In April of 2010, while I was running my own custom software business I had completed a major deadline and as a reward, my wife decided the best way to reward me would be to rent me a hotel room and get me out of the house (at the time I worked out of our basement) away from all the noise of 2 kids so that I could get a night of completely uninterrupted sleep. I took my laptop and a handful of DVDS (there had been quite a few movies that had hit theaters and then DVD without me seeing them so I had a lot of catching up to do, if you know me you know I am a movie freak). I ended up watching Surrogates with Bruce Willis (it was a decent movie, but that is not the point of this post). Anyways, what ended up happening was that I fell asleep at about 9 o’clock which for me was about 6 hours earlier than I normally went to sleep. The side effect was that because my body was only used to getting 3-6 hours of sleep a night, 3 am rolled around and I was wide awake…I didn’t know what else to do so I flipped on the TV and started flipping channels and there was this one infomercial playing on at least 6 of the channels so I stopped to watch it and was mesmerized…

What ended up happening was I watched the infomercial over and over and over again. I had heard of P90X before and knew that when I had a gym membership, I didn’t go, just using the cable weight training system I had in my basement wasn’t working. I needed something to wake me up because the fat guy that I had become wasn’t me…

It was time for me to stand up and do something about it. So I got a copy of P90X and the necessary equipment and took my first set of pictures.

Here are the first round of pictures that I took:

That was me at 345 pounds…not a pretty site, I tell you…

I have to be honest though, even though I loved P90X, I had a hard time sticking with it because of the crazy hours I kept (I own my own software company and would typically work 14-16 hour days getting only 3-5 hours of sleep a night). I would get about 30 days into the program then a deadline would creep up, I would have to pull a few all-nighters and it would wreck my workout schedule.

At one point, BeachBody had a promotion where they waived the sign up fee to become a coach so in an effort to make myself more accountable, I signed up to be a coach. I figured with a little more skin in the game I would hold myself more accountable, and it worked…for a time…until the next big deadline came up and I had to pull a few all-nighters again…

Finally, I had to say enough was enough and figure out what was important to me, because of some circumstances in my business, it made sense in April of 2011 for my wife and I to step back and take a look at what was important to us and where we wanted to be. For me, I had already defined what my three words for the year were going to be (Faith, Family & Fitness). So we decided that it made sense for me to put my resume out there and look for another job. Within 15 minutes I had a phone call from a recruiter that was hiring for a position that I was a good fit for. Things moved slowly at first, then they picked up very rapidly and in June I found myself in Bartlesville, OK living in an extended stay working for ConocoPhillips. My family moved down in July and we began settling into our new life with my wife as a stay at home mom, me closing shop on our old business contracts, and getting things more in balance than they were before, part of which was starting another round of P90X, of which I just recently finished.

I have been physically active since I was a child, played football for 14 years and have been working out since I was in 7th grade so I know how to work out.  I tried for several years with a gym membership, but I always found reasons not to go even though I was paying almost $100/month for my membership and my wife’s membership. I have even written software for personal trainers to build workouts for their clients so it isn’t that I didn’t know what to do, my life was so out of balance that I couldn’t. Another thing about me is that I am always looking for ways to help people and with BeachBody Coaching I am able to do just that. I had told myself that I needed to be a product of the workouts before I tried selling it to other people and now that I have finished a round of P90X I am in a position to relate my experience (both with BeachBody products and just health and fitness knowledge in general) to you and to help you reach your fitness goals. I am still on my journey, I have lost 30 pounds so far and am looking forward to losing 20 – 30 more. After a few more rounds of P90X are under my belt, I’m looking forward to P90X2 which comes out later this year.

What You Can Do

I would be remiss if I didn’t give you actionable steps to help you along your way, there are 3 possible things that you can do.

1. If you are already using a BeachBody product and want to look at how you can help others and make money doing so by being a coach, click here.
2. If you have never used a BeachBody product before but want to start, click here for the BeachBody Store or on the following links for specific products (P90X or Insanity), with a purchase of a  BeachBody you will be signed up for a free Team BeachBody account with me as your coach.
3. If you are not currently exercising but you are not sure you are ready to jump into exercising just yet, but want to do something you can start with Shakeology which is a meal replacement shake that is delicious and is the healthiest meal you can have all day (made from 70 high quality ingredients). The chocolate flavor scored a 97 out of 100 on FoodFacts.com [[insert shakeology link]]. Click here to buy Shakeology. With a purchase of Shakeology you will also be signed up for a free Team BeachBody account with me as your coach as well.

Please contact me if you have any questions, I would love to know how I can help you reach your fitness goals.

Please note: I am an affiliate provider for Amazon and a Team BeachBody coach so I must make the disclosure that links above are sponsored links and I do make a profit from purchases made through them.