Day 90 - What a ride

Day 90, wow, it's over.  I disagree with those who said it flew by.  It flew by like a long distance flight in cattle class where you feel like you've been on it forever then you look up and there's still 9 hours left, the guy next to you keeps stealing the arm rest, and the fat guy behind you periodically yanks on the back of your seat to help himself stand up.  Or something.  It was just <bleeping> hard, period.  There were a ton of ups and downs, but PCP is so brilliantly structured, you have the support of your group and you have the pictures, always the pictures, to track your progress.  The changes really are incredible.

Over the summer I was in Tokyo and Jason Fishelberg told me about this program he was doing...eat healthy, no this, no that, high protein, low fat, exercise every day, yada yada.  I knew he'd done various cleansing diets or whatnot before, stuff that didn't really take (and, as it turns out, slightly messed with his metabolism) and I didn't really give it much more thought.  Then I saw his before & after pics, and was just totally blown away.  And, what's that you say Fish, it's sustainable...?  What I'm trying to say is, J, thank you for finding this, and rocking it, and inspiring the rest of us to PCPtasticness.  Thanks also to Patrick and Chen for designing a program that is so powerful & life changing, yet when you boil it down, so incredibly simple.  More than anything else, PCP was an education for me.   Chatting with Patrick today, he said he & Chen feel that if they ever had to advertise, they'd have failed.  I said I'd wager that most PCP grads find it hard to not be evangelical in spreading the word, so I don't think that will be a problem.  Convert, O ye of little muscle and much flab!  Discardeth ye thine french fries; embraceth instead this carrot.  I want everyone to get on board, but I realize not everyone is ready.  That is not going to stop me from shouting it from the hilltops.  So, since me and my fellow PCP grads are basically walking billboards, here are some pictures to support the cause:

Day 1 back

Day 90 back

Day 1 side, yuck

Day 90 - Bruce Lee isn't here right now, can I help you?

Day 1, socks & flab

Day 90, neither

.....Aaaaaand, the obligatory old pants shot!  I went from a size 35 waist to a 31:

howYOUdoin'?

Weigh-in on 15Sep2010: 80.1kg (176 lbs)
Weigh-in (weigh-out?) on 13Dec2010: 70.9kg (156 lbs)

...so I lost about 11.5% body weight while at the same time adding a lot of muscle.  That doesn't suck.  And my much stronger legs are looking forward to carrying my much lighter body all over the mountain this snowboarding season.

As I said earlier, more than anything else, PCP was for me an education.  Food fiction and food fact, efficient exercise (ohhhh the burn!) vs wasted time, and so on.  More than the squats they make you do, or the egg whites they ask you to eat, it's the knowledge that Patrick & Chen impart that makes these results sustainable.   

Thank you.

Day 89 - JFD'ing all the way home

I have on several occasions over the last few weeks needed to borrow Team Blue (Team Cookie Monster?)'s motto, and JFD it.  That has especially been true these last few days when we have gone totally superset & failure-crazy.  Oh man.  I am really, really, REALLY sore, but that motto and the finish line in sight have kept me going.  Well, those two things, and the fact that I am seeing some awesome body results at the moment and want to be as PCP-tastic as possible for the final pictures.

Just wanted to tie up a couple loose ends before Day 90 gets here and we all get reflective and emotional in our final posts:
The gym workout assignment
This was pretty easy - I have done almost all my workouts in the gym in my building.  There are all kinds of people that go in there, from 50- and 60-somethings that read the newspaper while slowly burning some calories (and, probably, some fat!) on the exercise bikes, to high school kids that come in and run on the treadmill for 20 minutes before doing some curls and heading out, and just about every kind of worker-out in between.  But I'll focus on 3 guys in particular: an Indian, an Aussie, and an American (stop me if you've heard this one)...they are all there 5 days a week after work, and sometimes on weekends as well.  I see them all the time.  They are committed to being in the gym and, obviously, spend a lot of time there.  They are all pretty strong, BUT they are all carrying plenty of extra weight that they don't need that could easily be gotten rid of, if only they knew what I know!  However they don't really seem fazed by this, as being at the gym appears to be almost as much a social thing for them as a time to workout.  They talk for minutes between sets - every set - and I wonder if they ever get a burn at all.  They are all super nice guys, all of whom can definitely bench press more than me, but they turn in some of the least efficient workouts you'll ever see.  Until 3 months ago, I was frequently guilty of the same thing.

The new ab workout
I downloaded a fitness app for my iphone maybe...a year ago?  It's called iFitness.  I've used it like 4 or 5 times ever, and I paid for it too!  But now that I am armed with so much more info than before, I should be able to get some pretty solid mileage from it.  There have got to be about 50 different ab exercises on there, and they come with a description, pictures, and in many cases video of someone doing it.  Actually it's a pretty good app.  Anyway the one I am partial to, and have been mixing in occasionally already, is a medicine ball torso twist:
STEP 1. Sit upward with your back straight up but leaning slightly towards the floor, with your knees bent 90 degrees.
STEP 2. Hold a medicine ball close to your chest as you rotate your torso to the left. Then, place the ball on the floor behind you.
STEP 3. Rotate around to the right, pick up the ball, rotate left, and place it behind you. Keep your head in line with your torso throughout the movement, and perform it as quickly as possible. 

...those are the directions from the app, but I frequently keep my legs out & raised, pulling my knees in as I twist.

That's all for now...see y'all tomorrow, ON DAY 90 YO!

Day 84 - new pants

Just bought a new pair of jeans at lunch.  Waist size 31...actually the 30s fit better in the waist but were too tight in the legs.  I don't know where I was on September 14th waist size-wise, but it was probably somewhere around 34-35.  It has been higher than 36 in the recent past.  So that is high-five worthy, and ranks as the #2 feel-good event of the day, right behind the New England Patriots' clinical dismantling of the NY Jets on Monday Night Football.  THAT was too awesome to be topped.  But the jeans thing feels pretty good...not to mention I can stop wearing my old jeans, which had basically become a pair of clown pants on me.

I fear some backlash from Jason Block though, he has been getting really excited about an all-boys clothes shopping trip come PCP-end.  That's just the kind of guy he is.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Don't worry J-Blo, I could still use a new shirt or two, and maybe a pair of pants.

In other news, there really is quite an array of healthy new habits I've picked up over the last 84 days that I will definitely work into the life of Bill 2.0 from next Tuesday onwards.  And I will discuss those at a later date.  For now though, I just want to say, there are 2 things I am almost certainly never going to do post-PCP: creeps, and floor jumps.  Christ I hate doing both of those.

    

Day 83 - catching up

First things first, I got called out today by none other than my "inspiration" person, PCP grad Jason Fishelberg, for not having pics up since Day 55, so I am uploading the last ones I took - first from Day 64 that just never got uploaded, and then from tonight, Day 83.  So those are all up now.  Not sure what happened to the lighting on the last back picture; looking at that & then at all the others, you'd think I rotate the sun with the same alignment as Mercury.  I'm pretty sure I'm not actually that two-toned, but who knows.

Next, my 3rd & final indulgence: Sorry for the delay in blogging about it.  It didn't go well, and I want a do-over. I SAAAAID, I WANT AN INDULGENCE MULLIGAN!  Well I guess Patrick's probably not the mulligan type, so I'll have to wait until Day 91.  Anyway, I had it all planned, meeting up with the guys last Thursday night, softball league night, bacon cheeseburger, fries, ice cold coke, I was pretty stoked just at the very idea of it all.  When I got there one guy already was eating one, and I couldn't wait to get mine.  It looked fantastic, then I got it, and...it wasn't really all that.  It tasted good but for some reason not great, which was mildly annoying, but that wasn't even the bad part: when I got home a few hours later not only did I upchuck all the ground chuck, I spent the better part of Thursday night, into Friday morning, dry-heaving over my toilet.  I ended up calling in sick to work, sleeping all day Friday, and not working out.  So I'm still a day behind on the workouts and will catch up tomorrow (this is like the 3rd or 4th time I've missed a Friday or Saturday workout & ended up working out on a Tuesday "rest day".)

Anyway, pretty disastrous 3rd Indulgence.  None of the rest of the guys who ate the same thing got sick, so while I could chock it up to my body rejecting that sort of greasy crap, I felt totally fine while eating it.  I just don't quite understand what happened, which is why I want a mulligan.  Day 90-something will feature a cheeseburger and fries (probably from somewhere else), because I want to know if my body is really going to reject that going forward.  WTF.

Homework still to be done:
- Read others' blogs, way behind on that
- Gym snooping
- Dig up a new ab exericse

It's 12:10am, this is when I have time to update the blog.  I finished my workout at 10:45pm, had my post workout snack, then around 11:15pm I had my evening snack, fruit + milk.  I thought it was probably too late but I wanted and ate it anyway.

Day 76 - final indulgence planned

It will be Thursday night, Day 79.  My softball league has a handful of "league nights" at the various sponsors during the year, and this Thursday there happens to be one, at my team's own sponsor (McSorley's Ale House in SoHo, Hong Kong).  So I need to show up & represent.  I'll make the final call once I get there after work on Thursday and peruse the menu, but I'm thinking bacon cheeseburger, fries, diet coke.  Maybe that's a shade under 1000 calories but it'll have to do.

Not much else to report.  I was a pretty good boy on Thanksgiving, had an obligatory slice of pumpkin pie with a dab of whipped cream on Saturday afternoon.  It wasn't even a slice, more like a sliver.  Very very small, and then I went home and ran for an hour on the treadmill (10.75k), and did the workout.  Workouts are going pretty well, though I hit failure all the time on all kinds of things.  I mean there are a number of exercises on which I have not once, during the entire program, not gone to failure on.  Pull-ups, chest dips, push-ups, davinci, v-sits, plank, etc.  I am of course making progress in getting stronger, but perhaps more importantly I'm making progress in accepting failure as success.  It still frustrates me sometimes, and I think I could probably do this week's exercises for another straight month before being able to actually do them all, but as long as I keep seeing results it's all good.

On top of the usual workouts, I am hoping to get two or three 8-10k runs in per week in the mornings for the next 2 weeks, in a last ditch effort to lose as much gut fat as possible.  That lower gut, below the belly button, is just incredibly stubborn.  I'm not going to go off message too much (will certainly keep eating all the food), but anything else I could be doing for this homestretch to maximize those Day 90 photos?

Day 72 - Happy Thanksgiving

First and foremost, a very Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow PCPers, Americans and non-Americans alike.  Thanksgiving is such a great holiday.  Last year my mom was out visiting, my sister (who also lives here in Honkey Kong) hosted a huge all-day open house affair, dozens of people came and went for about 8 hours, I went & stayed for about 10 hours, had probably 3 full plates of turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, all of course covered in gravy, ohhhhhhhhhh the graaavvvvyyy

...aaaand honey sesame glazed carrots, a bunch of other veggie dishes, some milk, some apple cider, a couple slices of pumpkin pie with whipped cream, a couple slices of apple pie with vanilla ice cream, some cookies, maybe a coffee towards the end.  Somewhere Dionysus was high-fiving his buddies like, "Boo-yah!  That's my boy!"  I mean it was epic.

This year...it's a little different.  Sis just had kiddo # 2 about a month ago, and isn't hosting anything.  We've been invited to a couple different Thanksgiving dinner parties but can't make them and/or aren't interested in going, mainly for PCP reasons.  One I would very much like to go to, but the spread will just be too awesomely cruel for me to look at while not partaking.  So on Saturday afternoon, we will have a small family get together, after my sister and her crew go to a "real" Thanksgiving shindig and get sufficiently full, and after I play softball and stick to PCP all day.  We will get together, and instead of it being about the food, we will just be thankful to be able to spend some time together.  So on a day (and weekend) of giving thanks, here are a few of the things I am thankful for.  In no particular order:

- My family, meaning both my wife & daughter, and my sisters/bro in law/nieces/my mom.  Nothing is more important to me than all of them, and they are wonderful.

- The fact that Jason Fishelberg discovered some program on the world wide interwebz called PCP, and ruh-HOCKED it, inspiring many of the rest of us to do it.

- PCP itself.  I am sore all over and don't mind whining about it, but the truth is I haven't felt this good about myself in a long time, and it's only going to get better.

- My almost unmatched prowess in both Scrabble and fantasy football.  Damn I am good at both of those things.

- Sarah Palin.  Only just today, when I heard that she said we must "Stand with our North Korean allies" did I realize how smart she is.  I mean, we are all playing checkers like schoolchildren while she is playing chess.  It is clear to me now that she has figured out what no other politician before her could: that to beat the North Koreans, you simply need to out-crazy them.  And without question, she is the right person for that job.

- Fall foliage.  The promise of snow in Hokkaido in January.  Baseball.  Bell peppers.  Salmon.  So many things.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  

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Verrrry late night workout last night - I had to pop by a charity function for a bit, didn't get home until about 8:45pm, finished dinner before 9, had my new pre-workout bread slice around 10pm and then went to the gym.  Kind of got a minor stomach cramp while jumping but pushed through.  The gym closed at 11, which meant I had to do the abs portion back in the apartment, putting a towel down on my daughters play mat.  "V-Sits will be easier with no shoes!" I thought, but ahh, no.  No they weren't.  Anyway I finished the workout and realized, ok it's 11:15pm, I'm now meant to have my post-workout snack of an egg white and 200 ml milk, AND my evening snack of another 300ml milk plus 180g fruit.  I called an audible, nixed the fruit entirely, and went with the egg white, 140ml yogurt (which I'd been on until yday and we need to use the yogurt), and 250 ml milk.  Given the time of night and what we had in the fridge, it just seemed like the right call.  Anyone have any thoughts on that though?  Really didn't want to stuff myself too much, in the end I still felt full when I went to bed an hour later.

And if you think that was a time crunch, now I have a real problem on my hands: Grand Turismo 5 came out yesterday for PlayStation (f*cking FINALLY) and that is going to be a major drain on my free time going forward.  Yes I am 36 and excited about a video game.  Have you seen it?  Unbelievable.

Anyhoo...HAPPY THANKSGIVING PCPers!!

Day 69 - Slightly adrift

I have been crap at blogging and feel that I haven't been much better at PCP itself of late.  Thursday night client dinner, I definitely went over my dinner protein allotment, as my steak was just very tasty, so I ate the whole thing.  Probably 200-220 grams total, over by about 80~100 grams, which is obviously a pretty large percentage.  After doing so I went somewhat off the rails -- I also sneaked a couple french fries and extra non-special order veggies, which is to say they almost definitely had salt and/or butter on them.  And a few scoops of chocolate cake & ice cream for dessert.  And several bits and bites off the cheese plate.  I have mostly been able to avoid much client entertainment stuff during the PCP so far but just couldn't get away being 100% compliant on Thursday...nor, to be honest, did I really want to...as perhaps you can tell by the total lack of restraint.  Call it a mental health day.  Consequently I felt like ass all day Friday, got home Friday night and was totally spent, so didn't work out.  Amazing how bad decisions can compound and be felt well after their immediate making.  Saturday to make up for it, I jumped an extra 6-7 minutes, and combined the two workouts.  Didn't do 100% of both but did as much as I could (all of the legs & push-ups/back stuff + smaller muscles, and 3 diff sets of abs stuff).  Decent make-up effort I suppose, but I was hoping to get fully back on track on Sunday, buuuut Sunday turned out to be lots and lots of Maya time (my daughter)...which was great but it meant I didn't get to the gym until about 6:45pm, had ZERO interest in jumping so went for a run on the treadmill.  I ran 10k, which was awesome for me, first time I've run that far in a really, really long time, but it took 57 minutes.  I had to get back up and eat dinner, could NOT be in the gym another 45 minutes after that, so half-assed some random abs and then called it a day.  Today I will do Sunday's workout, Tuesday I will do Monday's, and be all caught up.  That's the plan anyway.  Did I mention I ran 10k (6.2 miles)?  I have run 5 miles twice in the last month or so, but haven't run more than those 5 miles in an unimaginably long time.  Yes I am pretty proud of this accomplishment, as unimpressive as it may be to some of you.

Anyway, that run notwithstanding, I'm just not in the zone these days, not even close.  I can't believe we only have 3 weeks left -- they are going to need to be a transcendent 3 weeks or else I fear I might ultimately end up disappointed with my efforts and therefore my results when this is all said and done.  I have worked extremely hard for most of this program and have had some great progress (I mean, lets face it, I am a million miles from where I started), but just don't feel great about myself at the moment.  It's strange; I didn't really have any specific goals when this started.  A lot of guys are talking about getting below a certain weight target.  I don't have one.  I remember mentioning to Patrick before starting, "75kg sounds like a nice #, but it's not a target."  I started at 80.1 kg.  Well I blew through 75, and late last week weighed in at 70.1 -- exactly 10 kg (22 lbs) down from where I started.  That was on Thursday morning I think, so a day after our diets had just ramped back up.  I developed kind of a fascination as the pounds were coming off with having a 2nd "big figure change" as we say in finance -- getting below 70, into the 60's.  That would have been cool, I guess...?  But given the increase in food and hopefully in muscle building, I now expect to finish somewhere around 71~72 neighborhood.  We shall see.

Whatever that final weight # ends up being though, I want it to be made of a few things: more muscle, pretty much everywhere, and yet still less gut.  A lot less gut.  The upper 4-packish looking thing is still uneven and stagnating, hasn't made any progress in weeks and weeks, and the lower gut refuses to go anywhere.  That is super frustrating.

I want two things in equal measure, and they are at odds with each other: a bacon cheeseburger, and a chiseled frame of lean, strong muscle.  I read all the daily emails, and I see how many diseases are preventable through healthy diet and exercise, etc...and then I think about how delicious cheesecake is.  There have been a lot of external changes for me over the last 69 days, but I don't think the internal decision-making changes happened with them.  Or at least, they certainly haven't kept pace.  I will bear down for the final three weeks. I will.  But I fear what will happen then.  I'm sure I will make some changes in how I approach food, but to what degree?