Self-Diagnosed MuffinTop

          I'm 37 years old. In my mind, I'm 25, or somewhere around there and some would argue I'm younger still. Yesterday I went to the birthday party of my niece and nephew. As a good uncle should, I entertained the youngsters playing soccer in the rain. This enabled a sometimes grumpy/sometimes happy (she's pregnant and hormonal) sister to arrange her birthday party extravaganza on the only day it rained all month. When I awoke this morning my legs hurt and my right arm hurt. My legs hurt from kicking the ball around for about 15 minutes and my arm hurt from attempting to throw a stick "javelin style" up onto the roof so that I could be the hero and hang the pinata. Didn't ever succeed but my arm was sore from trying. It's tough to say because at one point I was in pretty damned good shape. I played soccer from the age of 8 until I was 27. The effects of that lasted a long time but have now worn off. I'm not any adjective that would be used to describe an athletic shape. I've had enough. The other day I saw my back and there was rumpled skin. I have a muffin top. I'm not gonna lie. I guess it's best to put it out there. If you looked at me you'd never know I looked so bad underneath. It really came to my attention when Angela, the observant and ever so blunt Italian co-worker, asked me why I was wearing "smedium" shirts. I had no idea what she meant. Then I realized my shirt was hanging over my pants. I could no longer wear the shirts that I once wore. The rising of my dough-like tummy made the shirt not fit as long as it used to. You must keep in mind, this has never happened to me before. I have never not been able to fit into my clothes. I take that back, I gained 15 pounds living in Genova, Italy eating about 1kg of focaccia and a liter of Fanta every morning. Due to some medications I've been on, namely prednisone, I've gained a whopping 23 pounds. I used to weight 175 and now I weight 198. I am 6'1" for any of you who do the ratio thing.
          I was whining about my situation to my buddy Eddy the other day and he told me he was doing something called P90x. I had never heard of it and don't buy into the gimmicky exercise fad crap. I consider it the pyramid schemes for the skinny. The skinny and athletic promote them to the people like me, who want to be like them. I'm so tired of being in this state of muffin nast, that I decided to try P90x anyway. I have brides that are doing it apparently and many people I know are starting to see results. Maybe I will too.

Just finished the first session of P90X. Looking a little bedraggled.

          I just finished my first session called "Core Synergetics" or something to that effect. I could not even do all of the exercises. I felt like I needed the weanie ones, like doing push ups from your knees. The host is a little annoying and I think even he knows it. He put an option for doing the exercises without the volume. All I remember is he keeps calling one of the girls "Blam." That and he annoyed me a little bit when he didn't even really do all the workout. Just when he started to get tired he'd head to the black guy in the back (who was ripped like The David) and tell him to do a deeper lunge. The session was an hour long including warmup and cool down. I hope to be able to do them all eventually and not feel like such a loser. I didn't do all the reps either. I had to sit and make sure the sweat pouring off of my head didn't get into my eyes or all over my weights and mat. Don't get too heavy of weights either. I have 20's and I think I'm going to go to 8's even. I'm not ashamed to say it. Let's just say my arms plus ragu would have looked like spaghetti. Forget the banana thing. You flip around and turn up like a banana and then turn over like superman. I think I'm gonna feel that in the morning. I just wish I lived on a farm and could stack wood and do some farm work for a living. Then I wouldn't have to work out. I'd be working out at work. Instead, I have to work AND work out. I'm not sure how long this is going to last. I will put a picture of my muffin top up when I hit 30 days. I'll put it up with my 30-day photo. That way I won't be so incredibly embarrassed.
          If anyone has any tips at all or anything they'd like to share on how they keep motivated. Post that now. As you can see from the above pic, I'm a big sweaty mess.