Day 23: CARDIO POWER AND RESISTANCE

I notice an interesting pattern. First, I always feel kind of heavy and lethargic during the warmup, but by the third cycle, my energy kicks in. The second thing is, I found myself wondering today, "I'm almost done with month 1... isn't this supposed to get easier by now?" And then I realized, it never gets easier, and if it does, you're not working hard enough. You just push harder. It's just as hard four weeks in as it was the first week, but I'm amazed at how much more I can do/how fast/how high. I did ALL the moving pushups today. I did almost all of the globe jumps, and while I used to just touch my knees on the way down, I now touch the floor. Globe jumps used to be one of the toughest for me and now I'd say they're in the middle. Maybe I'll survive month 2 after all.

I also have continued to watch my heart rate, and get this -- at the end of the warmup today, it was at 200! The end of the stretch found me at 144, and the very end of the last circuit clocked in at 188. So there you go, guys. The warmup is not just a warmup. It's not only a full-on circuit, but it's without breaks.

I can tell I've made even more progress with measurements and my scale weight is also down since I posted my third week progress photo. Can't wait to give a full month-end report later this week. Also, I have more Insanity-friendly recipes to post later today.

Oh, one last thing. I've mentioned stevia several times as my sweetener of choice, a natural sugar substitute. I noticed in the Insanity nutrition guide today that it actually advocates using stevia as a sweetener! I missed this before and I'm pleased to read it, as using it was one way in which I thought I was departing from the nutrition guide. I much prefer it to Splenda and use Splenda as seldom as I possibly can. I'm actually following the nutrition guide more than I expected. Other than not using their uber-bland recipes, I'm following all of their suggestions, including eating five times a day -- and I'm gradually making the calories more equal at each mini-meal. I can see that's about to become even more important.