Team Beachbody Guest

My life of athletics and fitness started at the age of 5, when in the attempt
to keep up with 3 older athletic brothers, I started wrestling, snow skiing, and
soccer. My involvement in sports snowballed from there, to include football,
cross country, and track. In hindsight, it was this involvement in sports that
was the driving force to keeping me fit. When the competitive athletic sports
went away, so did my drive to stay in top shape.

My college years began the decline, with a moderate exercise regimen, and
very poor diet. My college career ended in fall of 1997 as I graduated with a
bachelor in nursing and I accepted a position as an intensive care nurse in
Nashville. While in Nashville, I managed to clean up my diet and actually
exercised very regularly, but it only took one year until I realized my heart
belonged back in South Dakota with my family and Shannon. The
unfortunate aspect of this move was moving from a very fit, healthy
surrounding to a much more sedentary one.

The next few years involved intermittent exercise, primarily lifting weights,
and a diet that on the surface looked good, but nobody was able to see the
soda’s and candy bars that I was consuming while driving, or the ice cream I
would sit and eat at night. I was slowly becoming what I had always sworn I
would not, and that is a sedentary unfit man who was now ashamed and self
conscious about his appearance.

In the year 2000 I was accepted to Nurse Anesthetist School. This involved
moving away from my family, and my wife who was 8 months pregnant with
our first child. Long late nights of studying, the 5 hour drive home every
weekend to see my family, a new baby, and the generalized stress involved
with this time of my life really took its toll on my health and fitness, but
admittedly it was not a top priority at the time. School ended in the fall of
2002, and I immediately began to work at our hospital in our home town, and
this also marked the birth of our son Mason, and my wife and I purchasing a
business.

The time commitment involved with another child, running a business, and
maintaining a full time nurse anesthetist position, all made for easy excuses
to not exercise…I was just too busy, or so I would say. Managing stress had
never been an issue for me in the past, but now it finally took its toll, as I
started to have severe headaches. I actually spent a day in the emergency
room being worked up for a possible leaky brain aneurysm related to these
severe headaches. It was thankfully diagnosed to be a cerebral vascular
spasm, which the neurologist related directly to my stress level. It was
obvious I needed an outlet for stress relief, and that outlet used to be
exercise.

Working as a nurse anesthetist really began to open my eyes more to the vast
and varied health issues related to obesity and poor health style. The
numbers of individuals requiring surgery directly related to being obese was
astounding; along with the complications that being obese creates for those
individuals in the surgical realm.

October of 2006 while on call at the hospital is when I first saw the
infomercial for P90X. I immediately became intrigued, but wrote it off as just
another fad, but it did spark my wife and me into cleaning up our diet and
starting to track what we were eating. Over the next few months I continued
to see the infomercials and started to research this “fad” a little deeper. I
lurked around the message board and as I began to see that these were truly
real individuals obtaining phenomenal results, I finally was convinced to order
the program, but I was still very skeptical. I was ready for a change from the
gym, doing the same routines all the time, and not getting the results I have
always strived for. My wife and I purchased all the equipment, transformed
the living room into our gym, and jumped headlong into the program, with
the commitment that I would not go back to the gym for the full 90 days so I
could really see what this program could do. After the first day I was
convinced this was not going to be easy, after 1 week, I was completely
hooked. I found myself looking forward to working out again, and with the
intensity I used to bring to every aspect of my life. I was changing my work
schedule as much as allowed in order to assure I could get my workout
completed, I was skipping events with friends because it would interfere with
my routine, and I was finally saying no to all my favorite snack foods. Day 30
was upon me before I knew it, and I could tell when I looked in the mirror
that I had been losing some weight and getting greater tone, but the pictures
astounded me. It was the old me, but even better, and this was only 30 days.
Phase II found me really kicking it into high gear, and the results were just as
surprising as phase I. I was now at day 60 of this “fad” and I had already
transformed my body into the lean muscular look I have been searching and
working for all my life. My 90 day mark arrived with much anticipation. I
didn’t feel like I had improved as dramatically in the final 30 days, but again,
the pictures didn’t lie. I had officially reached the best physical condition of
my life, and a new found confidence and pride in myself about who I am and
what I have accomplished. P90X did in 90 days what I was not able to do with
34 years of exercising “my way”. My way is now out the door and a new era
has been ushered in. Gone are the days of stress related headaches, gone are
the days of being self conscious about my appearance, and gone are the days
of being an unfit man.

Thanks Tony, Million Dollar Body, and the support of the individuals on the
threads, I was finally able to obtain the body and the results that I have so
longed for…but this is just the beginning. I will never be satisfied, never
stop pushing for more, and raising that bar ever higher. Spread the word,
P90X is the future of exercis