P90X week 6 done; Week 7 Started

Do you know what that means?????   Mama's got a new pair of shoes! When I made a commitment to myself 6 weeks ago I gave myself a little extra incentive to push play and Bring It - a brand new pair of Wave Creation 11 running shoes.  Why running shoes? Well as I've gotten older, I've discovered I love to get out and run.  I love being outside. I love the way I feel during and after a run.  And nothing raises my low resting heart rate like running the HILLS around my house.

Sorry, Tony - no matter how hard I Bring It during Cardio X, or Kempo X - I just can't get my Heart Rate above 120bmp...and I'm working my ass off, I'm sweating buckets and breathing hard, unable to hold a conversation.  Now, when I do Plyo X, I can get my HR super high, I can actually get it into VO2Max range - but I have yet to get through a whole Plyo X session, I'm working up to it. And the point of the cardio sessions are to burn fat, which I have a hard time doing if I'm up in the 165bpm - 185bmp range or below 130bpm for the work out.  I guess having a low resting heart rate and all that distance swimming I did through High School and College makes me have to work that much harder to really get into the fat burning range.

So my new trainers came last week. And I took them out for their first spin on my Kempo X day.  It felt awesome getting out and hitting the pavement.. Since this was only my second time back hitting the pavement in over a year I took it slow, and ran about 3miles in 45mins, and averaged a 135bpm for the whole run.  Burning fat, breaking in new shoes, and getting my running legs under me.  I can't wait til the boy can sit up un-assisted and we get a Cougar 2 Chariot, so I can take both the girl and the boy running!  That's 20lbs for the chariot, 20lbs of boy and 25lbs of girl! Running with both kids in hills around my neighborhood is Bringing it.

So far 7 weeks into P90X (Classic) I've lost l3 lbs! The size 16 pants/jeans/shorts I fit into after delivering my son 6 months ago are falling off!!!! I don't need to unbutton them - they're like sweatpants that I can just pull on! Time to dig into my closet and dresser to see if the size 14's I've got fit.  I'll be honest I haven't taken a before picture - b/c I can't stand how I look right now - When I started I was the heaviest I've ever been in my life.  Two back to back pregnancies can do that - especially if you haven't lost the pregnancy weight from the first kid, when you get pregnant with the second.  Now 7 weeks into P90X I've lost all the pregnancy weight I gained with the boy, plus a little extra! Now I just need to loose another 17lbs to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight before I had the girl. And then I only have another 30lbs or so to loose to get to my ideal weight, as established by my doctor.

I'm giving myself 1 year to bring all this weight off.  I'd like to drop 2lbs/week - but I realize that's not going to happen every week, because as I get further down the P90X cycle I'm going to start building muscle and muscle weighs more than fat.  And more muscle means a greater ability to burn more fat.

The first 6 weeks were not a breeze.  Every day I showed up and Tony kicked my butt.  I brought it...well accept during week 4, when I got rolled by a migraine that kept me non-functional for about 4 days.  I shook it off the best I could, then started week 5.  In the 6 weeks, the hardest work outs are PlyoX (which I'm not ready for - I could barely get through 20mins week 1, so opted for Cardio X for the remainder of this 90-day excursion) and Ab Ripper X..  PlyoX is hard,  because its hard, and I was out of shape after being pregnant for 9 months.  The most I could do while pregnant was walk - anything more and my boy would ensure I got dizzy and nauseated if I pushed it too far.  Walking is great and all but it just doesn't do it for me.

Now Ab Ripper X is my arch nemesis. Do you want to know why?  Try being pregnant and have a C-Section. Your abs are shot.  They've been pulled apart so your Doctor can deliver your baby.  My Abs are no where near the strength they should be. So I do what I can, and modify the rest.  A lot of the time I'm doing crunches but I'm Bringing It the best way I know how.  I think I can maybe do 1/2 the moves.  Here's what I can do, in and outs, bicycles, crunchy frog, scissors, tilt rock and raise, heels to heaven, oblique v-ups, and mason twists.  On each of those I can get between 15-20 reps in on all of them and I'm slowly building to 25 on each of them.. The rest of the Ab Ripper moves are non-existent give my poor, weak little abs...but I'll get there.  Just Like I'll eventually get through PlyoX too.

Overall the biggest challenge I face with P90X is finding the time, between working full time, nursing the 6 month old boy, spending time with my girl and John, and trying to balance getting a healthy dinner on the table, getting the kids stuff ready for the next day, staying on top of cloth diapers in the wash, before falling into bed exhausted from the day.  So I fit in a work out during my lunch hour -if I can.  I'll be honest - there are some days I'm just not able to squeeze in a P90X - So I take that day call it a wash, but I don't let that day stop me! I get up the next day and make sure I find the time to Bring It and I press play.

If I can find the time to Bring It, can you Bring it as well?