Anybody who has ever tried to stick to a healthy diet knows how expensive it can be to purchase all of those ingredients. The same thing goes for the P90X nutrition guide. I tried it too and yes, it can get fairly expensive, but if you want to see the best results, you really should stick to it.
The entire guide was created with an extreme workout routine like P90X in mind and the meals are designed to provide the necessary amount of calories, carbohydrates, fats and proteins to give you the best results. Unless you have a lot of experience creating high-performance meal plans, the nutrition guide is the way to go.
The great thing about the nutrition guide that comes with P90X is that you can choose to use either the meal plan or the food portion plan. If you don’t have time to make all of the recipes in the meal plan, purchase the ingredients from the food portion plan and create your own diet. I’ve found the portion plan to be much more affordable too.
If you decide not to use the meal plan or the portion plan from the nutrition guide, which I strongly advise against, you should always count your calories. You need to figure out how many calories you should be consuming daily and track every single thing you eat. As long as you don’t go over your daily limit of calories and stick to low-fat foods, you should be ok.