A Word (or More) About the Nutrition Plan

For those that don't know, the P90X2's nutrition plan is different from the original.  Rather than telling you exactly what to eat for each meal, there are daily guidelines based on your calorie level and the phase you are in. This means you get to customize the plan to suit your specific needs.  Sounds easy, right?

Don't get me wrong -- it's great if you want to eat vegan or grain-free menus without having to work too hard to modify the recipes to suit your needs.  It's not as great if you are like me and you just want someone to tell you what to do.  Sometimes, I want to scream, "Just tell me how to eat healthy, Tony Horton!  I'll do whatever you say!"

Thankfully, we got the kit a few weeks before we started.  Plus, I found a copy of the P90X nutrition plan on-line.  Still, it took me a few weeks to figure out the nutrition plan.  And I'm still figuring it out.  One thing I decided to do from the beginning is to divide the week into 2 sections -- I can't eat the same thing every day, but it seemed silly to eat something different every day.  So we have Day A which we eat for 4 days and Day B which we eat for 3 days.  It seems to be working out so far.    

Last week, our breakfasts consisted of omelets and scrambles.  John doesn't like eggs.  But, he powered through and made the best of it.  This week, breakfasts are soy sausage muffins and breakfast muffins -- I'm enjoying both better.  Meat and cheese in the morning -- yum!  We are also experimenting with grapefruits.  John asked, "Do we need to buy some grapefruit spoons?" to which I replied, "How hard can it be?"  Oh, it's hard all right.  Have you tried to eat a grapefruit with a fork or spoon?  It's not as easy as it looks. Plus, one morning John had to prepare his own grapefruit, and promptly cut it the wrong way.  Oops.

We're eating a salad nearly every day.  This week, I mixed it up with a soup instead.  Plus salmon and chicken.  Sweet potatoes, broccoli, and black beans.  It's not that different from what we were eating before, which is nice.

We're drinking a lot more milk -- 8 ounces a day at least.  It turns out I like milk.

We also get snacks in the P90X2 nutrition plan!  Rice cakes, peanut butter and celery, cottage cheese (for John, I wouldn't touch the stuff with a 10-foot pole).  There are lots of other options for snacks, we just haven't tried them yet. 

And, to round it all out -- protein bars and recovery formula. Thank goodness for those protein bars -- they are giving me a little bit of sweetness, without which I would probably have poked my own eye by now.  I am in love with Promax Nutty Chocolate & Cookies n Cream, as well as Balance Bar Cookie Dough.  The BeachBody protein bars are also delicious (we got to taste some thanks to our friend, Jess), but we just haven't bought them yet.  I am not using the BeachBody Recovery Formula, partly because we had some Muscle Milk Light.  It's not as many calories, but it was free.  In the future, I'll probably switch over the protein powder John uses, but I have to drink it with milk instead of water.  I'm holding out until I absolutely have to. 

I'm eating 1800 calories (give or take) every day.  Since we are cooking a lot more, we're buying so much food!  Our refrigerator looks like real adults live in our apartment!  It's a little bit of sticker shock --  we are spending more than we were before.  I didn't realize how much it takes to make all this food.

On the plus side, I have a ton of energy.  I'm able to get up at 6:00 AM with relative ease to cook breakfast, and have consistent energy all through the day.  However, don't think that I am staying up late. In fact, before I started this process, I was notorious for falling asleep on the couch at 9:00 PM.  Some things aren't changing.

I'll put more detail on another page so you can get a sense of what it all looks like. :)

Keep reading... and happy eating!