Well don’t drink the Results and Recovery drink if you wish to burn fat. If you are only looking to build muscle, then it’s fine. As far as pre workout, try a good BCAA drink (I recommend the Xtend BCAA drink) which will be almost immediately absorbed by your body and reduce the amount of cortisol your body will produce (cortisol ends up ‘eating’ away at your musle mass). You can mix some BCAA into your workout water and sip on it during the workout as well (I do). However, nautiousness may be just a sign of really bringing it. Getting a little nautious occasionally isn’t a bad thing even thought it’s not fun.

Nancy

I cut cal’s to 1500 per day last week and felt ok, do you recommend I keep that up?

Also, I’m a little worried about not keeping my endurance up? Can you recommend ways to incorporate some endurance training into P90x, or do you think that will come as I begin to drop weight? We went for a 3 mi run on Sunday and it wasn’t as easy as it used to be a month ago!!

Based on what you told me, if you do Classic and be sure you are eating high protein, high fiber and low glycemic index you should see progress. Be real careful about the total grams of sugar you consume. If you want to burn fat, keep your sugar grams to 40 per day or less. That means limiting fruits to only 1 to 1.5 servings a day and restricting those choices to berries (all kinds are good), cherries, apples, pears, peaches and grapefruit. For example, a banana has 28 grams of sugar but a cup of strawberries has only 7 grams. Also watch your intake of cereal and whole wheat bread products – many of them are chock full of sugar. You think you are eating healthy when you see whole wheat but often you are not.

By switching to Classic, you will add some lean mass which is a good thing. Women don’t ‘bulk’ – that’s a myth. In your 20′s you have only 1/16th the testosterone levels of men and as you age, it gets lower and lower. Those women who say they are bulking up are really not managing their diet so they add some muscle while keeping the fat. Those women bodybuilders are a genetic abnormality and/or are taking steroids. I lift very heavy (far heavier than those wimpy weights you see the women lift in P90X) and the heavier I lift, the leaner I get. Lift as heavy as you can in the 8 – 10 rep range as Tony instructs the men to do. Ignore his advice for women – I have no idea why he does that as he knows better.

Good luck!

Nancy

I’m in the third week of p90x, and not loosing much bf%. I’m 5’9″ and 208 lbs, and can’t seem to drop the weight after I had my son 3 years ago, but i have struggled with my weight my whole life. I am following the Phase 1 Level 1 (1800 cals) portion plan pretty religiously since starting. I started doing the lean program (but still doing plyo for the intense cardio), but after reading here, i’ll be switching to classic! I feel like i am bringing it each time, my heart rate max’s at 176 for plyo with an average of 151, and I sweat tons. I also noticed that my muscles seem to start burning much quicker as the weeks go by?!

Should I cut cal’s? why isn’t my bf% dropping?

Just have to say what a great thing you are doing by providing all this life-changing information!!

Thanks,
Julie

You are just going to have to get over being a carboholic if you want to lose your belly. There is no way around that. But remember that on my eating plan I permit the 1 cheat day each week and on that day, you can eat whatever you want so get out our pent up carb cravings on that day. As for what I’ve eaten at different points, please go over to the members area (free) where I have several posts about what I eat in the ‘Nancy’s Diet‘ section.

I tend to put information like that over in my members area (free). I have a post at http://www.pressplayfitness.com/members/forum/topic/Breakfast-Ideas.htm#topic/Breakfast-Ideas.htm that you may find helpful.

Nancy

In the first month your body is shedding water and what I like to think of as ‘easy fat’. But then your body adjusts to what you are doing and eating. So if you are not sore at all, then you are not pushing hard enough. Lift heavier than you have been. Remember you want to gain muscle not only because muscle is less voluminous than fat but because the process of adding it raises your metabolism. And the added muscle itself will slightly raise your metabolism.

If it makes you feel any better, I had a similar pattern where I lost at a good rate in month 1 and then only lost 1lb in the second month. But I could see the muscle coming on so I was fine with that. Really, really work hard in the 3rd month and, if you have time, you may add some walking or other low impact, low intensity cardio on your resistance days.

Also, I don’t know if you are taking the cheat day I recommend but if you aren’t, you are sabotaging your results as your body will quickly settle to a new, lower caloric baseline. Cheat days are included for a number of reasons!