Introduction | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
Setting the goals, buying the food, and getting the weights were all the easy part. If anything, it was a little exciting to get this process started. Saying you’re going to do something and actually doing it are two completely different things. I powered up P90X3’s Total Synergistics on a Thursday and started working towards my goal.
I was 195 lbs 23.4% body fat, 27.8 BMI (I honestly have no idea if the two numbers were high or low but I included them as a tracking reference), fresh off an injury from playing soccer were I tweaked a muscle by literally walking. That first day was not pretty. I couldn’t do more than one pull up, I couldn’t bend my knees for a squat, and I had negative running stamina. I completed 20 seconds (out of 60 seconds) or less of any given exercise. Overall it was very very challenging. That was how the first week went with the workouts. I wanted to workout because I was curious to see how impossible the next days workout was going to be.
From an eating standpoint, I had a lot of external help with controlling what was put into my body. The COVID-19 shut down made it impossible to eat out and it forced me to meal prep in order to place home delivery grocery orders. I already threw away all the yummy unhealthy stuff in preparation of this challenge, so the only things to eat were healthy options. During the first week of following my new diet, I found myself hungrier quicker and wanting to eat more which was a huge impulse I had to fight. Eating and snacking was something I thoroughly enjoyed. Now, food was strictly an efficient fuel to power my workouts (that were killing me).
During that first week, my body felt drained as I was adjusting to both the physical feeling of doing hard exercise while eating healthy.
The next two weeks were identical to the first in terms of feeling tired and hungry. The only difference was, I knew what to expect for the workouts and started to dread certain days over others. I was significantly more tired when it came time to putting the kids to bed and would even pass out while my wife was starting the evening bedtime routine.
The first 4 weeks of P90X3 and practicing healthy eating habits, I lost 5 lbs. In the mirror I looked the same and I didn’t feel any physical improvement. Thankfully I had my action goals which I was accomplishing every day.
- Working out daily
- Eating healthy
- No eating after 7pm
LeRoy J. Watkins III 