Wow, guys, I am tired. Week 1 was so hard for me. This is a hard program, no bones about it. The calendar has you scheduled for Monday - Friday, but I decided to do Sunday - Thursday, since ain't nobody wanna be doing anything on Friday after a long work week. Fridays are the days that I just get home and collapse.
I started doing this program in the afternoons/evenings when I got home from work, but the program is so high-intensity that it would get me too amped up to sleep in the evenings. I took a deep breath, thought long and intensely about my life, and switched my workout schedule to 5:00am and moved my bedtime up to 9:30pm. Surprisingly not that hard to do! I just had to retrain my circadian rhythms, but the schedule is fine for me now, and I am already awake/alert by the time I get to work.
The program is hard. I've said this already, but I will say it again. Even when I was at my optimal body weight for my height and I was doing yoga/weight-lifting/running every day, I can say with confidence that I would have had trouble finishing each workout. Knowing this makes me feel a little better about how badly I'm sucking at this so far. That and the fact that the people in the videos who have ostensibly been doing the workouts with Shawn T for quite some time also have an incredibly hard time completing them - and this includes the woman doing the low-impact modifier exercises, which is what I do since my tendons have been blown out since 2011.
So how is the workout? The first day I had to take frequent pauses. Shawn T does not let you take a break or pause whatsoever through the videos, with the exception of Speed 1.0, where you do a 30 second active stretch in-between your high-intensity moves. It is go-go-go, and it ramps up the entire 25 minutes to a progressively harder level through the end. High cardio, of course, but that is what gives you faster results, so I don't mind it.
Completing some of the workouts is hard, and I'll be frank - I have barely made it sometimes. A few days I finished the workouts by dry heaving into the sink in my kitchen when I went to get more water. I was so tired at the end of the week that I couldn't do the two workouts scheduled for the last day - I only made it through one. Basically my first week went like this:
BUT I PERSEVERED, DAMMIT. And I'll be durned if I didn't immediately notice a difference in myself. I am one of those people who is always tired. Always. I go to bed and wake up feeling as though I never slept. I've been tested for anemia, thyroid problems, etcetera. I take multivitamins every day. No doctor I have been do can figure out why I am always tired. All of my levels are normal and I'm not low on any mineral or vitamin. I'm just perpetually tired and feel as though I'm operating through a fog throughout my days.
The first morning after I started Focus T25 I woke up and actually felt like I'd slept. I was full of energy - to the point that it felt as though I was dreaming it. I've been happier and I've been smarter - all of that extra oxygen to my brain is really doing a lot of good toward my cognitive processing. AND this continued through the entire week. I'm on my second rest day right now (you get two rest days), and I woke up this morning feeling the way I used to. I'm bagging hard, man. No energy at all because I didn't work out yesterday. It's such a startlingly huge difference internally. I'm not the only one who noticed - I caught a coworker looking at me oddly mid-week and said, "What's going on?" "It's just weird seeing you with energy," she said, sounding perplexed.
It's actually making such a big difference energy-wise and physically that people at work are asking me what I've been doing, and I keep catching my boyfriend surreptitiously checking me out. "You're looking really good," he told me the other day. (Compared to what I had looked like, hahaha.)
Today was the day to weigh and measure myself versus last week, and I'm not going to lie - I was kind of bummed by the weight part of it. I have a very muscular body when I work out - I'm part Viking and I think that's a big part of it. I have a solid frame and my family (myself included) tends to bulk muscle quickly. Then I noticed my body fat percentage and measurements went way down!
Last week, starting program on 3/15/15:
Weight: 184lbs
Body Fat Percentage (BFP): 44.6%
Arm: 13"
Thigh: 23.5"
Waist: 37"
This week, ending T25 Week 1, 3/21/15:
Weight: 185.2lbs
BFP: 40%
Arm: 12"
Thigh: 22.5"
Waist: 33"
I lost 4% of my body fat and my waist dropped FOUR inches!! I was discouraged by my weight going up a little over a pound, but I think it's just water weight. As I said, I bulk muscle quickly and I think that's why the actual scale weight has not gone down, but my BFP and waist dropping so quickly is awesome! My clothes are even already loose!
So, to conclude, I am SUPER FREAKING THRILLED. Week 2 starts tomorrow and I'm PUMPED. Let's do this!!!!
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