LinLog

It's time for another workout program review!  I've been sort of jumping around and experimenting a little as I get more experienced, so there's not a lot of consistency in what I'm reviewing here.  But that's OK.  If nothing else, it gives others an idea of what the different options out there look like.

Today, we're going to talk about the Gym-Free training template from Renaissance Periodization.  I first learned about RP from their YouTube channel, where I frequently listen to Dr. Mike Israetel explain fitness and muscle building concepts.  In addition to having lots of interesting information, I enjoy his dry sense of humor.

General Structure

The RP gym-free program is, as the name suggests, intended to be done from home.  It's a six-week program that is designed to be do-able with nothing but a pair of dumbbells.  Obviously it's easier if you have a range of weights available (either a set of dumbbells or an adjustable one), but the program includes guidance on what to do if you have limited weight available. I actually did three rounds of this, which I'll talk more about below. 

When you purchase the plan, you select two option: your sex (there's a men's plan and a women's plan) and how many days per week you want to train, between two and six.  I chose the men's plan at four days per week, so that's what I'll be reviewing.  I assume the other options probably have a similar structure, but I have not seen them.  In the 4-day version, there is no split - every workout is total-body.  

As I mentioned, this is a six-week program, but you only get one week of workouts.  You do a different workout each day of the week, and then progress the next week by doing the same workout, but adding one set of each exercise.  After being used to the Athlean-X programs, this put me off a bit at first.  After a while, though, I actually came to like it.  Doing the same workout each week means that you can more easily see your progress in terms of getting stronger and gives you more practice in refining your technique for each exercise.

The exercises themselves were mostly old classics - pushup variations, rows, deadlifts, squats, lateral raises, etc.  Nothing crazy or exotic here.  Again, this was a change from the almost pathological variety in programs like AX, but I actually found that I enjoyed the consistency and focus on the basics.  

The most interesting thing about the workouts is the structure.  There's a little bit of variation between days, but the basic pattern is three exercises for myoreps and then three sets of supersets.   I was not familiar with the concept of myoreps and the program doesn't really use the text-book version of them, but the idea is that you take almost no rest time.  So you take the first set to failure, rest for only 5 - 10 seconds, and then immediately start the next set, repeating until you finish all the tests.  You follow those up with supersets, which involve doing two exercises back-to-back with no rest.  So you'd do exercise 1 to failure and immediately transition to exercise 2 and that would be one set.  Then you rest for 30 seconds and do the next set.

As I mentioned above, progression is done by adding sets.  So the first week, you do two sets of each exercise.  That's 6 total sets of myoreps plus 6 sets of supersets for a total of 18 sets.  The next week you do three of everything.  Then four, then five, then six.  On the sixth week, you get a deload week, so you only do one set of everything.  After completing the first cycle, the recommended progression is to start again, but add another set every week, so starting at 3 and going up to 7.

Program Presentation

In terms of the actual product you get and use, the RP gym-free plan is pretty basic.  (I haven't used their other templates, but I would assume they're similar.)  Basically, you just get a few PDF files and a spreadsheet.  That's it.  I got a one-page "orientation" PDF, a two-page FAQ PDF, an Excel spreadsheet for progress tracking, and a four-page PDF of the actual workouts (one page per day).  The workout PDF did include links to YouTube videos demonstrating each of the exercises, but the videos were very short (just 10 - 20 seconds or so) and didn't include more than a sentence or two of instructions or commentary.

I found this presentation to be...fine.  I mean, it conveys the required information, which is all you really need.  It would have been nice to have some more detail or discussion in some of the demo videos, as there were a few things I had to figure out for myself.  (The extra discussion and background was actually my favorite part about the Athlean-X programs.)  On the up side, the workout PDF looks nice and is laid out well, so it's good as a reference tool.  The general feeling I got from the materials was that this was written by and for people with some weight lifting experience.  It wasn't unfriendly to less experienced lifters, but it didn't do a whole lot of hand-holding.

In terms of tracking the workouts, I tried using the Excel sheet for a few weeks, but ended up just writing them down in a notebook.  I found that using the sheet was a little awkward on my tablet.  I mean, you can do it, but trying to type into Excel sheet cells on a touch screen while you're sweaty and breathing hard isn't great.  I guess I could have printed out the spreadsheets, but that seemed like too much trouble.  I had a spare spiral notebook laying around, so I just hand-wrote my own table with the same information.  I found that easier to do in the moment and easier to look back at, because you can just turn the page rather than having to scroll up and down.

My Experience

I found this to be a very challenging program.  As I mentioned, I did three rounds of this.  The second round, I increased the weight I was using and continued doing the same number of sets.  The third time, I increased the number of tests.

As you might have noticed, but the time you get to week 5 of this program, you're getting a lot of volume.  That's six sets of everything, which comes to 54 sets in all.  When I did the set-bump for my third round, week five was 7 sets of everything for a total of 63 sets.  That's one workout.  Granted, the myorep sets tend to be short (because you're going to failure on the first one and not resting), but that's still a lot of sets.

The good part of this is that it really works - I'm no expert, but from my understanding, volume is one of the big drivers of hypertrophy.  So if you can maintain the level of intensity, adding more sets is likely to lead to more muscle development.  And I feel like I did see some noticeable growth from doing three rounds of this program.  I certainly noticed some increases in strength.

Sadly, there are also some down sides to this approach.  The first is that all this volume can really drag out the workouts.  By week five of my third round, I was closing in on 90 minutes per workout.  And even on the first round, it was around an hour by week 5.  So if you're habitually pressed for time, this might not be a great program for you.

My more serious problem, though, was fatigue.  This program has you doing a lot of sets, and they're all to failure.  I frequently found myself exhausted and sore after workouts and managed to mildly injure myself a couple of times.  It was just a couple of minor pulls or tweaks - not enough to stop me from working out, but enough to make me adapt my form for a couple of exercises.  But still, it underscores that it's important to be mindful of your form, especially as you get more tired.

But it wasn't just getting tired during the workouts.  Although there was a lot of that.  By the end of the program (especially round three), I was getting more out of breath from lifting weights than get from running.  But there was also a lot of carry over of that fatigue from one workout to the next.  This meant that I wasn't able to keep up the same level of intensity though the entire program.  I fact, I noticed that even with the same weight, the number of reps I could do on the first set of an exercise started to fall over the weeks.

Never having done a deload week before, I was a little skeptical when I saw that on the program, but by week five it was pretty clear to me that this was absolutely necessary.  And as a matter of fact, I found that one week was barely sufficient at best.  After the third round, I didn't feel like I'd fully recovered until the second or third week of the next program!

To sum up

Overall, I liked this program.  It was pretty no-frills, but I feel like I learned a lot and made good strength progress.  However, it's very challenging and I had some trouble recovering from the workouts.  Your mileage may vary.  Definitely worth the money, though.

My last fitness post was on the CaliMove mobility program. Well, I just finished their at-home program as well. And (spoiler alert) I really liked it.

General Structure

This program is a bit different from the mobility program. It's also different from the Athlean-X strength training programs, in that the workouts all time-based.  The exact details vary depending on what phase of the program you're in, but this means that the length of any given workout is fixed, so you know going into it exactly how long it will take.  Personally, I really liked this, as one of my main issues with the mobility program, as well as the Athlean-X Xero calisthenics program, was that the workouts could drag on for an hour or more.  With this program, you know the length up front and it's never too long - I think they top out at around 40 minutes, which isn't bad at all.

I started this program when I was half way through the mobility program. At the time, it was a good fit because you start out only training three days a week.  Also, they advertise that, while this isn't meant to be done with other training programs, it's OK to do the mobility program at the same time.  If you're going to do that, though, I would recommend staggering them like I did.  As I mentioned, the mobility program ramps up to six days a week and probably an hour or more per workout by the end.  Combine that with four days a week of 30 to 40 minutes of the at-home workout and you've got a pretty long and tiring workout there.

Anyway, like the mobility program, the at-home workout program is six months long, with a one-week de-load half way through.  Each month is a different "phase", with a slightly different training schedule and approach.  The phases vary, with some focusing on circuit training, some doing straight sets, supersets, AMRAP intervals, etc.  They're all challenging and give you enough variation to keep the program interesting and engaging.

In terms of the exercises, there's nothing really new or revolutionary here.  The program is designed to be done at home, with no exercise equipment at all (not even a pullup bar), so there's only so many options available.  So lots of variations on pushups, crunches, planks, lunges, squats, and so forth.  The only thing that requires any "equipment" is the row variations, which can be done with a pair of folding chairs or something equivalent.  But that said, there are actually a lot of variations in this program.  And the exercises rotate and progress as you move through the program, so the workouts stay challenging and change often enough that you don't get bored.

Program Presentation

In terms of presentation, this program is quite different from the mobility program.  Since this one is time-based, each session has a follow-along video (also available as downloadable audio) that tells you the intervals and exercises.  It also has a very spiffy set of graphics that summarize the workout.  Basically, they're animated GIFs that show the exercise, the time on and off, number of repetitions, and an indication of the workout flow (so for circuits the images flow together).

I have to say, I really like this presentation.  Of the programs I've done so far, this is by far the most visually interesting and and easy to follow workout summary.  Once you get used to it, you can get all of the information you need in a single glance, without having to search the page or think about the instructions.  This is especially nice for the circuits and supersets.  When dealing with simple text presentations of more complicated flows, I find that it's easy to get lost when I start to get tired.  The graphics make it easy to reorient yourself and prepare for the next exercise, while the video helps keep you from getting lost in the first place.

The rest of the program presentation is also quite good.  Each phase starts with a brief video overview describing the approach and a set of demo videos for the exercises employed in that stage.  As usual for CaliMove, the exercise demo videos are exceptional.  Each phase also has an Excel spreadsheet that you can download to track your progress.  This is a little inconvenient, in that it's a little hard to compare between phases with each one being a different file and the spreadsheet doesn't break down sets, but that's not a big deal.  With a calisthenics program there's no weight to track, so really all you care about is that the number of reps keeps going up.  Besides, if you don't like it, you can always track things on your own, whether in your own spreadsheet or just on paper.

Nutrition

I also purchased the "nutrition upgrade" with this program.  The base program is just the workouts - it doesn't come with any kind of nutrition information, or eating plan, or anything like that.  If you want that stuff, you have to buy it as an add-on.

The nutrition upgrade was...fine, I guess.  I watched the videos and read the PDFs, but ended up deciding not to follow the nutrition program.  It had a lot of good information, as well as some that seemed iffy.  There was some mention of "detox" and a couple of other things that made me cringe a little.  For the most part, though, it seemed sane and reasonable.  As I recall, the plan involved using food categorization and relative portion sizes to reach specific macro targets that change week by week.  To me, it seemed like yet another way to track macros without actually tracking them. 

Personally, I didn't care for this approach and ended up just doing plain-old food tracking with Cronometer.  I was already in a place where I was eating a healthy, balanced diet, and just needed to change my energy balance a little to drop 5 - 10 pounds.  I was up to close to 170lbs after the holidays and wanted to get down to around 160, so I tried to cut my calorie intake back by an average of 250kcal per day (give or take - some days I was at maintenance, others I was 500 under) for five or six months.  That worked well for me and averaged out to around half a pound per week of weight loss.  I know some people really hate tracking their food, but I don't mind it all that much.  At least, I don't really find it any more painful than the "no-tracking tracking" alternatives like this program uses.  I'd rather just look at the numbers than have to figure out what group and portion size each of my foods fits in.  But that's just me.

Conclusion

Overall, I really liked the at-home program.  It's extremely well presented and easy to follow.  The workouts themselves are good and stay challenging, despite the lack of any equipment.  I also really liked the relatively short duration and fixed time.  If I had it to do over, I wouldn't bother with the nutrition upgrade, but if you're looking for a more structure nutrition plan, then maybe it could be helpful to you.  But if you're looking to stay in shape, get a bit stronger, and do it at home without equipment, then I highly recommend this program.

So the other week I saw a cool toy I've been wanting on Amazon, and it was a good price.  No, not a tech gadget this time - a new set of dumbbells.  And since I didn't want anything for my birthday, my wife gave the approval to order them.

Specifically, I got a pair of PowerBlock Elite EXP dumbbells.  These things may look like toasters, but they're actually adjustable dumbbells that can go from 5 to 50 pounds in 2.5 to 5 pound increments.  The big selling point is that they adjust quick  You can do 10 pound adjustments just by moving a pin, which is super fast.  The 2.5 and 5 pound increments are little more involved, as those are adjusted by removing weight cylinders from the handles, and you can't do all increments, but it's still just pulling the pin, flipping a lever, and dropping a cylinder in or out.

Compare this to my old set of dumbbells, which adjusts up to 52.5 pounds.  It adjusts in 2.5 pound increments (and does all of them), but does it by swapping out plates and securing them using a screw clamp.  It works fine, but it's slow.  So, for instance, my current program has a bunch of supersets in it, and for most of them I'm using different weights for each of the two exercises.  So the "go immediately into the second exercise" was actually more like "spend about a minute changing the weights and then go straight into the next exercise".  Clearly this is not ideal in terms of executing the program, and it also stretches out the workout.

I'm pretty happy with them.  They took a little getting used to, but after using them for a week or two they work pretty well.  My main complaint is that the instructions were a little iffy.  It took me a little playing around to figure out exactly how to put in the pin, which direction things went, and so forth.  But it's not complicated, so it just took a few minutes of messing around.

On the down side, Amazon is now sending me suggestions for the thing I just bought.  They did the same thing when I bought my new laptop on Prime day.

I'm sure at some point Amazon will fix this, but it doesn't exactly say much for their recommendation AI.  I mean, this recommendation is a different model and a lighter weight, so it's not exactly the same thing, but come on.  Can one of the biggest tech companies in the world, with huge amounts of computing power and legions of brilliant people devoted to building their recommendation systems, really not figure out that I don't need to buy a slightly different version of the thing I just bought from them?  

I don't know - maybe there's a good reason for that and I just don't know enough about Amazon and/or machine learning.  It's just a really annoying thing that seems like it should be an obvious thing to fix.  Heck, I would imagine that the machine learning systems might even pick up on that on its own.  I mean, do people who buy a thing really buy it again a week later that often?  I'd think those numbers are all fed into the recommendation system and that they'd be low enough that the algorithm would drop recent purchases (especially larger ones) off the recommendations.

Then again, maybe the algorithm knows something I don't.  Maybe people re-buy the same thing all the time.  It could be they even do that with items that cost hundreds of dollars.  I doubt it.  But what do I know?

Several months ago, I posted a review of the Athlean-X programs I've done so far.  Since then, I decided to branch out a little and try some of the programs from Calisthenic Movement.  I'm a fan of their YouTube channel, which includes some extremely good exercise demos and other high-quality content, so I was confident I could trust their programs to be at least decent.  I decided to start with their Mobility program.

What is mobility and why would I train it?

Mobility training is quite different from the other programs I've done so far, which are focused on strength and athleticism.  Mobility is a completely different thing - it's about how much you can move your joints.  This is somewhat different from flexibility in that flexibility is about how far a joint can move in absolute terms, whereas mobility is about how far it can move under its own power, so to speak.  So, for example, if you bend your wrist backwards as far as you can using just  the muscles of that arm, that's mobility.  If you move it even farther back by pressing your hand against the wall, that's flexibility.

So why do a mobility program?  Well, I noticed my mobility was lacking.  The big sign for me was my shoulders.  I'd noticed that while my shoulder strength was definitely increasing (as measured by how much weight I could lift), I wasn't able to move them as far as I should.  For example, if I laid in bed with my arm above my head, it wouldn't lay flat.  It would just sort of hover because my shoulder wouldn't go that far without some additional pressure - it was just too tight.

I also had issues with squatting.  It was hard for me to get to a 90 degree knee bend, much less past that.  This is something I'd noticed with dumbbell squats and deadlifts, but it was also very apparent when attempting to do a plain, bodyweight deep squat.  I think that part of it might be an anatomical limitation in my left hip in particular (that one plays way out to the side when I flex it), but still - my range of motion was pretty miserable.  So I figured some mobility training would be helpful.

And you know what?  I was right - the CaliMove program really did help my mobility. But more on that later.

Program structure

As the webpage tells you, this is a six-month program, broken into three two-month phases, as well as a "prep week" to get you started.  The phases are progressive, so both the exercise volume and the difficulty of the exercises increases with each phase.

In addition, there's progression within each phase.  In the first two weeks, you get used to the phase.  In the second two, you increase the number of reps for each exercise.  Then in weeks 5 and 6, you keep the reps the same but add another day of training.  And then in the last two weeks you bump up the reps again.

After the main six-month training period, there are four additional workouts.  One is an advanced warmup/maintenance workout that aims to help you keep your mobility improvements.  There are also three specialized workouts targeted and making you mobile enough to do specific calisthenics techniques.  These are just stand-alone workouts that are structured in the same way as the rest of the program.  You can use them or not as you see fit.

In terms of the presentation, each phase starts with a presentation of the schedule and a summary of the routine for each week.  You get individual demonstration videos for each exercise which are very much in the style of their YouTube demo videos (so generally very good and helpful).  There is also a video demonstrating the routine, but it's abbreviated and sped up, so it's not something you can follow along with.

The primary tool you use to navigate is a graphic that illustrates the flow between exercises, each annotated with the number of reps and sets.  The graphic also includes a back/front/center symbol indicating your relative orientation for the exercise, which is cute but not especially helpful.  If you know how to do the exercise - which you should - this information is redundant.  But still, it's a nice summary and it looks good.

I only have two complaints about the presentation.  The first is that the mobile webpage isn't zoomable.  This isn't an issue if you're using a laptop or tablet, or if you're young and have good vision, but if you have bad eyesight like me, and you're trying to do this on a phone, then it can be hard to read the sets and reps.  The second is that while the workouts are clear about the sets and reps, the demo videos don't always make it 100% clear what constitutes a "set" or a "rep".  It's not enough to stop you from doing a productive workout (the actual technique is clear), but for some exercises it's a little ambiguous whether some movement sequence is a set, or a rep, or multiple reps.  You can easily end up doing too little or more than you need to depending on your interpretation.

My assessment

Overall, I found this to be a very good program.  I chose to do the mobility program at the same time as a strength training program.  This is advertised as being a totally reasonable thing to do with this program.  The first three months I did alongside a second round of Athlean-X AX-2, while for the second three months I started the CaliMove at-home workout program (which will be another review).

In terms of results, measuring mobility gains can be difficult.  However, I definitely saw good results.  I fixed my shoulder mobility issues and saw noticeable improvements in my squat depth.  I also noticed increased strength and mobility in other joints.  I feel like my joints are generally stronger, more stable, and less prone to collapsing into dangerous positions.

One thing to note with the way I did the program is the time commitment.  The program starts off slow, with relatively short workouts done three times a week.  However, by the time you get to the end, you're doing the mobility program six times a week and the time has increased significantly.  And while the webpage says the workouts take between 15 and 40 minutes, by the later level 3 workouts were taking me a little over an hour.  I generally tried to schedule things so that I wasn't doing strength and mobility workouts on the same day, but by phase three this was unavoidable.  So on those days I would generally end up doing the mobility program first, as a very extended warm-up, followed immediately by my strength program.  This generally took me at least an hour and a half and left me feeling pretty wiped out.  So if you're planning to do this in conjunction with another program, you might want to be mindful of that.

In general, I was actually surprised by how physically taxing the mobility program was.  I sometimes felt more sore and fatigued on mobility days than on strength days.  I chalk this up to the fact that I wasn't used to working those particular muscles.  The recovery wasn't as long as a really hard strength workout, but it was still noteworthy.  I guess I almost expected it to be like a nice, relaxing yoga session, but it's actually much more demanding than that.

Another important thing to realize with this program is that there's a good chance you won't be able to do all of the exercises properly.  I know I couldn't.  Even after finishing the program, there are still several that I can't even get close on, like the back bridge.  However, simply going as far with them as you can still seems to work pretty well.  It can be a bit frustrating, but it's a long program and there's plenty of opportunity to improve.

Currently, even though I've finished the main six-month program, I'm still doing mobility training several days a week.  I sometimes use the advanced routine as a warm-up to my main workout if I have some extra time (the advanced routine takes me about 20 minutes).  I also do the advanced routine and possibly one of the technique-specific routines on my "rest" days.  The technique routines are good, but I find them a bit less interesting, as they tend to involve fewer exercises, but at higher rep ranges.  A lot of the exercises are also quite difficult for me (especially the split training), so while they're beneficial, they're not the most fun workouts.

At any rate, I would definitely recommend this program.  Mobility training is a beneficial and easily overlooked area and I think I'm definitely better off for getting some experience with it.  This is definitely a type of training that I'm going to continue to do while working towards other goals.  Perhaps I'll branch out and try some other mobility programs.  But even if I don't, the CaliMove program has given me some great tools to maintain and enhance the mobility gains I've already made.

So here's a random fitness-related link.  It's a handy page I found for doing visual body fat comparisons.  I particularly like this one because (at least for the men's section) a bunch of the pictures are of the same guy.  Apparently he must have lost a bunch of weight and kept good track of it.  That makes it much easier to see the differences in physique than when you're looking at different people with different sizes and shapes.

If you're not into fitness, you might not be familiar with body fat measurement.  Body fat percentage is one of those metrics that are handy for gauging your fitness level.  It's basically just the percentage of your body weight that consists of fat.  If you don't train, then just tracking your weight is fine, but once you're lifting weights or doing other strength training, you're going to build muscle.  Since muscle is more dense than fat, it makes weight tracking less reliable - you can get into a situation where you're getting thinner, but are actually gaining weight because you're burning fat and building muscle.

There are a number of ways to measure body fat: there's the DEXA scan, which stands for dual energy X-ray absorptiometry and is considered the "gold standard"; there are multiple techniques using calipers to measure skin folds; and there's the seriously low-tech method of eyeballing it, i.e. using comparison pictures. Of course, none of these measurement techniques is exact.  Even the DEXA scan is just an estimate that can be influenced by a variety of factors.  The only 100% accurate way to determine your body fat percentage is to excise every gram of fat from your body, weigh it, and compare that to your total weight - which can't be done without killing you.

Looking at pictures is the method I use.  It's obviously the least accurate and the least precise, but it has the benefit of being by far the cheapest and easiest.  I mean, you're just looking at pictures on the internet, for crying out loud!  And for my purposes, the exact number doesn't really matter anyway.  It's more a reference point for helping to figure out what weight changes mean and where my general fitness level is.  It's nice to have a general idea, but it's not important enough to me to spend significant time or money on it.  It's just one metric among many.  How useful it is depends on your needs and goals.

In a previous fitness post I talked about how I was using Athlean-X for my training regimen.  In this post, I'm going to go into a little more detail and give some reviews of the programs I've done and the Athlean-X system in general.  Hopefully this will be useful to fellow geeks who decide they'd like to take active control of their health and fitness. 

The Athlean-X Approach

Obviously you can read all about this on their website, but I thought a brief overview might be helpful.  Athlean-X is founded and run by Jeff Cavaliere.  Jeff is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) with a Master's degree in Physical Therapy.  His schtick is that he trains professional athletes.  He used to be a strength coach for the New York Mets and his YouTube channel has a bunch of videos that show him coaching pro football players, pro wrestlers, etc.  So the idea is that his training programs are training you like he would train an athlete.  Except, you know, without the actual one-on-one coaching.

One of the aspects of this that I really like is the idea of training harder rather than longer.  There are multiple ways you can train to evoke a response in your body.  One is the "three hours in the gym" approach that people tend to think of when they look at body builders or people with that type of physique.  The alternative, which the AX programs use, is to dial up the intensity.  So instead of doing a lot of sets with longer rest times in the weight room, you do fewer sets, but with heavier weights, going to failure on every set, and typically resting for one minute or less between sets.  And instead of spending an hour on the elliptical machine, you do High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), going all-out in short bursts.  This is difficult training, but the big up side is the time savings.  I'm typically able to finish a strength training workout in 45 minutes or less and conditioning workouts are usually around 20 minutes.  And since I'm able to train at home, I don't even lose time traveling to the gym.

Another interesting feature of the AX programs is that they feature regular "challenges".  These are workouts that include a scoring system.  There are a number of different levels - basic, solid, pro, elite, extreme - and you're supposed to score at a certain level (usually solid or pro) before continuing on with the program.  The idea is to two two things:

1. Make sure that you're ready for the next phase.  The programs are progressive, so if you can't pass the challenge for the first phase, you're going to really struggle with the second phase.
2. To provide you with objective feedback on your progress.  You can track and compare your scores each time you do a challenge in addition to comparing to the benchmarks for each level.  So it gives you a way to confirm that you're actually improving.

The frequency of the challenges depends on the program, but they're generally short, intense workouts that try to give you motivation to push yourself.  This is good in general, but at least for me, it's important to approach the challenges with the right mindset.  It's easy to psyche yourself out or get too focused on "passing" so that you lose sight of the helpful goal of gauging your progress.  Personally, I find the challenges to be more fun the second time - when I already know I can pass them and I'm more focused on improving on my previous score.

What Your Get For Your Money

So if you're about my age, you probably remember the good old days when workout programs would come in the mail and include a bunch of DVDs or even VHS tapes, along with some instruction booklets and so forth.  Well, nobody does that anymore.  These days things are 100% online and AX is no exception.  When you sign up, you'll get an email pointing you to their portal site where you can log in and access your programs.

The portal itself is fairly nice.  It has an adaptive layout, so you can easily use it on a phone or tablet.  The dashboard shows a link to the next day of your active program, but there's also a calendar that you can use to browse the workouts.  The workouts themselves normally include a demo video that walks you through the routine and shows you how to do the exercises.  Below that is a  nice listing of the exercises.  In addition to the sets and reps, each listing includes a link to a short demo video (ten seconds or so) of that specific exercise as well as buttons to track your weight and reps and to view your history.  For strength exercises, I find this very useful as a guide to choosing how much weight I should use and seeing if I'm making progress.  At the bottom of the page, right below the "mark complete" button, there's also a link to the "six-pack shuffle", which is an optional core workout for after you're done.  It's a short, randomized workout that runs between 4 and 8 minutes and has options to use various pieces of equipment or just body-weight.

Beyond the program itself, you typically get a bunch of extras in your portal.  The one that they like to advertise is the "meal plan", which comes with most of the programs.  It's nice as an example of the type of things you might want to eat, but it doesn't include any recipes!  It just lists the different foods for each meal - no measurements, proportions, or cooking instructions.  To me, that makes it kinda useless as an actual meal plan.  Also, a  meal plan seems to come with pretty much every program, but it's the same plan for all of them.  So to me, this is just a stupid marketing gimmick and I ignore it.

The "programs" portion of the portal also includes a "bonus" section with some extra stuff.  This includes things like articles, videos, and most importantly, some bonus challenge workouts.  These are nice things to check out when you're between programs and want a change of pace or if your schedule is off for some reason and want a few "filler" workouts to get back on track.  I've done a number of them and they're generally challenging and enjoyable.

It's also worth noting that you are able to download offline versions of the programs.  Sadly, they don't include the same content - you just get some PDF files listing the exercises in each workout.  No videos or anything like that.  Still, it's nice to have.  If you've been through a program once, then you already know the technique, so the listing is really the main thing you need anyway.

Program Reviews

Now it's time to get into the program specifics.  I don't claim to be an expert, but I've been doing the Athlean-X programs for about a year and a half now.  For the first year, I did four rounds of AX-1, which I mentioned in a previous post. This included all five of the "TNT plugins".  After that I did a round of AX-2 along with Core4, followed by two rounds of Xero and the Ultimate Abs bonus program.  I'm currently on my second time through AX-2.

I'll get into the details of each program below, but the "TL;DR" is that I've really been liking the Athlean-X programs.  Some are better than others, but I haven't done one that I didn't like and that I didn't feel like I got something out of.

AX-1 and TNT

 AX-1 is the "bootcamp" level AX program.  It's targeted at beginners, but let me be clear: this is not an easy program.  If you've already been training for a while, then it's not too bad - you'll get a good workout, but it won't be too challenging.  But if you don't already do regular strength and conditioning training, then it's a hard program.  And if you're sedentary, then it's probably going to be really hard.

When I started AX-1, I was already in what most people would consider "decent shape".  At that point, I'd been doing light home calisthenics (though nothing organized) for about 6 or 8 months and was down to around 175 pounds.  I also did (and still do) karate practice twice a week, which is a pretty good cardio workout (at least it is the way we practice - apparently that's not the case for every school).  However, my first time through AX-1 was pretty brutal.  For instance, the first time I did the "bumps and jumps" conditioning workout, which is just 20 minutes of burpees and box jumps, I was drenched in sweat and felt like my heart was going to explode.  I was lucky to make it through my shower without passing out.  Of course, it's possible to modify the program or dial down the intensity, but the point is that if you're not already an athlete then this is a hard program.

The program is broken into three four-week phases with a challenge at the end of each phase.  The phases are progressive, so each month the exercises get more difficult and more intense.  The schedule is five days a week with two rest days on the weekend.  You do strength training Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with conditioning on Tuesday and Thursday.  Note that it's a different workout pretty much every day.  There are a handful of repeats, and obviously a lot of the same exercises, but you're not repeating the same workouts every week, or anything like that.  This is true of the AX programs across the board.  They're very good about keeping things fresh and interesting.

In terms of equipment, AX-1 has minimal requirements.  So while you can do it in a gym, you don't have to.  In fact, you can probably get everything you need for less than $200, if you look in the right places.  You need:

• Adjustable dumbbells.  Powerblocks are nice, but I use the old-fashioned screw-lock type and they work just fine.
  • Note that you'll probably need a set that goes up to at least 50 pounds for each hand.  You're probably not going to be curling or pressing that much any time soon, but the more common 20 pounds-per-hand sets probably won't be enough for a lot of the back and leg exercises.
• A set of resistance bands.  You'll want a variety of resistance levels.
• A physio ball.
• A pull-up bar.  The doorway ones are fine.
• (Optional) An adjustable bench.
  • If you don't have one, it's possible to lay on the physio ball instead.  However, I found that this gets harder as the weight you're using increases.  I found that once I got up to about 35 pounds or so, trying to do a bench press on the physio ball became really difficult.  It was just too hard to get into and out of position while maintaining control of the weights, so I had to get a bench.
• (Optional) A yoga mat, or something similar.
  • How necessary this is depends on the flooring where you train.  It's definitely necessary if you have to train someplace where there's carpeting (because the plank-style exercises will give you rug-burn on your elbows otherwise).  It's also helpful for lying ab exercises if you're training on a hard floor, just because it's more comfortable.

While some of the exercises do call for other equipment, pretty much everything else can be improvised.  For instance, the inverted rows that are introduced in the first week.  In the video, Jeff uses a barbell bar across a pair of saw horses, but you can use pretty much anything you can fit underneath that will support your weight.  I use a broomstick across the backs of a couple of chairs.  You can get underneath a table or counter overhang - whatever you've got.  One of the bonus features for AX-1 gives a bunch of examples of how to improvise replacements for gym equipment just using things you have around the house.  Jeff goes out of his way to remove the "but I don't have X" excuses for not doing the exercises.

In addition to the base program, you can buy TNT plugins.  These are targeted muscle group workouts that integrate into AX-1.  They have ones for back, shoulders, chest, biceps, and triceps.  You can have up to two TNT plugins active at once and when you activate one, the AX portal will automatically integrate it into your program.  Each TNT adds one workout per week.  If you do one, it will add it on a rest day.  If you do two, one will be on a rest day and the other will be doubled-up with a conditioning workout, so you still get one rest day a week.

Each TNT includes two workouts - a "home" workout and a "gym" workout.  In both cases, the format is similar to a regular AX-1 workout, but the video is a full-length walk-through where Jeff runs through the entire workout in real time - all the exercises, all the sets.  The main difference between the two versions  is the equipment required.  However, even the gym workouts can mostly be done with the same equipment as the main AX-1 program.  I was able to do all of the "gym" workouts at home - I just had to adjust some of the exercises, for instance substituting dumbbells for barbells and resistance bands for a cable machine.  The recommendation is to switch between the two versions, which gives you a little more variety.

I did all five of the TNTs and in terms of effectiveness I found them to be helpful.  They're not indispensable, but if you're looking for an easy way to bump up the intensity of AX-1 a little, they're a good addition.  The workouts are good and Jeff provides some good information in the videos.  Whether they're worth the extra cost kind of depends on how much you can afford, but if money isn't a big issue for you, then I'd recommend them.  However, AX-1 by itself is pretty intense and very effective, so if you're new to training then you might want to save the TNTs for the second or third time through.

AX-2 - "Athlean Extreme"

This past summer I moved on to AX-2, or "Athlean Extreme" as Jeff refers to it. This is supposed to be the "professional athlete" level training, and Jeff actually does get some professional athletes to help with the demonstration videos.  (No big names or anything, but still professionals.)  The pace of this one is much faster - instead of a different theme and challenge for each month they have one for each week.  And the challenges are, in fact, pretty challenging.

The format is a little different from AX-1.  It varies a bit from month to month, but the strength training workouts generally follow a "bro split" - chest and triceps on Monday, back and biceps on Tuesday, rest on Wednesday, legs on Thursday, shoulders and rotator cuff Friday, and then the challenge on Saturday.  The workouts tend to be more complex than in AX-1 as well, with lots of combinations of movements, supersets, and various more advanced techniques.  However, the equipment requirements are mostly the same (I think there's one workout that actually requires a barbell to do correctly) so it's still relatively easy to do at home.  There are also some conditioning workouts sprinkled in as well, but there's not as much of the HIIT cardio as in AX-1.  Much of the conditioning effect seems to be folded into the challenge days and reduced rest times for the strength workouts.

I do have two complaints about AX-2.  The first is that the "different phase every week" thing is a little much.  It's nice to have variety, and you do learn a lot about different techniques and ways of training (definitely watch the phase explanation videos for this program), but it's very hard to judge progress when you're doing something different every week.  I'm also not crazy about the "challenge every week" thing.  As I said above,  when you're going through a program for the first time the challenges can make things a bit more stressful and less enjoyable.  So while AX-2 is still a good program, it's not my favorite.

Core4 Abs

When I started AX-2, I also started Core4 Abs along with it.  This is kind of an interesting one.  It's a dedicated core training program with each session averaging 15 minutes or less.  Each workout includes exercises to target each of the four main core muscle groups - upper and lower abs, obliques, and lower back/glutes.  The videos include a lot of focus on form and activating the correct muscle groups.  The way it's built in their web portal is quite nice as well.  You can choose from one of four "levels", which adjusts the difficulty by varying the exercise type and/or duration.  You can also choose to use Core4 as your post-workout ab session.  This basically substitutes it for the "six pack shuffle" that's recommended at the end of each workout, which is pretty nice.

Like AX-1, Core4 is divided into three month-long phases, each with a different focus and with a challenge at the end of the month.  The videos have a lot of good information, which I think is one of the main benefits of this program - it doesn't just show you the exercises, it teaches you the proper way to do them and why it matters.  I would recommend it just for that.

My main problem with Core4 was the time commitment.  While the individual workouts are pretty short (though the challenges are a little longer), they do generally run in the 10 to 15 minutes range rather than the 5 to 7 minutes that the six-pack shuffles run.  Plus there's the time to watch the videos (which you really should do), so I found that they often pushed my training times over an hour.  That's not super-long, but for me the short training times is one of the best things about AX, so that's something to take into account.

Xero

After AX-2 I did two rounds of Xero, the AX body-weight program.  I decided to do this because we'd planned to spend some more time visiting family and getting away from from the house in the fall and it's billed as "requiring zero equipment", so I could do it on the road  That's mostly true - there are a couple of workouts that involve inverted rows or pull-ups, but they have you doing them with tables and door frames rather than bars.  Personally, I kind of think that's cheating, but its not a huge deal - I just used my usual equipment anyway.

Let's just say up front - Xero is tough.  When the pandemic hit, AX started advertising Xero pretty hard because the gyms were closed.  By the time I started it, they'd "upgraded" it with two additional mini-programs (which I didn't look at) - "Two Below Xero" and "One Below Xero", which are preparatory programs for the main Xero program.  This was probably necessary, because I can't imagine going from not working out to doing Xero.  Frankly, it sounds like a recipe for failure.  I mean, I did AX-1 and AX-2 first and I still had a hard time with Xero.  In particular, the the last week's conditioning workouts left me feeling like I was about to pass out.

In terms of the actual program, Xero is only a six-week program, but it has a challenge every week.  Like the other programs, there's plenty of variety, but it's not too much.  The schedule is fairly regular, with total-body strength training workouts on Monday and Friday, conditioning on Tuesday and Thursday, and the challenges on Saturday.  It also includes what they call "xero-sum progression", where the strength training workouts are repeated, so you can track the number of reps you're doing easily see your progress.

Personally, I found Xero to be very effective.  I feel like I made more progress from Xero than I did from AX-2.  For me, it had enough variety to keep it fun and interesting, but enough consistency to make progress clear and keep me motivated.  The main caveat is that some of the exercises are very demanding.  In fact, some of them are probably non-starters if you aren't already fairly strong.  For me, the most challenging were the hand-stand pushups (they're done against a wall, but still very hard), the plank power-ups, which require a lot of tricep strength, and the ninja tuck jumps, which actually require some technique practice to get a proper rep out.  The workouts also tend to run longer than other AX programs, especially in the last couple of weeks, when they can run over an hour.  Of course, this is kind of inevitable for calisthenics workouts, since without external weights the only way to overload your muscles is with harder exercises or more reps.  But overall, I really liked Xero and highly recommend it.

Ultimate Abs

Lastly, a few words about Ultimate Abs.  This is a six-week bonus program that got for free as a bonus when I purchased Xero (there was a special deal on at the time - I forget the occasion).  I don't think it's sold individually.  There are several other bonus programs that get included as give-aways, but this is the only one I've done so far.

Ultimate Abs is a bit different from the regular AX programs.  For starters, there are no videos.  The workout page has the same kind of text and short demos as the regular workouts, but no walk-through.  You just have to read the couple of paragraphs of description to know what to do.  You also can't set it as your main workout - you have to get to it from the "bonus" tab under your programs.  And you can't set it as your ab workout like you can with Core4 either.  So the integration isn't there and there's not as much content.

The workouts for this particular program are a bit different as well.  Ultimate Abs is obviously an ab training program, but it focuses mostly on weighted exercises.  There two workouts per week, one long and one short, both of which are repeated for a total of four training days per week.  The workouts are pretty tough, but don't require any more equipment than AX-1 does.  

Overall, the program is decent.  Not as good as Core4, but not bad.  The workouts are tough, but there's not really much information included.  It also requires some scheduling, as it seems like it could be a drop-in replacement for the six-pack shuffle but really isn't.  The "long" days can take upwards of 30 minutes, so doing it right after a strength training day is tough and really stretches out the workout.  I ended up shifting the schedule to do the long days on Sunday and Wednesday, so I was doing them on the scheduled rest days for Xero, which I was doing at the same time.

So overall, Ultimate Abs wasn't bad, but you get what you pay for.  If it's offered with a program you already wanted, then great.  Go ahead an give it a try if you feel like something different.  But it's definitely a second-class citizen compared to Core4, so don't go out of your way to get it.

A year ago, I did a post on getting in shape.  Well, a lot has happened since then.  For instance, there's been a global pandemic and people have been stuck in their houses for six months.  So I thought an update might be in order.

The food situation

In terms of general health, I've made it a point to maintain good habits.  I started working from home in March, but I've maintained the same schedule as when I was going into the office.  I still get up at 6:00 every morning to exercise - I just have a few more minutes to wake up before I start my workout.  And I still prepare all my lunches for the week every Sunday morning - my go-to lately is turkey burgers, roasted sweet potatoes or butternut squash, and sauteéd broccoli or brussels sprouts, along with half a bag of chopped salad.  I find that this is good for my mental health, in that it maintains a sense of normalcy and consistency, while keeping my on track in terms of physical health.

While my weight has been holding steady at around 165 pounds, I've noticed that I have been eating more.  This is probably to support the increased exercise and the extra muscle mass I've gained.  To deal with this, I've been making an effort to curb my sweet tooth and choose healthier foods when I'm hungry.  For snacks, I might have an apple, or a small handful of mixed nuts, or perhaps an RxBar.  (I wasn't a fan of RxBars the first time I tried one, but they've really grown on me.  The chocolate peanut butter is my favorite.)  They even have "mini" RxBars that are half the size if you just want something little.

I've also been eating a lot of PB2, which is powdered peanut butter.  I'm a big fan of peanut butter - I could easily stand there and just eat 1000 calories worth of it right out of the jar if I'm not careful.  PB2 isn't really the same as "real" peanut butter, but I think it's still pretty good and it's much safer as a diet-friendly food - a 2Tbsp serving of PB2 has 6g of protein and 60 calories, compared to 8g of protein and 190 calories for regular peanut butter.  So I get almost as much of the good stuff for a third of the calories, which means I don't have to be so concerned about over-eating.

PB2 has also become part of my typical evening dessert.  Sure, I still have "real" dessert if we have something special in the house, but when we don't, I've been having some Greek yogurt mixed with PB2, which makes a sort of "peanut butter pudding".  I throw in a little store-brand Fiber One cereal and some granola to add a little texture and it's actually a very nice before bed snack.

The training regimen

In terms of exercise, I've been making good progress.  I've been doing the Athlean-X programs for about a year and a half now.  For the first year, I did four rounds of AX-1, which I mentioned in a previous post.  After the first round, I standard integrating their TNT plugins, which each add an extra workout per week that targets a specific muscle group.  There are five of them and you can integrate up to two at a time, so I did one on my second round of AX-1 and two on my last two rounds.  I'll save the details for what the workouts were like for another post, but as you might guess from the fact that I did it four times, the "beginner-level bootcamp program" is actually fairly rigorous.

This summer I moved on to the next program - AX-2, or "Athlean Extreme" as they refer to it.  That's also a 12-week program like AX-1, but more difficult. It still focuses on general athleticism, but includes a bit more strength work.  After that, I did two rounds of Xero, which is their bodyweight-only program.  This has apparently gotten a lot more attention since the pandemic started.  Since people couldn't got to the gym, a home bodyweight program was just what a lot of people needed.

Before starting AX-1, I initially considered Xero, since at the time I didn't have any equipment.  Since it was listed as an "intermediate to advanced" program, I decided against it.  In retrospect, I'm glad I did, because it's actually quite challenging.  The strength training workouts are good, but some of the conditioning workouts are absolutely brutal.  Even after completing the first two programs, a few of them left me feeling like my heart was going to explode, which hadn't happened since my first time through AX-1.

In terms of training results, I think I'm doing pretty well.  My endurance has improved noticeably and I've actually started to develop visible muscles.  I'm stronger, my blood pressure is great, and those random aches and pains that I assumed were "just part of getting older" have gone away.  In a way, it's weird - between training daily and eating right, I feel physically good pretty much all the time.  I'm not used to that, but it's nice.  I highly recommend it.

The other week, I watched a Jarvis Johnson video about losing 50 pounds.  For the zero people who've been following my blog for over ten years, you might know that I did something similar in 2007 and documented my progress here.  (Although, unlike Jarvis, I did do some exercise.  Not a lot, but some.)

I've actually been on a similar journey this year.  It's a little different this time, though, both to what I did ten years ago and to what Jarvis did.  This time, instead of just trying to "lose weight", my goal is to actually get healthier and improve my overall fitness.

Motivation

The last time I lost weight, the goal was just the traditional "to lose X pounds" or "get to X weight".  This time, the goal is more specific: to lose fat (not the same as "losing weight"), build lean muscle, and develop healthier eating habits.  Why?  Well, there are several reasons.  For one, I want to be in sufficiently good shape to play with my son until he's too old to think I'm cool.  I also want to stay strong and healthy long enough that when I one day (hopefully) have grandchildren, I'll still be able to run around and play with them too.  In fact, I'd like be able to stay healthy and mobile for as long as humanly possible - preferably until I die.  And the best way to ensure that is to start taking better care of myself and building better habits now.

But it's more than just that (as if that wasn't enough).  There's also a self-actualization aspect to it.  Part of living a fulfilling life is constantly trying to develop yourself and becoming better than you were before. There are many axes along which you can do that: social, intellectual, moral, spiritual, etc.  Well, I came to the realization that physical development is also a valid form of self-improvement.  We often forget that our physical and mental health are not independent - they directly impact each other.  Your mind is connected to your body, in a very literal sense.  So the healthier you are physically, the more mental energy and stamina you can muster, which in turn helps you grow in other areas.  Penn Jillette summed this aspect up nicely in his interview with Joe Rogan here:

Another important motivation is to serve as a role-model.  As I mentioned above, I have a young son and I want him to grow up to be a mentally and physically strong, healthy, confident, and independent adult.  He's still too young to appreciate the implications, but I want him to learn how to eat a healthy diet, exercise safely and productively, and develop the discipline to maintain the good habits he'll need to succeed in live.  We live in a society that doesn't encourage healthy living, in either the physical or emotional sense, so I can't count on him to pick this up on his own.  I figure if I can start living a healthy life-style myself, I can help him learn the skills he needs early and not have to figure it out later in life like me.

Inspiration

So, why bother to change?  Yes, I've given some good reasons above, but let's be honest - most people could give those same reasons.  And the fact is, most people don't act on them, as I didn't for many years.  So clearly I needed more than just motivation to change my lifestyle.  I needed inspiration.

It's kind of lame, but I'll be honest.  The truth is that I got inspired by allowing myself to be sucked down a YouTube rabbit-hole.  There, I said it.

It started with martial arts channels.  In particular, some of Ramsey Dewey's videos.  He had a video where he talked about training to be a fighter and gave this simple piece of advice - just do something to improve yourself every day.  It doesn't have to be a big, dramatic change - small things work too.  The key is to just do something, consistently, every day.  And if you keep at it and you will get better.  It might not happen fast, and your progress might not be even, but that's OK.  The important thing is to put in consistent effort towards your goal.

At that point, I felt like I'd like to be a little stronger (sitting behind a keyboard all day is not conducive to muscle development), so I decided to take Ramsey's advice and start doing some strength exercises every night.  Nothing fancy - just some push-ups and sit-ups before bed.  But it was something and I was doing it consistently.  And after a few weeks, I noticed that I was able to do more of them than when I started, so I was making progress.  That prompted me to start increasing the number of reps, trying different techniques, and adding some squats and other leg exercises.

Looking for more exercise ideas led me to the world of YouTube fitness, which, like the rest of the internet, has some great content as well as a whole lot of morons.  Fortunately, good channels aren't hard to find, so I quickly discovered Athlean-X and Calisthenicmovement.  Both offer lots of excellent exercise demonstrations, workout ideas, and lots of background information about nutrition, the bio-mechanics of various movements, and how they fit together.  From there, I branched out into channels that focus less on demonstrations and workout specifics and more on commentary and criticism, such as Every Damn Day Fitness and Shredded Sports Science, both of which offer humor combined with reality-checks intended to cut through the nonsense that permeates much of the fitness industry.

I think the main thing I took from these channels, and what inspired me to get into shape, was to really internalize the idea that your fitness is something that is within your control.  Quite often people think about fitness as something that happens to them - that either you're naturally thin and athletic, or you're not, and there's not really that much you can do about it either way.  But that's not the case.  Sure, there are people who have legitimate medical issues that impact their diet or ability to exercise, but the majority of over-weight or out-of-shape people do have the ability to change their body composition and fitness level.  And it's not a choice between "dad bod" and spending four hours a day in the gym, either.  Different people can have different goals in line with their lifestyle and other commitments, and there are different ways to achieve those goals.  It's not always easy, but it's certainly not impossible.

This sounds like a fairly obvious thing, and I think it's something I sort of knew on an intellectual level, but I didn't really "get it".  But after a while, I realized that, conceptually, getting in shape is no different than learning a new programming language or technology.  It requires hard work, and it's easier if you have a plan and someone to guide you, but it is achievable if you're willing to put in the time and effort.  There are no shortcuts, no silver bullets, no magic formula - just time and hard work.  And while it's true that this stuff comes easier to some people than to others, nobody is born into it - the limiting factors are time and energy, not genetics.

Taking Action

For me, internalizing this message and seeing a few good examples was enough to move me to action.  When you think about "getting in shape" in terms of "natural athletes" vs. "regular people", it's easy to write off the possibility of meaningful change.  But when you think of it in terms of "just putting in the work"...that's a different story.  At that point, I realized: I can do this.  I know how to work hard, maintain discipline, and follow and monitor a plan.  Heck, I do that in my work all the time.  This is something I can realistically achieve.  

So I started putting changes in place.  After a few months of doing the body-weight exercises I mentioned above, I decided to start adjusting my diet.  I didn't "go on a diet", but rather started trying to build healthier eating habits.  Basically, this meant moving towards a the kind of diet your grandmother always said you should be eating - cut down on the breads and sweets, cut down on between-meal snacks, and eat lots of vegetables.  In fact, for the first few months I completely cut out between meal snacks.  I also cut way down on my alcohol consumption.  I went from "a drink or two before bed" down to "one drink once in a while".

For my meals, I started making a point of having a sizable serving of green vegetables with every lunch and dinner and cutting down on the refined carbohydrates (breads, pasta, etc.).  To facilitate this, I started pre-cooking my lunches for the week.  On Sunday evening, I prepare four days worth of lunch (I still take advantage of "free lunch Friday" at the office) which I then portion out so that I can just grab them each morning before I leave.  As an example, last week I made turkey burgers and chicken breast (for alternate days), roasted sweet potatoes, broccoli sautéed with onions, and some chopped kale salad from Wegmans.  Lest this sound boring, I make liberal use of the spice cabinet to jazz things up.  We have a number of interesting spice mixes from Pennzey's that add a lot of flavor to the meat and veggies.

After about three months of this, I was down about 15 pounds (from 191 to around 175) and was feeling stronger from the strength training.  However, it was also becoming clear that I needed to be more organized about my training.  This whole "cobble together a workout from YouTube videos" think worked fine initially, but it was becoming clear that I didn't really know what I was doing.  I was starting to notice some strength imbalances and mobility issues and I didn't know how to address them or work around them.  So I decided to get myself on an organized training program.

I decided to go with the Athlean-X "AX-1 Training Camp" program.  I chose this partly because I was already familiar with the YouTube channel and trusted the quality of the material.  But the program had several other aspects that I found very appealing:

1. It takes a "don't waste time" philosophy, which they sum up as "trading time for intensity".  The short version is that, unless you have difficulty executing one or more of the exercises (which did occasionally happen to me), the workouts shouldn't last more than 40 minutes (about 45 if you do the optional "six-pack shuffle" abdominal workouts that are included).  In fact, some of the conditioning workouts can take as little as ten minutes (just don't mistake "short" for "easy").
2. The entire program can be accessed from your phone.  It's a mobile-friendly website that lets you access your workouts, watch the demo videos, and keep track of your weight and repetition numbers for each exercise.
3. You can do the all the workouts from home with relatively little equipment.  I only had to buy a doorway pull-up bar, a physio ball, and a set of adjustable dumbbells.  Not only does it save money over a gym membership, it also saves time - no driving back and forth.  (Note that really do need an adjustable dumbbell set.  The program is based on lifting to failure in a certain range of repetitions, so you need to be able to move the weight up and down in fairly small increments, and the only way to do that is to have adjustable dumbbells or have a rack of a dozen dumbbells in five-pound increments, which is both costly and takes up a lot of space.)  In fact, the entire program has a "no excuses" philosophy to exercise, offering adaptations and substitutions you can make to the exercises.  One of the "extras" is a set of videos showing various ways to get an exercise in even if you don't have the "proper" equipment for it.  There are also plenty of options offered for the conditioning workouts, including ones that can be done indoors with zero equipment.

I've been really enjoying this program so far and would definitely recommend it.  The one thing to keep in mind is that when Athlean-X uses the tagline "if you want to look like an athlete, you have to train like an athlete," they aren't kidding.  Even though it's the "beginner-level" program, AX-1 is definitely challenging and requires dedication.  If you are extremely over-weight or if you haven't been exercising at all, then don't expect to have an easy time with it.  You might want to consider starting with something less demanding or be prepared in advance to repeat the first month several times.  (The program is structured around three one-month phases, each of which ends in a "challenge".  If you don't "pass" the challenge, you're supposed to repeat the current phase until you can pass.  You also repeat the challenges in later months, so you can track the changes in your performance.)

Results

Long story short: so far, my results have been very good.  

At this point, I'm down to about 168 pounds and in the best shape of my life by far.  I don't look like a fitness magazine model or anything, but I look better and feel stronger than I ever have and my energy and endurance levels, both physical and mental, are higher than before.  I'm also discovering bones and muscles that I didn't even know I had, which is cool but kinda weird at the same time.

In terms of lifestyle changes, things are going quite well.  I started the basic body-weight exercises last November, changed my diet in March, and switched over to doing AX-1 in June.  I'm currently maintaining a six-day training schedule (I'm on my second round of AX-1, this time including one of their "TNT" plugins, which adds an extra workout), doing my workouts first thing in the morning before work.  I am still pre-cooking my lunches and maintaining a healthy diet without too much difficulty or feeling of restriction.  I'm also being more mindful of my sleep schedule and getting to bed at a reasonable time.  While all of this does require some effort and discipline, I'm not finding it to be burdensome and I'm feeling really good, so the extra effort is definitely worth it.  At this point I can see myself maintaining this lifestyle for a very long time, which was exactly the point in the first place.