Preparation, Part C: The P90X Nutrition Plan, the Mental Workout You Didn't Have to Pay For
Posted by Brent Fremming at 3:51 PM
I opened the P90X box somewhere around January 4th, and began reading the documents. Due to the fact I already knew we were consuming far too many complex carbohydrates I began reading the nutrition guide and associated recipes. I reached a decision: let us make these recipes, to the letter, and see where that takes us....
A week later I now realize just what a difficult endeavor this truly is. You see, almost all of the suggested recipes require cooking and preparation. So, in order to meet your protein targets you actually need to often cook two meals each night, as well as breakfast. You can't grab a bagel, as eating 1/2 will cause you to reach the maximum of your daily complex carbohydrate allowance, and a whole bagel... well you're just not supposed to do that, not during the fat shredder phase. No friggin' bagels, waddya mean?! Not only that, but there is a one-serving limit on fruit at the lower starting limit of the plan. Torture, pure torture.
Then there is the true cost of the food. Wow, our grocery bill doubled if not tripled. I'm now in the process of clipping coupons and deciding how this is to be done. This is huge change, as we used to be able to shop once a week outside special occasions.
Now as you're planning your diet, there are some incredible sources out there. One nutrition plan gives a great Excel Sheet for portioning and shopping for food.
However, I've noticed I'm immediately needing another Excel Sheet of a different nature, one that controls for and saves time in buying the actual food. You see, each recipe in the nutritional guide may have multiple ingredients of varying quantities. Across recipes, some ingredients overlap, yet you end up with a squirrely recipe list of indeterminate length.
In lieu of possible issues with copyright, I won't be able to list my own sheet, but suffice is to say, the sheet(s) will contain volumetric conversions for each recipe, and have tracking columns for grocery store areas. This sounds anally retentive, but just try and cook the recipes for three straight days and you'll immediately see the problem. I'll plan to make a combined excel sheet for each week's groceries, that will amalgamate quantities of individual items needed.
I've also just realized I'm missing a few key devices that I will need before we begin our plan (measuring tape, a heart monitor). As such, it will be at least one more day before beginning the actual workout. It has been forever already, but I can feel our P90X start date getting closer than ever. I'll keep you posted!
