P90X2 Results: Vivek

Vivek on top of getting some awesome results with P90X2, has got some serious video skills and its my pleasure to share his awesome transformation vid with the RIPPEDCLUB crew!

 

Viveks story in his own words:

 
I grew up with my parents in Mumbai, India. I was only 4 years old when we moved to Mumbai. It was difficult for me to get detached from my cousins, grandparents and settle in a new place where I did not know anyone. No friends, no cousins and my father was mostly out overseas due to the nature of his job.

I started making some friends in a new place and slowly, we all started settling into the Mumbai lifestyle. As time went by, I watched a lot of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies and was really inclined to start learning Martial Arts. But, there was a problem; I was very overweight. And school kids can be cruel, they would make fun of me even if I tried running to lose weight, or play sports with them. I was always pointed out as the loser, due to the fact that I could never make team win or participate in Sports without being made fun of. I decided to ignore everything and enrolled for Martial Art classes.

I was in Grade IX or around that time and some mischievous school kids pushed me and one of them tripped me behind and I fell straight on my back. My back was not strong enough to take my body weight and my lower back (Coccyx) fractured as soon I hit the floor. It was painful, as I was lying on the floor and the kids were pointing at my face and laughing. I could not do anything. I was fat, under-confident and dealing with a back injury and everyone made fun of me in school. In addition, growing up in Mumbai (India) meant competition, competition to succeed as a professional, which meant, Sports and Fitness related activities faced a lot of criticism.

To top it all, my back injury was so bad, I had to take a small pillow to school and sit on it, in a way that the Coccyx would not make any contact, so the pillow would be actually placed under my hamstrings and the butt would be in the air. I could not sit in a bus, I could either lay down or stand up.

With all these issues and all the opposition for Sports and Fitness, I joined Karate, and I told my Sensei that I have a back issue going on. He understood my situation and allowed me in class (this was when the fracture recovered to a relatively good level, but my weight was still an issue). He told me to not do stomach situps, I used to do push-ups or squats instead. During my first sparring session, I was nervous and got beat up real bad. As years went by, I put my 100% and focused on punches and kicks and intuitively learned ways to protect my back. I was not the best in class, but I was the most consistent. I finally got my Black Belt 9 years later. During this time, my Sensei hired me to teach his class and paid me on an hourly basis. I had almost 700 students assigned to all over Mumbai. The best thing is, I’m still in touch with him (he is in Mumbai, India) and I meet him whenever I travel home. 

I came to the United States in the year 2000 for a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering. I worked hard for my education and I continued to workout 3x/week with no knowledge of nutrition. I got a job after I graduated and there came a time where I was eating junk food, drinking Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha and lots of Soda almost everyday. Whenever, I started gaining weight, I starved myself to lose the weight and never looked at food as fuel or a source of energy.  I skipped meals, in fact, sometimes my first meal of the day used to be at 4:00 PM! It was a yo-yo cycle; I would gain weight with junk food and try and lose some of it by starving myself. The worst problem with the yo-yo cycle is that there is a serious loss of energy. One cannot make it a lifestyle, a lifestyle has got to be long-term and sustainable.

All my life, I had not learned much about nutrition. A very important aspect of fitness is nutrition and not staying on a diet, an aspect I had overlooked big time!

I started with P90X. P90X has helped me get on track with Fitness, Nutrition and one of the most important things I have learned with P90X is to respect every aspect of fitness. Most often, people ask me if I do Sports Training, Weight Training, Martial Arts or Yoga. My answer? P90X!