Insanity Makes Maxim Go Crazy!

Our editor is going on a 60-day quest to find golden abs buried deep under a flabalanche on Gut Mountain. Will The Insanity Workout provide him with the fat shovel he so desperately needs?

Our editor is going on a 60-day quest to find golden abs buried deep under a flabalanche on Gut Mountain. Will The Insanity Workout provide him with the fat shovel he so desperately needs?

Hey, it’s Dan and I have a confession to make. [Takes deep breath] Okay, here goes: I’m not in the most amazing shape right now.

Not that I’ve ever been in what anyone would define as “amazing” shape, but I’ve certainly been in “better” shape than I am now. (Turns out, drinking a lot of alcohol and not moving around very much makes a man more pear-shaped than not pear-shaped.)

For a while I was okay with not being in the most amazing shape. But I had an awakening. No, I didn’t have a heart attack while playing catch with my son or anything dramatic like that. I was getting dressed one morning and caught a not-so-sexy glimpse of my gut hanging over my boxers in the mirror and blurted out, “What in the fuck, man?” Now I’m not the type to yell at my reflection, so I took that as a sign to do something drastic. Something crazy. Something INSANE!

No, I didn’t decide to quit drinking or go on a diet or anything ridiculous like that. I decided at that moment to do The Insanity Workout! You know Insanity from the infomercials, right? The ones starring, Shaun T., a man seemingly carved out of hairless wood?

Described by the web site, “The INSANITY® workout might just be the hardest fitness program ever put on DVD. Your personal trainer Shaun T will push you past your limits with 10 INSANITY workout discs packed with plyometric drills on top of nonstop intervals of strength, power, resistance, and ab and core training moves. No equipment or weights needed. Just the will to get the hardest body you’ve ever had.”


Wow, exhausted just reading that. But, yes, duh, of course I want the hardest body I’ve ever had. But do I have the will? Only one way to find out. I dialed up the good folks at Beachbody.com and put in an order. A few days later, this brown box of hurt came in the mail.


Now, Maxim historians may recall that I tried Insanity a few years ago. But here’s the thing: I only did it for 30 days, and if truth be told, more like 17 or 18 of those 30 days.


But this time I am doing it for real! 60 days of blood, sweat and Shaun T. Will I be able to dig deep enough to get the beach body I so richly deserve? I’ll report back every week to let you know how it is going. How fast will I get results? How weirded out will my wife and children be by my time spent alone in the basement working up a good sweat as a shirtless bald man does Power Squats on my laptop? Only time will tell.

Here are my Day 1 stats:

Weight: 163

Waist: 36 inches


I took a “before” picture, but maybe we’ll wait to for the after to see if it is worth showing. (If you’re dying to see me shirtless in the meantime, watch my encounter with several large sandwiches and Guy Fieri here. The shirt comes off around the 6:30 mark). 

But I will offer this. To show how serious I am about this, I shaved my head in honor of my new gut guru, Shaun T.

Smell ya later, stomach!