after I figured out what my calorie needs would be and what my percentages needed to be (20% fat, 40% protein, 40% carbs).
What can I say about sleep? My work schedule is flexible so I was always able to get enough and I agree, I think it makes the difference.
I'm excited to hear how round two is going!
I think you've nailed it on the head, with regards to sleep. I need to get more, in general, and certainly with working out. BTW, excellent blog. I found it through looking at Power 90 stuff. I am starting Power 90 in anticipation of starting P90X after. Thanks :)
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