Is It Necessary to Stick to the P90X Nutrition Guide?

healthy-salad

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.

image courtesy of fdm06 / CC BY-SA 2.0

An Update on Holiday Fitness

So it looks like the holidays are wreaking havok on my diet and my fitness routine. My family came into town, as mentioned in my previous post about Thanksgiving, and all they want to do is eat. That’s just how my family spends time together so I knew it was gonna happen, but I’ve also stopped working out regularly, which is me just being lazy.

I actually did OK for Thanksgiving when it comes to eating well, but since then my eating habits have gotten out of control. I’ve eaten huge meals at various restaurants (Applebees, Chubby’s, Casa Bonita, The Butcher Block, etc.) with my coworkers, my family and my friends. The weird thing is that I almost never go out to eat, but I’ve gone out probably 2-3 times a week in the past month.

One thing I have going for me is that I don’t really gain weight no matter what I eat. I have extremely high metabolism so gaining weight is very difficult, but my real problem is that I want to burn the fat that I currently have and tone my body, and that isn’t gonna happen with poor eating habits.

I’ve finally started getting back on track with my meal plan though and I feel much better already. I just need to get back into a regular workout routine now.

Thanksgiving Means Lots of Food

Today is Thanksgiving, so I’m sure what’s on all of our minds is the huge feast ahead of us as well as the regrets afterward and a couple of long strenuous workouts. That’s what’s on my mind anyway. To be honest, I don’t know what to do. I always read about how you’re supposed to just eat a small portion and stick to healthy snacks, but you have no idea how much disrespect my family would take if I did something like that. My family is full of cooks who are very proud of the food they make and they expect the family to eat it.

So my plans are to eat almost like I would if I wasn’t trying to stay fit, cut down a little, but still come home from my Grandparents house stuffed, and plan on working out hard for the next few days. I really hope I can push myself over the next few days though, because I have a feeling my diet is going to hell. Plus I have family from all over coming into town who I know are gonna want to have some drinks too, so the next four days are gonna wreak havoc on my body.

Oh well. It’s fun times with family I rarely get to visit with, and it only happens once a year. Well, sometimes twice a year, because the family sometimes comes out for Christmas too. I’m determined to keep the fat off though, so I just have to work that much harder during the holidays. I hope you all do better than I probably will. Let me know how things work out! Happy Thanksgiving and good luck!