Reasons People Quit Their Workouts
So why do people quit? The rewards for sticking with your workout routine are immense: you look good, you feel good, your health improves, your energy levels will go up, you'll live longer and be happier. With such an amazing list of benefits, why would anybody ever stop? Especially when most people who start are always so fired up? They want to do the hardest workout, to adopt the most extreme diet plan, and they want to do it now. So why do they stop? Why does almost everybody quit, so that when you check back in a couple of months later they're back on the couch, griping? What are the reasons people quit?
We've all been there. Sunday afternoon at a poolside BBQ, looking good, feeling good, body in the best shape it's ever been, a month or so into your new workout regimen, and suddenly somebody shoves a paper plate loaded with potato salad, grilled sausages oozing fat, a pile of potato chips, whatever. Or maybe it's the day of a big game, and your buddy is serving up six fresh pizzas along with soda. Or you're driving home late, you're exhausted, and you decide to just hit a Drive Through and pick up some junk food to go. Either way, everybody ultimately gets tempted to break their nutrition plan and eat junk. Accept that this will happen to you, accept that you'll be tempted, and then ask the question you'll immediately ask as you look down at that unhealthy food: how bad is one cheat day?
Tune into any sports event and you'll catch sight of athletes emblazoned with the logos and trademarks of various companies, their shirts and equipment sporting Nike swooshes, American Express credit cards and General Motor's initials. Endorsements are a million dollar business, with some athletes like Tiger Woods earning up to sixty million dollars per year for simply wearing a certain set of clothing or using a certain kind of golf club. Given that, perhaps it's no surprise that a long list of celebrities and athletes have come out an endorsed P90X, citing it as their favorite means of getting in shape. What might be surprising, however, is that they're not paid to do so; each celebrity or professional athlete that praises P90X publicly is doing so of their own free will. So who are these celebrities, and what have they said about 
Pumping iron. The term is old school, and refers to the classic exercise of lifting 
I get this question all the time. "I'm doing everything right," they say. "How come I'm not losing more weight?" Whether it's somebody who has been pounding away at Insanity for a couple of weeks, or who's about to finish their first round of P90X, people will often climb onto that dreaded scale and get disheartened. Expectations run high when people start, and yearning for a total body transformation, they pour their heart and soul into their workouts, only to find themselves betrayed when they haven't dropped the 50lbs they hoped to lose. What's happening here? What went wrong, and why?
Is it too late for you to start exercising? Is there a certain point beyond which extreme workouts are no longer possible? How do things change when you leave your 20's for your 30's? What should you know about your body so that you can best train it to maximize gains and performance? These are the kinds of questions people who treat health and fitness as a life long goal have to ask, and that people who are only in it to lose 10lbs never consider. Health and fitness is a life long passion, and today we know that exercise can not only make you feel better, but even reverse aging's effects. As such, we have to ask: how does your age affect your workout routines?
It's a simple fact that the Insanity Workout involves an intense regimen of plyometrics and cardio, and that following such a schedule six days/week for two months can result in an inordinate amount of stressing on your joints. This is one of the main reasons why the Insanity Workout is considered an elite workout, due to the fact that in order to complete it successfully you need to have joints that are conditioned for high impact exercise. Many people don't, however, and still wish to attempt the Insanity Workout: what can they do in order to minimize the stress they will subject their joints to, and minimize any potential joint pain?
I get asked this all the time. Will I lose muscle if I do the Insanity Workout? As with most questions, there's an annoying answer: it depends. What are the variables? They're your current body composition, your goals, and how you approach nutrition. Let's take a quick look at what the Insanity Workout is designed to do, and then see how you can tweak that to best suit your needs.
People start new programs all the time, and people quit them just as fast. For every ten bright eyed, enthusiastic newbies ready to start their latest fitness endeavour, there are nine burnt out, hollow eyed folks who failed to go the distance. What's that one person doing right, that those nine people are failing to do? How do you line up your factors so that you're most likely to stick with your workout, and less likely to quit? If you've glanced at the banner above, you're likely to have an idea as to where I'm going, but listen up folks. Sometimes its the basics that people forget first.
Coffee. Espresso, latte, Starbucks, American, whatever, as long as it has caffeine. Some people can't live without it--you know who you are, drinking entire pots every day, lining up and growling in line at the local coffee joints, itching to get your hands on a cup. Others have it occasionally, only after lunch say, a delicate espresso, pinky extended. Some people drink it occasionally, or not at all, but we're all familiar with its effects. You light up, energy flows through you, you can become almost manic (full disclosure: I'm writing while under the influence of caffeine right now, a shot of espresso dumped unceremoniously in my Shakeology smoothie). Depending on your tolerance you might get energized for an hour or two, or not even register the jolt, but everybody knows how powerful a kick of caffeine can be. But what if we try to combine that boost of energy with a workout? Harness that energy so that we workout harder, longer, faster? Is that a good idea? What would the effect be on our system?