Started 12/21/09, ended 03/20/10.

Stats:

30 year old male
5'9"
Begin Weight - 170lbs
End Weight - 160lbs

I plan on starting a 2nd round tomorrow. Hopefully will have a solid 6 pack by Summer!

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Very nice results... you packed on some muscle and definitely flattened your stomach. I have a few questions:

1) Did you follow the P90x nutrition plan?
2) Did you do 12+ reps or 8-10?
3) What was your beginning/end body fat %?
4) How much did you push yourself during your workouts?

Another round of P90x will definitely do the job. Actually, I am pretty sure that even after 45 days, you will have abs. It looks as if you have 12% BF or less.

1) I sorta followed the plan. I switched my diet to 5 meals a day instead of 3. Every morning I have a scoop of ON whey, frozen fruit (berries, medley, whatever), a few ounces of lowfat yogurt, and some low fat milk to help it blend better in my magic bullet. Then I eat a clif bar builders bar for my morning snack. Then some type of "healthy lunch and dinner." For my afternoon snack it's usually some almonds, walnuts, turkey jerky, or some other nut and dried fruit combo. Bottom line I just tried to stick to a ratio of 40/40/20. I didn't make any of the recipes in the book or switch my phases. Also probably consusume under 2000 calories/day. I think the nutrition guide recommends waaaay too many.

2) Most of the time I did a 8-10 rep. As I got stronger I would up my rep count until I hit 10 reps. Once that happened I would bump my dumbbell up 5lbs and set a goal of 8 reps. For pullups I would do about 5-6 reps unassisted and then another 10 using my foot on a chair. Toward the end I ditched the chair and did an extra 2-3 reps unassisted to exhaustion.

3)I don't know what my body fat % is/was. I wish I did. Maybe I'll try that military formula to figure out. At least it'd be a consistent comparison. I bought some crappy plastic calipers off ebay but don't know how to use them effectively. seems like you need a buddy to measure you properly.

4) I think I brought it pretty hard. To be honest, the first 30 days or so I didn't do ab ripper. I was too spent from the routine to do abs. But they I switched things up to do abs when i got home from work and then eat, rest, 30 mins or so and then bang out the routine. When I did weight training routines I'd always target an addd'l rep or two, maybe heavier weight from the last time. But rarely was my routine from the previous week as easy current.

Trust the program... Ab Ripper X doesn't have the warmup or any stretches in the beginning of it. It is meant to perform ARX right after the lifting because:

1) you will already be warmed up and have the blood flowing.
2) your muscles will already be stretched and will be less prone to injury.

ARX is an extreme ab workout, but you also utilize other muscles in the body. Be very careful doing ARX before your lifting or in a different session. Trust the program... it was setup in a specific way for a reason.

As for the nutrition plan, I agree with you 100%. I believe they recommend WAY too many calories. But that is for me, everyone is different. I consume about 1700-1800 calories per day and keep a 40/40/20 ratio. I stick to fruits and vegetables only for my carbs and avoid Bread and Pasta. I only eat chicken, turkey and fish for meats. Red meat has too much fat making it impossible to keep the ratio with it.

Keep doing what you are doin... it is working. But you don't need me to tell you that, you have your before/after pics. Good luck with Round 2.

Good for you! Nice progress. You can see a big change in your abs and the width of your back and shoudler. Well done.

Good results for not following the plan looked like you worked hard. Your arms are definately more defined. IF you had followed the plan though lol .. Still good job getting through your 90 days.. congrats

Bear