The Day After P90X

…is just like any other day.

Except you’re in a lot better shape then you were 92 days ago.
Except you find your pants don’t really fit anymore.
Except you don’t eat a lot of junk food (if any).
Except you feel like you need to get a good workout in.
Except you have developed some really healthy habits.

One of the questions I kept being asked as I neared the end and reached the completion of P90x was this:

How did you do it everyday, especially when you didn’t feel like doing it?

Great question. At the beginning of the program, I wouldn’t have had the experience (or discipline) to be able to answer it. I also realize that my experience may not be the same as someone else’s and I continually have a lot to learn. So here’s some observations I have for those times when my “feelings” fought hard against my “doing” the workouts and eating right.

Ignore your feelings.

Yup. I just ignored all the feelings that said I didn’t need to workout that day. The feelings came in a lot of different forms. They were thoughts that said, you’re too tired or you’re too busy or you can skip just one day. Every time those thoughts came into my head (and they did often), I already had a plan to deal with them. I ignored them. I didn’t let them persuade me. I consciously refuted them by saying, “I will workout today” and “I will eat right today.”

At some point along the 90 day process, it finally occurred to me that many of my thoughts that urged me to stop, to quit, to back off just a little – were nothing but lies I was telling myself. That’s right…lies. Somewhere in my innermost being, my psyche was churning out falsehoods to keep me in my comfort zone. I was fighting myself. I think that was one of my breakthrough moments. I didn’t have to do what I was thinking. I could do what I had committed to do.

Just push play.

This is the mantra of P90X (along with Bring it!). The folks at Beachbody.com already knew that my feelings were going to fight me, so they gave me a strategy: 1) Put the DVD in the machine, 2) Push play, 3) Do what you see the people on the screen doing. That’s it. Once you push play you almost have to do the workout. It’s all of the things that get in the way up to the moment before you push play that will keep you from working out.

Have a plan.

One of the reasons I have never really stuck with working out in the past is because I lacked a solid plan. With P90X, I knew what I needed to do for every single day. I didn’t just walk up to the weights and start wondering what to do. I knew specific exercise. I knew how much weight. I knew how many reps I should shoot for. And when it came to eating, the program provided a very specific menu or gave me a ton of options if I chose to use their portion guide. Since I didn’t have to come up with all of this on my own, I could focus on what I needed to do each day: workout and eat right.

Challenge yourself.

If you read my last post (I Completed P90X) you’ll notice that I chose to do P90X because I felt like I needed a mountain to climb. I didn’t want to simply react to life, I wanted to be intentional. I wanted to see what I was made of. You don’t discover who you are on the days where it’s easy to workout or during those moments where all you have to eat are healthy options. You find out about yourself in the midst of the struggle. Most people don’t climb mountains because mountains are hard to climb. But then they miss out on the view, on the journey, on the way people discover things about themselves because they pushed past their routine. It’s a great feeling to workout. It’s an even greater feeling to complete a workout when everything within you is fighting to do something else.

Keep track.

Not only did I know what I was going to do with P90X, I also knew what I did. I knew the results of my fitness test on Day 1. I knew how much I weighed throughout the whole program. I knew what I ate. I knew how many reps I did on the very first workout all the way through the very last workout. I kept track.

Do you know what happened when I kept track? I saw results. Those results then became motivation to achieve more results. My former results became targets on the wall for future results. I knew I was progressing because I was recording it all on paper.

At the end of P90X I knew it wasn’t the end. I mean, I’m going to keep going. But there’s something about seeing a date on the calendar and working hard at something; knowing you won’t have to do it forever. The thing is…I don’t want to stop now.