As many of you know Kaci and I started our fitness journey July of 2010 (Although I had an accident with some stage deck while loading for Sturgis that cost me about a month).

We began our fitness journey with Insanity (a beachbody.com product) which is a DVD workout series led by Shaun T.  In a later post we will share our beginning measurements and ending measurements and how many times we’ve been through Insanity, P90X, or some form of a Insanity\P90X hybrid (a workout using both systems). But I will tell you that over the course of two times through the Insanity workouts I lost 4.5 inches from around my navel…not to mention what I lost everywhere else!!!

Amazing, life altering changes occurred in our life over the last year but we never seemed to quite lose the “fluff” in those problem areas.  For me it was my “man boobs” and my “spare tire” or “man muffin top”.  For Kaci is was her thighs and butt that was frustrating her.

So on August 1st, 2011 we did something very profound…we started following the P90X diet that came with the workouts.  I can hear the everyone saying “well duh”…but here’s the deal:  we see and hear from so many people that have done intense workouts and, like us, haven’t seen those awesome results we see on the infomercials.  Here’s why. None of us eat as healthy as we think we do!  For the most part we take in an INCREDIBLE amount of carbohydrates and fats in our daily diet without the physical activity to back up those kind of calories.

On August 1st we had to learn how to eat all over again.  Talk about frustrating!  But we finally came to the humbling realization that our diet was the one thing holding us back from being ripped like the old “teenage glory years”.  The first week was pretty much a living hell for me and without Kaci pushing me along I would have quit.  We purchased a digital scale to weigh out our food as well as newer foods that would accommodate a diet that would allow us to attack the “stored energy” (or fat) that our bodies already had in place.  Everything was measured out and we even began using an app on our iPhones called “Tap & Track” to measure our daily caloric intake (complete with protein, carb, and fat ratios).

Right now we are in what is called “The Fat Shredder” stage of our new diet.  Of our daily caloric intake we take in 50% Protein, 30% Carbs, and 20% fats.  As I said in the paragraph above, the first week was a living hell.  You don’t realize how many carbs and fats you take in until you look at your food diary (in our case our Tap & Track app) and find it’s noon and you have already taken in your daily amount of both those areas and your not even 5% along on your proteins!!! Someday I might bore you with the week by week details but for right now let me tell you that after one month of “The Fat Shredder” I lost 10 pounds, 2 inches from around my navel, and dropped a little over 3% body fat…all without changing my workout!  Remember I’ve already been doing this intensely, without missing many days, for a year at this point!

So here’s the goal of NEELY Fitness.  We want to blog from the road and hopefully encourage you through our successes and failures in order for us all to become healthier.  We don’t have it figured out but if we attack this as a community there’s no telling what we all can do!

So as Tony Horton would say, “Bring It!!!”