© Tim Pannell Photography

Well……I’m back. After a self imposed hiatus I have determined it is time for me to get back on this P90X horse and share my fitness goals for 2011 with my readers. First and foremost – a big thank you to all of you who have spurred me on over the last year and a half.

It has been an interesting journey to say the least. My family has experienced quite a few curve balls since I started this blog 1 1/2 years ago. There have been a lot of successes sprinkled with setbacks as well as some failures.

Now, before you “positive minded,” “positive attitude” people start foaming at the mouth, let me say this……I believe in a positive outlook as well, but I believe it is always healthy to review the past to learn what went right as well as what went wrong so that I can repeat what went right and correct what went wrong.

I want to take and am taking personal responsibility for my failure so that I can learn from them and get better and ultimately overcome those weaknesses that more often than not rear their ugly heads at the worst possible times in my life.

I injured myself in plethora (I love that word) of places sometime towards the end of September. I was feeling pretty good….I was seeing improvement in my workouts and I had more energy when I was playing racquetball. So much so that I forgot to keep myself in check and I ended up re injuring my right rotator cuff as well as tearing my right tricep and tearing up both of my knees.

I’m older than I used to be. Truth be told…I just turned 50 yesterday. I still feel like a 20 something in my head, but sadly my body doesn’t heal as quickly as it did when I was younger. It took almost 4 months to be able to get back to P90X without re-aggravating those injuries.

This time around I will be more careful. I have had a complete physical…a colonoscopy (its like living a dream) and have chosen some new dietary guidelines and workout schedules to have more success in 2011. Aside from being overweight, I am healthy. My cholesterol is good, my blood pressure is flirting with being too high, but I’m not in the danger zone and I will not allow myself to hit the danger zone.

It’s nice to know that I can workout hard and not be at risk of blowing something up. The colonoscopy….no problems, no polyps, no issues. Time to get to work.

What did I learn in 2010? I learned that it is much easier and more enjoyable to workout with a partner or multiple partners, but that its not always practical. My wife and I are working out together on the days it makes sense with our schedules and I a working out alone otherwise. My sister in law is in the process of returning to fitness while battling lung cancer. She is responding well to her medication and the tumors in her body are shrinking or disappearing altogether. Miracles happen….plain and simple…..thank God.

She may be able to start back up with some P90X in the not so distant future.

Where did I fail or struggle in 2010?  I’ve come to realize that my biggest mistake of 2010 was my self talk.  Frankly, it was completely counterproductive to what I was trying to achieve.  While I was doing my body lots of good by doing the P90X workouts, I was sabotaging myself with negative self images and self talk…..to the point where I believe it counteracted all the good I was doing with my workouts.

I didn’t lose any weight….whether or not I was working out I stayed at basically the same weight as when I started.  I would lose some and then put some back on.  I was terribly inconsistent and I now believe that it was because I keep calling myself “fat ass,”  “lard ass,” “puss bucket,” “fat bald puke” etc., etc.  In my mind I believed I was a fat slob and my body obliged me by continuing on it’s chubby hubby way.

I have done a lot of reading and studying over the last 4 months to try and get my head on straight…so to speak.  It hasn’t been easy and I can’t tell you that I’m 100% certain that I won’t slip back into my old habits from time to time, but I have worked on my weakness of poor self talk and I am at a point where i”m comfortable enough to share where I’m at with it at the moment.

I am healthy

I am fit

I am strong

I am young

I am energetic

I am a workout beast

These are some of my “I am” statements for the rest of my life.  This is who I am on the inside.  I’m already there.  This is the true me.  The artificial me is what has developed over the years on the outside.  2011 is all about matching up my inside to my outside.

I would workout out hard for months at a time only to look in the mirror and get all pissed off that I was still a fat slob.  Then I would  berate myself and get “small” and weak, not in actual size but in spirit.  I would depress myslef into not accepting myself and then I would fall back into my fat boy cycle.  Now as I’m writing this I realize I may have to change the name of my blog at some point….I guess I’ll worry about that later.

I now know who I am and as a person that is fit, healthy, active, strong, lean etc. I do the things that someone that is all those things does.  I workout, I eat healthy, I keep moving, I expect success,  I am manifesting on the outside who I am on the inside.  I still really do believe I’m the healthy guy I was in my late teens and early 20′s.

I’m turning this thing around.  I’m doing better than I did last year at this time.  I will continue to do better throughout  all of 2011 at getting my outside to mirror who I am on the inside already.

Here’s to success!  Here’s to the journey!  Here’s to self discovery!  Here’s to improving!

My you have an amazing 2011……I know that I will!

P90X 2011 Fitness Goals is a post from: Losing weight with P90X

© Tim Pannell Photography

01/20/10 – Here’s my candid P90X review explaining where I’m at right now.

I’m now 49 years old.  I currently weigh 267 lbs.  At my worst I was 310 lbs.

I had gotten down to about 260 a couple of months ago.  I gained back 12 pounds over the holidays while we had our house up for sale and moved to Utah just after Christmas.

I attribute that to not exercising (other than riding my bike) eating poorly.  We ate out a lot more often because we were showing the house up to 30 times a week.

I also think my stress levels were elevated and caused me to add weight.

Since starting P90X about 8 months ago I’ve gotten into better shape, but that’s still relative.

If you’re new to this blog you wouldn’t know that I’ve gone from weighing 185 lbs with 6% body fat to weighing over 310 lbs. with 46% body fat at my worst.

I’m a victim of my own making.  As a kid I got used to eating anything I wanted and never gaining an ounce of fat.

I developed really bad habits and my relationship with food was pretty unhealthy.

I used to work out regularly when I was in college.  I would lift weights for 1 1/2 hours and play racquetball for 2 hours a day, 6 days a week.

I never did it to stay in shape.  I did it because it was fun.

I started my own commercial photography business in 1985.  I became much more sedentary and at that point started gaining weight.

I got up to 240 pounds and was hating life.

Before my 19 year old daughter was born I started playing pick up basketball gains in the park at lunchtime 5 days a week and I got back down to 185 lbs.

My body fat percentage was probably around 12% at that point.

Since then I’ve ballooned up again and have been struggling to get a handle on my predicament.

Ideally, I want to weigh around 210 pounds and have a body fat percentage of about 10%…….that’s my goal.

I’m doing this for me, my wife and my kids.

I want to be healthy, I want to enjoy my years as an older guy.

P90X is a great workout program.  I love it.  The only problem with it is actually a problem with me.

I haven’t been consistent.  I’ll do well for a couple of weeks and then I’ll get out of the habit.

I’ll eat well for a couple of weeks and then I’ll gradually add more junk into my diet and before you know it I’m drinking soda instead of water and eating cookies and ice cream.

I know myself well enough to know I could never go cold turkey on that stuff, but I need to learn how to eat it sparingly instead of daily.

I’m understanding my body better than I did a year ago.

I know that I respond well to eating 5 – 6 smaller meals each day instead of 2 or 3 bigger meals.

I know that if I can exercise regularly for 2 weeks it’s easier for me to keep at it.

I know that if I skip more than 1 day of exercise I have a good chance of bailing out on my workouts for as much as several weeks.

Today is day 7 of P90X workouts for the year 2010.  We moved from Arizona to Utah and we’ve been in this house for 10 days.

I’ve established a routine of working out at 8 am with my wife and sister in law and it’s going well.

I’ve had bronchitis for 3 weeks and that’s been holding me back.  The higher altitude up here is also making it more difficult for me to breath so I’m still not riding my bike.

Eventually I’ll be healthy again and I can go back to riding the bike 45 minutes a day along with my P90X workouts.

The workouts are great…….IF YOU DO THEM CONSISTENTLY.

The consistency problem comes from me, not P90X.

I’m now accountable to my wife and sister in law and I believe that will help me stay on track.

In any case, it’s 8 am and it’s time to pop in the P90X Shoulders and Arms DVD.

I fully expect to reach my fitness goals within this next year.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

P90X Review – Where Am I Now? is a post from: Losing weight with P90X

© Tim Pannell Photography

Well, we finished day 4 yesterday by doing the P90X Chest, Shoulders & Arms Workout.

It feels so good to be doing P90X consistently.  It’s only been 5 days since I started working out with my wife and sister in law, but I can tell that this is becoming a repeatable routine.

We started working out on Thursday with P90X Shoulders and Arms.  Friday was Kenpo X, Saturday we did Core Synergistics.

We took a break on Sunday and started back up on Monday with Chest, Shoulders & Triceps.

I’m not sure what workout we’ll do this morning, but I know we’ll be doing one of them.

My body is sore in a few places, but not too bad when you consider the intensity of the workouts.

Some of the different types of push ups done in the “chest, shoulders & arms” workout really tax me.

I’m feeling tightness right where my chest attaches to my shoulders.

It’s a good feeling.  That’s one of my favorite parts of working out…….feeling my muscles and being just a little bit sore.

The beauty of the P90X routines is that they work different areas with different exercises from disc to disc.

The soreness I feel in my body moves from day to day to different muscle groups………..I love it.

That feedback from my muscles lets me know the workouts are doing what they’re supposed to do.

The bottom line for me is this – I am at a stage in my life where I can’t wait any longer to get committed to changing my lifestyle.

I started P90X last year and have made a lot of improvements in my life.

I’m eating better than I was.  I’m working out more often than I was.

This year I need to get more consistency.  I know it’s unrealistic for me to cut out sugar completely, it’s just not gonna happen.

Though I can and will do a better job of limiting the amount of sugar I take in.

I have a better system in place this year to keep me on track with my workouts.

I’m basically just piggy backing off of my sister in law since she’s been working out on a daily basis for years.

My wife and I are accountable to her and since she’s coming over to the house in the mornings for P90X with us, we have no excuses.

We have to show up.

In fact, she just walked in so I’ll have to finish this post after today’s P90X butt kicking.

I’m back after an hour of P90X  “X Stretch”.  It felt pretty good.

I definitely need to work on my flexibility.  This workout helped me easily identify the areas of my body I need to work on.

I know that by keeping with it my flexibility will improve.

I’m so glad I’m in a position to be working out every morning.  It just improves my entire outlook for the day as well as gets my body in shape.

If you’ve struggled with your weight year after year or decade after decade you have to make a choice.

I’ve decided that I can’t continue to live my life with an extra 100 pounds.  I’ve lost over 45 pounds and have about 55 more to go.

I know that as I apply what I’ve learned by cycling through the P90X workouts, ride my bike consistently and eat more responsibly I’ll eventually reach my goal.

Maybe I do it in a couple of months, maybe it takes me a couple years.  I am embracing the process and focusing on that as oposed to just focusing on results.

I will be healthier from doing these things, whether or not it immediately shows up on the scale.

My mindset is changing as I do more and more of these workouts.

I’m no longer just hopeful.  I actually expect to succeed at reaching my fitness goals.

I can now see myself at my target weight.  I can picture it in my mind’s eye.

I can feel it, I can taste it.  I will reach it

P90X Workout – Chest, Shoulders & Triceps is a post from: Losing weight with P90X

P90X / Biking © Tim Pannell Photography

We just got back from taking my 16 yr. old son to Lacrosse Camp up in Utah and I am anxious to get back in the workout saddle so to speak.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how easy it is to do P90X workouts on the road. That post was aimed more at business travel and staying in hotels. I never really tried doing P90X while visiting friends and family.

Let me just say this, it’s a completely different animal. I struggled with working out this last week. It was hands down the worst week I’ve had since starting out on my program. I feel like I lost an entire week.

I did a lousy job of keeping up with my workouts when we were away. I did a series of P90X shoulders and arms with my wife sometime in the middle of the week and the rest of the time I just kept getting sidetracked with other issues.

I got to play golf with my sister a couple of times and that was fun in spite of me playing the worst I’ve played in at least 5 years. Man did I suck!

I’m starting a new photography blog and that consumed me for most of the week as well. I’m teaching people how to shoot better photos of their kids. The website is just in it’s infancy, but check it out if you get a chance and you’re interested in photography. http://photomommies.com

In any case, I’m home now and I’ll be doing P90X chest and back and riding the bike this morning to get things started up again.

The old me would be beating myself up right now for not having worked out consistently all of last week, even though it was nice to get to see family and spend some time with them.

The new me sees the past as the past and today as the present. I can’t change last week, but I can make good choices today. If you’re struggling with weight issues like I do chances are you can get easily derailed from your workout goals.

It’s all too easy to just throw in the towel and give up when things don’t work the way I hope. This is always a major crossroads in my life. What I do in these situations will ultimately show what I’m made of.

I have a choice to give up completely and wallow in self doubt and pity or I can pick myself up and learn from the past instead of dwelling on it. What can I do better, where can I improve?

I’ve been working out with P90X for the last 2 months and 3 weeks. I haven’t last the amount of weight that I’d hoped for, but I am in much better shape than I was.

I would say that my biggest problem over the previous couple of months is that I haven’t been consistent enough and that is what I will be working on this coming month.

I am guilty of letting off the gas once I made a lot of progress. I have to do a better job of keeping my fitness goals a priority and not put them on the back burner.

I know that ultimately getting my body back into good shape will have a profound effect on every other aspect in my life.

So, for now, I’m going to stop writing and I’m gonna go hop back on my bike for an hour and then I’m dropping my P90X chest and back into my DVD player and I’m gonna sweat my butt off for a while.

P90X Weight Loss – Get Back On That Bike Dude! is a post from: Losing weight with P90X

Beachbody Results © Tim Pannell Photography

Last week was actually not a great week.  I got through the 4th of July weekend and actually lost weight.  Monday morning I weighed in at 268 lbs.  and was feeling fantastic.

The problem shift in attitude happened after  I ate a bunch of junk that I’d been avoiding for the previous month or so.  My oldest daughter also had a birthday on Wednesday last week and I ate cake and ice cream then as well.

In and of itself, that’s probably not such a big deal, but we had extra ice cream laying around the house….well, not actually laying around the house, but calling out to me from the freezer non stop.

I had some ice cream several days in a row and what I noticed was that I had less and less desire to work out once I started systematically filling my pie hole with a lot of junk.

In full confession mode here…..I’ve always liked ice cream, but I became and addict when my wife worked at Baskin Robbins while we were in college and I got used to eating it everyday.

In fact BR is absolutely responsible for me gaining 25 pounds shortly after Kim and I got married.  It was the first time in my life that I ever even had a weight issue.

Now that you know the history, you’ll understand a bit better why this is so frustrating to me.  I know better, I know I need to be careful around ice cream.  It’s not like my fitness quest is over, far from it.  It is a setback though.

Had I continued last week the way I had the previous week, I probably would have lost an additional 2 or 3 pounds.  Instead I hung out in limbo for a week.

The interesting thing is the shift in my attitude.  Prior to the ice cream binge, I couldn’t wait to get to my workout because it always felt so good.  The last several days have been difficult for me to get motivated.

I”m sitting here writing instead of lifting weights and riding the bike.  So……that being said, I’m gonna stop writing for the moment and go workout, even if I’m not totally fired up about it.  I’ll be back in an hour and a half……………..

It’s 2 hours later and I’m feeling a lot better.  I rode the bike for 55 minutes and I upped it’s intensity from 3 to 4.  Then I did an hour of P90X Shoulders & Arms even though I was scheduled to do Back & Chest.

My arms felt weak and wimpy so I decided to start the week with my favorite set of exercises.  I’m really glad I worked through my bad attitude and just did my workout.  My body feels great, my arms are nice and tingly and I have a great “fitness” buzz on.  My mind is clear now and I’m ready to tackle the week.

I know that there are people out there that once they commit to something they seem to never stumble, but when it comes to working out or eating a certain way, I’m not one of them.  I’m going to have a few “down days”.

I’m not making excuses here…….I plan on doing better, but I’m not going to beat myself up for having a set back.  That won’t help me reach my ultimate goal.  So I’m gonna sit down and take a good long look at what I did last week and how it effected my overall plan and then I will learn from it.

All I can do today is start back on course and make a change for the better.  I put in a good 2 hour workout and I feel great!  That’s success in my book.  The past is now in my past.  I can actually do something in the present to have a positive effect on my future.

If you’ve struggled or are currently struggling with your weight, look at the past only to learn from it and then make a plan and stick to it.

Hang in there and don’t let the little or even the big setbacks get you down on yourself.  Just keep moving forward and before you know it you’ll be hitting your fitness goals and maybe even moving above and beyond your health related goals.

Don’t let anyone or anything stop you from claiming what’s rightfully yours.  It’s your body, it’s your health…..own it for crying out loud!

If I can get into shape, then anyone can.  If you’re on the fence, what are you waiting for.  There will never be a better time to start than right now.  Try the p90x workouts, try a gym membership, get a personal trainer, whatever works or will work for you.  Make a choice and follow it up with a bigtime commitment!

If you are waiting for an attitude adjustment to start working out, flip it around and workout so you get the attitude adjustment you want.  Just close your eyes and bull your way through it if you have to, but I can guarantee you’ll feel better once you’ve done it.

The times you feel least like working out are probably the most important times to actually get your butt off the couch and start moving.

Special thanks to condron.us for promoting the Fatboy Fitness Blog, we appreciate it!

P90X Workout Review – Attitude Adjustment – 07/13/09 is a post from: Losing weight with P90X