Tried out Insanity

Day 17:

I thought I would try out an Insanity workout today.  Why? I think it was due to temporary insanity.  I had an emotionally traumatizing experience today.  I had to weigh myself!  And everything that I was suspecting to be true was true.  I haven't lost a pound!  Not even a micro-pound, not even a nano-pound, nothing.  And if I include my weeks on the Lean Program, that means it's been 32 days, and I've gone nowhere.  Oh, the injustice!  I became frantic, crazed even, I needed to know why, I needed a solution.   I overthrew my better judgement and thought it's all the resistance training that's been fouling up my game.   And my mind seized upon the idea that I have to up my cardio workout. And so I remembered that I had the Insanity program, which I've never dared attempt before, until today....

I loaded the first video of the program, the Plyometric Cardio Circuit.  When it played it only read 45 mins, so I thought, "Bah! Piece of cake.  Am I even going to burn any calories with this?"  But everything went downhill from there.  A minute into the video, I thought I was going to have a heart attack or puke, or both! Insanity is not insane, it's dangerous! Which is why I would definitely recommend it, but only to those souls who like to torture themselves or are at Olympic-athlete-level fit.  So given I don't like to torture myself, and I'm far from qualifying for the Olympics, I'm going to put off Insanity for awhile.

But the program does burn a load of calories.  I burned 588 calories; yeah doesn't sound a lot but that's because it was only 45 mins, but my rate of caloric burn was 13, meaning I was burning 13 calories per minute. So far a caloric burn rate of 13 is the max for me; it means that my heart was working at 80-90% of my maximum heart rate.   Also, you get a good kick of after-burn with interval training, i.e., you continue to burn calories at a higher rate even when the workout ends.

But, to be honest, I could barely keep up; there was a lot of jumping, climbing, pumping, sweating and wheezing.  It's plyo, so the workout engages your legs a lot, especially from a squatting position (OUCHIE!), but there's also a lot of push-ups.  I'm not sure how I got through it, everything's a blur now.  I only know that I must have done it by the fact that I have a pulled hamstring and glutes.

Insanity has helped me return to my sanity, somewhat anyway.  I'm still upset about my weight, feeling very down, but going at Insanity full force is certainly not the answer.  So what is the moral of the story?  Don't try to stuff an entire cake into your mouth when you know you can only handle a bite.