Fascinated - one might say, “agog”. But I also find sneezing interesting.
Today's a day for titles pulled out of random things the TV is saying in the background. Underneath that information-rich skin, though, it's just the three-week P90X update - sorry if that's disappointing. ;)
So. When I lost weight using the 6x 200-calorie meals / day "Polyphasic Diet", it took about 5 weeks to really start showing. It was pretty easy to maintain by that point, but whew, I remember about three weeks in thinking, "This is just impossible."
And tomorrow will be the last day of week 3 of P90X. Next week I'll be 1/3 through, but the chunks go [(3 identical weeks + 1 different week) x 3], so it does feel like the end of this week is accomplishing something.
But of course, it's still week three. I don't really see much difference*, and man, I'm missing the time and effort this is all costing.
Fortunately, many things have taught me not to quit at week three, probably most of all polyphasic sleep itself, which is really easy to quit at about week 3 if you're not careful…The early exhaustion can be gotten through with guts alone, but the following couple weeks of time and effort to work it into one's lifestyle fully are, I would argue, sometimes even more exhausting than zombie-mode.
*It's not that I see no difference - actually my arms and stomach are minimally, but noticeably, tighter, and my shoulders and legs are definitely on the muscliest side of normal for me. But it's not really a motivating difference.
I had prepared a bit for this, though that preparation came in the form of just plugging along, in a sense. But I've made sure to let my days of success (which has been all but a few of them) accumulate weight that lends more legitimacy to my fitness as an ongoing enterprise, deserving of effort and investment**. As such, my awesome workout clothes (all sale items, thank goodness) should be here any day, and my giant box of awesome Builder's Bars got here yesterday. I'm also perfecting chocolate milk - improvements include a few trials of protein powder and an upgrade (definitely upgrade) to soymilk. These little advances function not just for making things easier as they go forward, but also as gifts - achievement rewards, to the MMO-acquainted - to help motivate me forward.
**I would like to make it less of an effort and investment than it is now, don't get me wrong. But changing takes a lot of effort itself, and once you've gotten past that part, you can work on making things more efficient. I'm still holding out hope that I can try getting my polyphasic schedule back during the remaining 9 weeks of P90X, but if not, I'll focus on finding a maintenance workout to follow P90X with that takes less time and isn't so intense that I can't go back to Everyman. (Yeah, going back to Everyman is not optional; I miss it crazy bad.)
The diet goes well too, though hitting the protein/carb balance they want for the first three weeks (50%/20%) is haaaarrrd, and there've definitely been days that I was off by a bit. Having too many carbs vs. protein will make the "slimming down" part go slower (or possibly just not work I guess, though I should be/probably am losing fat just from burning extra calories and building muscle too - and I had minimal extra fat anyway), but that's not my biggest worry. I like being on the thin side, sure, but I'm also old enough now to not care so much - I've shaken off the ad industry's insistence that thin is (and only is) beautiful, thank goodness. I do find health beautiful, but I can feel totally gorgeous with a little plump on me, no problem. (And personally speaking, I dig curvy women - I'm too small to be a proper one myself, but healthily plump hourglassy women are my favorites to look at for sure.)
Also, slipping in a totally unrelated thing at the end…I've written some new verses to an old song, and am considering the rather typical YouTubeing of myself singing a song. Interesting idea? Or just stupid? Your opinions matter, Internet, even if only to this one lowly IP address!
Peaceful yet Interesting Times,
PD
Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.