:: 30 Before 30: Insanity Update ::

Well, as many of you know, one of the things I wanted to accomplish before I turn 30 was to finish Insanity in completion. Mostly because I want the shirt. =) Apparently, if you send in your before and after picture, you get a shirt that says, “Insanity: I Earned It!” I know, I know, when will I wear it out?? But I still want the shirt!! About a month ago, I actually saw a man wearing the shirt at Disneyland. I was incredibly jealous and awestruck by him.

So most people have heard of P90X, made by the same company, but in case you don’t know what Insanity is, I included a link. Essentially, it is an intense, hard-core 60 day DVD workout regimen that includes 10 DVDs covering interval training, cardio, plymetrics, ab work, and some yoga-ish work. Sounds easy enough, right?

WRONG. The first time I watched my sister do it, I thought it looked easy peasy. Then I tried it, and boy was I wrong. I wanted to give up during the beginning of the warmup!! In fact, it took me a couple of weeks when I first started doing Insanity before I could actually do the warmup in completion. Granted, I began from a pretty sedentary state.

So this time, RJ and I are actually following the schedule, and we are almost 3 weeks done. (Whooo!) By far, the farthest and most committed we have ever followed the program. And we both have been actually noticing a difference! I mean, granted, we both for some reason gained like 5 lbs in the past three weeks, but hopefully that’s just muscle weight. =)

But here are some things I’ve noticed:

1. I no longer need naps to get me through the day.

2. I have a lot more energy throughout the day.

3. I am waking up earlier on my own and needing to sleep in less, which is a HUGE deal since I always thought I needed 10-12 hours of sleep a night.

4. I feel stronger as I go through everyday life activities. Even simple things like walking. I know, I know, weaksauce,  who gets winded from walking and going up one flight of stairs?

5. I can see more muscle definition. Now, I realize I am pretty little to begin with and that some people would be happy to have my before picture as their after one. However, I am filling in nicely, and have less of a bony appearance and more of a healthy look to me, which I really like. My body is looking more balanced.

6. This regimen is setting me up to incorporate exercise into my daily life, another 30 before 30. Did you know it takes about 30 days to form or break a habit? Well, with this being a 60 day regimen, hopefully the habit of exercising will form and I’ll be able to continue exercising at least 3-4 times a week afterwards.

Some negatives so far:

1. It is just a really hard and time consuming regimen. Not as time consuming as P90X, but you do have to plan exercise into your day in order to follow through and actually do it.

2. Because it is so intense, you can get injured REALLY easily. RJ has thrown out his back a couple times (however, he is more prone to that sort of injury) and we are not sure whether it was Insanity or a rogue cough, but I sprained my ribs at some point near the beginning of Insanity. Coughing hurt, stretching hurt, and certain exercises would exacerbate it. I also started having this weird foot tingling during certain exercises. My suggestion is to work at your own pace, seriously utilize your core, and ALWAYS choose good form over quantity of exercise. You see it in the people in the videos, they stop when they need to! Shaun T TELLS them to stop!

3. If you travel and don’t have a laptop that runs DVDs, you need to improvise a bit. During a recent trip, RJ and I did the Fit Test from memory. That wasn’t so bad, though for the other DVDs we definitely could not have done so from memory. I don’t think this is a problem for most people, but we only have a netbook which doesn’t have a DVD slot. You could attempt to find it online, but then you’d also need internet.

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SO….so far so good. Hopefully we can keep this up til the very end, even after school starts!

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In other news, I just found out that I passed my first year comprehensive exam for my Master’s program, which consisted of 200 questions covering all topics in all classes taken in my first year of graduate school!  PRAISE the LORD, and without a shred of false humility, that test REALLY had me worried. But hurrah, I am on track to graduate in June 2012! =)

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