One Week of Insanity

The good news: I survived six consecutive Insanity workouts! They were hard while I was doing them, but none of them lasted all that long. Mentally, I felt great throughout, but I would try to push my body harder and then fall on my face. Especially the last day. I was plumb worn out. But it felt good.

The ugly: the eating plan. Counting calories and eating five times a day. Hated it.

I think I underestimated my caloric needs, so that was part of it. Eighteen hundred calories while doing an intense workout like that was apparently not enough, after the first few days. So I felt increasingly hungry all the time. Perhaps the smarter move would've been to increase my calories -- duh -- but the truth was, I hated the tracking. If I'm eating packaged food with calorie counts on it, fine. But weighing or eyeballing my chicken meat for ounces, or surfing the web to find the calorie count of 1/4 cup of ?baked penne that my friend brought me? Takes the joy out of eating, and of life.

So I'm done with that. Even though I lost three pounds in one week. Because it was also making me feel really negative, suddenly, about working out. Because I felt deprived.

So I took an extra day off -- two in a row -- and with it, two night hour nights of sleep. And now I feel great, well rested and raring to go for my workout tomorrow.

Though I wish I hadn't eaten cold cereal the last two nights to make up for my hunger pangs. Serves me right for not listening to my body.

So the plan from here on out is to follow the workout plan and simplify my eating. I'm reading The Whole 30 diet plan to see what ideas I get from it. It sounds pretty similar to how I eat now, with some fine tuning.