Day 1
Monday, July 9th, 2007 Day 1 - Fitness test
Alright! Up early (not necessarily bright), and ready to go. Today is the fitness test that P90X requires potential users to complete. The program is quite advanced, and someone in very poor physical condition wouldn't have a hope in hell of completing even the test.
We measured our resting heart rate, weighed ourselves, took measurements of various limbs and torso points, and snapped a few "before" pics. Up next was the fitness test, which included basic strength and cardio fitness levels. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't overly difficult either. My guess is that a person of average fitness and health would be able to pass.
With the fitness test done and passed by both of us, we pressed on with the P90X program and have the first, predetermined meal of the program. There are various levels of calorie intake that users are grouped into. I fell into the 2400 calorie/day group, and Chelsea was in a lower calorie group. We still ate the same things, I just had more of it. Any recipes or amounts I report here are for me only.
Today's breakfast consisted of:
The morning snack consisted of a recovery drink and a protein bar. Not bad. Certainly a nice break from the monstrosity of a breakfast I had a couple hours earlier. I thought I'd be stuffed after that massive breakfast, but it turns out that a diet that relies on half of its calories coming from protein isn't all that filling. That's probably because the body can't digest more than 32g, or 128 calories, worth of protein in one sitting.
Lunch was a chef salad that Chelsea was kind enough to prepare for us the evening before. Did I mention how long meal preparation takes with these pre-planned meals? You'll get a true appreciation for it when I describe what Monday evening consisted of. Anyways, despite this being a reduced calorie diet, we were eating a truck load of food for the normal meals of the day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). I suppose that works when I'm eating a salad that consists of 4 cups of salad and veggies and there's nary a calorie to be seen from all that food.
I can't recall the afternoon snack. It must have been something semi-normal.
Ah, and now my (least) favourite part of the first day: dinner. Heh. Here was the rest of my day after coming home from work: make dinner, eat, make lunch, sleep. I'm not kidding.
Dinner was a vast cornucopia of delicious foods:
The roasted red pepper soup took more effort than it was worth, in my humble opinion. We still have about 3-4 cups of it sitting in the fridge, we liked it that much. At least it made a half-decent topping for the rice we had. The salmon was delicious, but 8oz is 1) too expensive and 2) too much, even for me. Poor Chelsea, who would be a vegetarian by now if I wasn't the cook in the house, had to eat 6oz of the stuff. I think she managed to eat about half of her food over a period of about half an hour to 45 minutes. We started out at the kitchen table, but as time wore on, our butts started to get sore from sitting there for so long. She moved to the couch to work a bit more on her dinner, while I tried to figure out an alternative to this P90Xtreme meal plan.
Well, after dinner was done with, it was time to make lunch. YAY! Shrimp stirfry with a mound of vegetables, I kid you not, that must have weighed at least a pound, if not 2. All this was 2 SERVINGS. No left overs. It was pretty tasty, to be honest, but not worth a half hour of my time. Especially since we were only getting one meal out of it. Oh, and did I mention it used an entire bag of frozen shrimp? That worked out to be about $7-8 worth of crustacean goodness.
So here we were, Chelsea cleaning round 2 of dishes, and me trying to puzzle out how anyone who doesn't have a personal cook and a million dollars could afford this meal plan. When the kitchen was finally cleaned for the last time that day, we dragged our tired asses to bed, hopefully ready to wake up at 5:30am again tomorrow to tackle this program.
Alright! Up early (not necessarily bright), and ready to go. Today is the fitness test that P90X requires potential users to complete. The program is quite advanced, and someone in very poor physical condition wouldn't have a hope in hell of completing even the test.
We measured our resting heart rate, weighed ourselves, took measurements of various limbs and torso points, and snapped a few "before" pics. Up next was the fitness test, which included basic strength and cardio fitness levels. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't overly difficult either. My guess is that a person of average fitness and health would be able to pass.
With the fitness test done and passed by both of us, we pressed on with the P90X program and have the first, predetermined meal of the program. There are various levels of calorie intake that users are grouped into. I fell into the 2400 calorie/day group, and Chelsea was in a lower calorie group. We still ate the same things, I just had more of it. Any recipes or amounts I report here are for me only.
Today's breakfast consisted of:
- an eight egg white mushroom omelette with various veggies in it,
- 1 cup of 1% cottage cheese
- 1 cup of sliced strawberries
The morning snack consisted of a recovery drink and a protein bar. Not bad. Certainly a nice break from the monstrosity of a breakfast I had a couple hours earlier. I thought I'd be stuffed after that massive breakfast, but it turns out that a diet that relies on half of its calories coming from protein isn't all that filling. That's probably because the body can't digest more than 32g, or 128 calories, worth of protein in one sitting.
Lunch was a chef salad that Chelsea was kind enough to prepare for us the evening before. Did I mention how long meal preparation takes with these pre-planned meals? You'll get a true appreciation for it when I describe what Monday evening consisted of. Anyways, despite this being a reduced calorie diet, we were eating a truck load of food for the normal meals of the day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). I suppose that works when I'm eating a salad that consists of 4 cups of salad and veggies and there's nary a calorie to be seen from all that food.
I can't recall the afternoon snack. It must have been something semi-normal.
Ah, and now my (least) favourite part of the first day: dinner. Heh. Here was the rest of my day after coming home from work: make dinner, eat, make lunch, sleep. I'm not kidding.
Dinner was a vast cornucopia of delicious foods:
- 8oz grilled lemon dill salmon with a lemon-shallot sauce
- 1 cup of blanched asparagus
- 1 cup of long grain, brown rice
- 2 cups of roasted red pepper soup
The roasted red pepper soup took more effort than it was worth, in my humble opinion. We still have about 3-4 cups of it sitting in the fridge, we liked it that much. At least it made a half-decent topping for the rice we had. The salmon was delicious, but 8oz is 1) too expensive and 2) too much, even for me. Poor Chelsea, who would be a vegetarian by now if I wasn't the cook in the house, had to eat 6oz of the stuff. I think she managed to eat about half of her food over a period of about half an hour to 45 minutes. We started out at the kitchen table, but as time wore on, our butts started to get sore from sitting there for so long. She moved to the couch to work a bit more on her dinner, while I tried to figure out an alternative to this P90Xtreme meal plan.
Well, after dinner was done with, it was time to make lunch. YAY! Shrimp stirfry with a mound of vegetables, I kid you not, that must have weighed at least a pound, if not 2. All this was 2 SERVINGS. No left overs. It was pretty tasty, to be honest, but not worth a half hour of my time. Especially since we were only getting one meal out of it. Oh, and did I mention it used an entire bag of frozen shrimp? That worked out to be about $7-8 worth of crustacean goodness.
So here we were, Chelsea cleaning round 2 of dishes, and me trying to puzzle out how anyone who doesn't have a personal cook and a million dollars could afford this meal plan. When the kitchen was finally cleaned for the last time that day, we dragged our tired asses to bed, hopefully ready to wake up at 5:30am again tomorrow to tackle this program.
posted by Tim at 9:34 a.m.
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