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?

Day 64, THANK YOU...

...for more food.  Was so stoked when I saw the new diets this morning.  I have stayed consistently hungry throughout this thing.  I get hunger pangs during the day, but usually those are mid-morning or mid-afternoon, and make me realize, "Ooh, time for a snack!"...but it's the other main time I get hungry that is the problem: late at night, around 11pm to midnight-ish.  And I don't get any snacks then but man would I love one.  So anyway, very thankful for more food which will hopefully help me get through the day with less temptation & less pain.

The workouts are going pretty well.  I still can't finish a lot of stuff.  Push-ups if dips are first, pull-ups in general, though I'm definitely still making progress and seeing results.  Definitely building muscle, losing fat, and enjoying it.  One major concern for the rest of the way: my lower gut.  Just about everything else is proceeding satisfactorily, but my lower gut just will not go away.  The fat has come off almost everywhere else, but is just incredibly stubborn there.  What to do?  More jumps?  Push harder on planks?  Both?

Day 55, when's our next indulgence?

I think I'm climbing out of the valley.  The return to normalcy on Saturday night - that is to say, the civilized dinner out with another couple - was really nice, and I think helped my mood.

We went to a place called Cafe Causette, a pretty casual joint in the Mandarin Oriental hotel.  It has a huuuuge menu of various Western & Asian dishes and all of them are delicious.  I really like that place actually.  Akane and I split a smoked salmon caesar salad, which also had anchovies and bits of bacon in it.  Nothing tasted particularly salty or strange, just delicious.  Then I couldn't quite decide between the Indian chicken curry and the Reuben, which comes with french fries (oooh, fries!) but in the end, went curry.  I would like to have tried the fries as a taste experiment, but I didn't regret my decision. It was heaven on a plate.  I wish I'd taken pictures like McElwain but perhaps it's for the best that I didn't; no doubt I'd be staring wistfully at them now.  But anyway, great night out.  I think generally speaking I didn't go too unhealthy, and as a result none of the stuff left me thinking "Oh that was so fatty/salty/oily/whatever" ...it just left me extremely, blissfully full.  High five.

In other news, I did what could reasonably be considered 6 straight pull-ups today.  That beats my previous record by 20%.  Okay, busted by the math majors, yes, that's only 1 extra pull-up...20% just sounded better.  Anyway, it's progress.

Uploaded some new pics to My Friend Flickr, looks like I forgot to do any last week, so first picture update in 2 weeks.  I notice what appears to be more muscle in my upper back, and I look thicker around the upper chest/shoulders.  Cool.  My main points of concern are my lower gut fat & love handles, which don't seem to want to go anywhere.

Day 51 - Damn, yo

I'm looking for an appropriate name for yesterday's leg workout.  Something that blends together the words legs, rubber, and insanity.  I'm coming up empty so any suggestions are welcome.

Some random musings:
DIET:
- I welcome the post-workout yogurt I'm on from this week.  I hope that will feed my hungry muscles as these workouts get harder & harder.  I'll definitely miss my afternoon fruit however, which has been replaced by...more yogurt.  Hmmph.
- I have been finding myself pretty hungry a lot still.  I'm not sure if I'm meant to have adjusted to this amount of food already, but it doesn't seem to have happened.  I'm hungry.  A lot.
- I love my lunches.  The rest of the diet is really starting to bore me.

EXERCISE:
- I mentioned in another post recently that the workouts are "still very hard for me."  I think I wrote that before seeing what was in store for this week.    Now they are "absurdly hard for me"...the legs yesterday I could not finish.  It seems strange to hit failure in floor jumps; you kind of just assume your body can jump like that as many times as it needs to but...nope.  Today's chest exercises, the dips went 8, 8, 8, 5, respectable enough, but then push ups were 8, 7, 5, 5, or somewhere in there, I can't quite remember but the point is, it's still really tough.  I still can't do more than 5 pull-ups.  This is frustrating because I have lost a ton of weight, and definitely added some muscle here & there, and I really feel like I should be able to do more pull-ups, push-ups, etc, but at the moment for whatever reason the upper body strength just is not there.

CONFESSIONS:
- I have yet to even watch 8 minute abs, let alone do it.  I planned on mixing it in to either the rest day workout or the weekend workouts, but have been thoroughly exhausted by the "normal" stuff, and never got there.  I will endeavor to watch it this weekend.
- I haven't given much thought to my next indulgence yet.  Maybe dinner Saturday?  No idea.
- I haven't started the homework assignment yet, the one where we pretend to explain different parts of PCP to a young kid.  Another weekend project, I suppose.

Kind of a negative tone to this post, for which I apologize, but at the moment I am feeling VERY MUCH still stuck in the PCP valley.

Day 48 - I had some pie

My mom was here visiting for two awesome weeks, capped by one really great weekend.  We had beautiful weather - almost New England-ish autumn type air, which is unnnnbelievably rare for Hong Kong.  It was just perfect.  Earlier in the week we decided we would celebrate my Halloween birthday (my 36th) on Saturday instead, since mom was flying back out early Sunday.  So, I played a couple of softball games on a glorious Saturday morning, went home and snuck in a nap, then went down the hill to my sister's place for the afternoon and an early dinner.

I carved a pumpkin for my 4-year old niece ("4 and a HALF, Uncle Billy!"; I suppose it is a material difference at that age), while she "helped" by occasionally jabbing the side of the pumpkin with a toothpick.  Not sure the poor guy really needed that while I was already taking a knife to his face.  Not that it was a great work of art by any stretch, but when it was done and I put a candle in it, and brought her out to the balcony to show it to her she gasped and her face lit up more than the pumpkin itself.  That was a great birthday present right there.

I brought my apple, 2 egg whites, and 200ml of milk over to my sister's place with me, and dutifully but ruefully plowed through it while everyone else was eating an incredible smelling veggie lasagna, garlic bread, salad, etc.  I have been very, very good on this PCP so far, basically not slipping off course in the slightest.  But with my birthday dinner taking place around me, I caved.  I had about a 2" mini-cube of the lasagna, which was heavenly, and then after dinner I had a small slice of apple pie with 2 spoonfuls of ice cream.  I didn't even really feel bad about it; I was enjoying the whole day too much for any remorse.

We got home around 9pm, and I still had the workout in front of me.  My calf had really been bothering me for a couple days, and I felt a little twinge while stretching post-workout on Friday.  It had been fine during softball but I didn't want to push it, so called the audible: for the first time all PCP, I was going to substitute jumping with a jog.  After about 10 minutes I called another audible: I wasn't going to do the rest of the workout.  So I ended up jogging 5 miles in 46 minutes, not terribly fast but I was hoping to stay in fat-burning range rather than serious cardio-building range, then did the abs workout, and called it a night.  Pre-PCP I was only making it about 3-4 miles before knees, ankles, etc really started hurting.  Now that I am about 7kg lighter and my legs are much stronger, 5 miles was tiring but shockingly do-able.

So anyway I am a day behind in the workouts - I did Saturday's on Sunday, will do Sunday's today, and instead of Tuesday's rest day I'll do Monday's workout, and then will be caught up.  Basically I moved my rest day up 3 days but am still getting all the workouts in.   Hope that's cool.

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A couple things I've been meaning to bring up:
- I have cottonmouth almost every morning.  I am eating my water (I don't think I'm overcooking anything) and I still drink about 2-2.5 liters of water a day.  I'm not sure if the cottonmouth is a sign of dehydration or of something else.  But it sucks.  Is this happening to anyone else?  I haven't seen it mentioned.
- The workouts are really hard for me.  I know that's the point, and any program that ever let us plateau couldn't really be called the "peak condition" project.  But for example, I did all the chest dips the other day, was pretty stoked about that, but then could only do 1 full set of push-ups before sets 2-4 disintegrated into 7, 5, 4 or something along those lines.  It is frustrating.

Anyway, that's all for now.  I had some awesome pie, and I had a great jog afterwards.  Both felt terrific.  Happy Halloween to all, Happy Birthday to me.

Day 41, chugging along

Been a while since I posted, since a couple days before we started the pistol squats, by the looks of things.  Let me say that while I have naturally found various parts of this 41 days of exercise harder than others, nothing has left me as sore as the pistol squats.  I feel those like nothing else for some reason...a little in the glute but mostly on the top of my quads.  We're not even doing that many of them but they are really hitting me.  After about a week of doing the pistol squats (and a crapload of creeps & floor jumps) I have noticed some legit upper leg muscle build.  So, sweet.  But holy cow have my quads been sore, almost all week.


Speaking of "all week", I was thinking it may seem strange to use that phrase on a Monday, but I think PCP has got to be more successful as a result of being staggered with the actual calendar week.  It keeps both fresh for me.


Crazy to think that this Friday will be the halfway point.  Am I halfway to where I want to be?  Does it matter?  I appreciate that this has never really been a linear path, nor has there ever been a fixed destination.  But I do find myself wondering what I will look like when it's all said and done.  For now, I look like the new pics.  Trying to stay consistent with the weekly Monday night post-workout picture updates.


I still can't get out of bed early enough to do the full workouts in the morning, and I really don't want to break it up and be in the gym twice a day.  So, goal for the next couple of weeks: force myself to get up early a couple days in a row, get into a routine, and get to bed much earlier so as to be able to continue the routine.  I've typically been doing the workouts when I get home from work around 645ish, so 7-815pm, eat dinner around 9, evening veggie snack around 10, bed around 1130pm.  Everything is just happening too late at the moment.  I want to eat dinner when I get home, evening snack around 830-845, in bed by 10pm.  Ooooh, bed at 10pm, that would be really sweet.  

Day 34, I am sore

Great weekend.  We got our butts handed to us on the softball field on Saturday but it was a fun day anyway.  I snuck an extra banana in between the 2 games I played in addition to my morning fruit.  I felt like I needed the energy and reasoned that 2 games is not part of my daily, or even on average, weekly schedule so I didn't feel guilty about that at all.  I did the workout after I got home, and it turns out that 2 softball games + the hard Saturday workout = a very sore Sunday.  Sunday was probably the most sore I've been since this thing began.  Quick note before I post a picture from the highlight of the weekend: Saturday I set a personal best with the jump rope, going 950+ without a single trip up.  Then Sunday I smashed it, 1170-something no trip ups, buh-BAM!  Feeling pretty consistent with that now.  Not ready for any tricks or even for alternating feet or anything yet but it's feeling good.  Speaking of feeling good, I've kind of been in the doldrums lately, depressed by not being able to eat all the good food I'm surround by, and by not losing any further weight this week despite the reduced dinner, etc...but I uploaded some new pictures to the ol' Flickr tonight, and happened to look back at Day 1...holy crap I've come a long way.  So, renewed focus on staying the course.

Sunday as you know was my daughter Maya's first birthday.  She wasn't actually feeling too great and crapped herself even more than usual, but hey that's how it goes sometimes.  She also had a whole lot of fun on her birthday though, and all the smiles reminded me of why I'm working so hard in this project.  I want to be the best father I possibly can be for her.

Happy Birthday Maya.  I love you.

Day 31 - I am on an island

It's a tropical island, offering me the exotic fruits of prolonged jump roping and leg lifts.  The wind blows through the palm trees gently, but not so gently that you can't hear it whisper, "aaaabbsssss", before it teases the dark locks of the local women, and fades into sweet-smelling island memory.

This island is a beautiful place to be.  It's impossible not to feel good, and feel good about myself while here.  But be warned -- this island has a dark side.  I can walk right up to the edge of its sandy shores; indeed, they call to me like a siren.  This temptress though is not after my soul -- she is after my waistline, and at a closer look reveals that the ocean is made of chicken tikka masala so aromatic and surely so tasty that to swim through it for eternity would be the definition of heaven.

*****

Or something.   The point is the last 2 days I have been getting some bad cravings again, and at the same time I have been surrounded by some really remarkable food.  Last night, as Jasper mentioned, we were out for a work dinner.  About 12 of us, which mean that about 10 of us had delicious steaks, fries, butter-soaked veggies, "crispy creamed spinach balls" that I didn't even know existed, and bottle after bottle of wine.  Jasper and I sat there surveying the forbidden fruit in front of us, and I think we both made it through in part because the other was there.  Well I went home after "dinner", but that desk party carried on of course, so that everyone got good and dee-RUNK, which of course this morning meant that everyone ordered in full English breakfast fry-ups, fried eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, butter, jam, etc, etc, et f*cking cetera to soothe their hangovers.  The bacon smelled great, and actually while the rest of it didn't particularly realllly smell terrific, it was just a reminder of what I sadly, sadly cannot  have have chosen not to indulge in because I am finally becoming mindful of just how bad it is for me.  Then the hungover work crew ordered in a ton of just really amazing smelling curries for lunch.  Down the row that we sit in, it was like this at lunch: two guys to my right eating delicious Indian curry, me, guy to my right eating delicious Indian curry, Jasper, woman to his left eating delicious Indian curry.  It was ridiculous.  I had to take a walk down to the far end of the desk to try to escape it a little bit, and there were TWO EFFING PIZZAS ON THE COUCH!!!  No shit.  Just unbelievable.  In summary: I'm hungry.

*****

Very busy weekend coming up.  My mom arrives here in Hong Kong in about 3 hours, staying for a little over 2 weeks.  She will tell me I'm too thin and that I need to eat.  So anyway this weekend we have:
- trip to airport to collect mom tonight
- try to catch tail end of friends' birthday party tonight
- All day softball tournament tomorrow
- client's birthday tomorrow night
- daughter's 1st birthday on Sunday
- somewhere in there try to catch up with an old friend from Tokyo, who now lives in Singapore, that happens to be in town for the weekend.

Busy busy.  But mostly "good busy", so I am excited and it should be a lot of fun.  I can't believe my daughter is going to be one.

A great weekend to all.

Day 27 - Indulgence, what a non-event

I really didn't want to do my indulgence.  I just felt like it was going to be a step back, with no real upside.  But Jasper convinced me it was an important part of the process, so I caved in and did it.  I went with half a slice of blueberry cheesecake from Starbucks, with a coffee...they didn't have the calorie #'s for me there, so after I bought it I googled and got results ranging from 500~700+, so I split it in half and shared with a co-worker.  I guess there was some upside after all: it was creamy and delicious.  I didn't find it too sugary, or too anything else for that matter, not even too small, as I didn't feel like I wanted any more.  It was nice to eat it, I guess, but really what a non-event.  Zzz and hmmph.  I kind of wanted my body or my taste buds to have some kind of unexpected reaction, but nope.  Of course I'm writing this within 10 minutes of eating it so I reserve the right to edit this post if I'm hunched over a toilet or bouncing off the walls in half an hour.

In other news, new leg exercises: not fun. I don't mind the plank or the v-sit, they are hard but worth it I think.  Plank is a lot harder than I thought it would be, and I am worried about when we go longer than 30 seconds with that badboy, but I'm ok with it.  The floor jumps and the creeps...just not fun at all.  Part of the reason I'm hating them is that I did something to my knee on Saturday.  It felt fine during softball, and fine during the workout afterwards.  But about an hour or so later it really started bothering me, and was worse yesterday and worse yet today.  Doesn't hurt while jumping rope, but getting into creep position and keeping down there was pretty painful.  Anxious to see how it is with just going back to normal squats tonight.  If it keeps up I may be asking Patrick for some alternative leg exercises.

Days 22+23 -- Too early for the iPod

Wednesday Day 22, I tried to spice up the workout a little by introducing my kickass new iPod Nano to the mix.  I was hoping it would put me "in the zone".  iPods and other such devices have been banned from the Showa Kinen Koen disc golf course in Nishi Tachikawa, because they are a proven catalyst for launching disc golfers directly into "the zone", thus giving them an unfair advantage.  A warning to my fellow early-stage PCPers: at least for me, using the iPod during my workout had very much the opposite effect.  It was at best a distraction, and I had one of my worst jump rope sessions to date and frequently lost count of what # rep I was on in any given set of the exercises.  I probably ended up doing too many of most things as I tried to compensate when losing count, and the workout took forever.

So, the brand spanking new iPod, as much as I want to use it, is on the shelf until we move heavily into the timed rather than numbered exercises.  If I have to jump rope for 10 minutes straight with no counting, or hold a plank for 5 minutes or something, hopefully the tunes help me get through that.  But for now, sadly, tunes are out.

I slept like crap again Wednesday night and felt run down and haggard and generally craptastic all day Thursday.  Then last night (sans ipod of course), I proceeded to bang out my best jump rope session ev-ERRRRR.  I think maybe my mind was so exhausted my body just took over?  No idea how, as exhausted as I was, I turned in that good of a workout.  I have been ok with jumps, but typically do 200, 200, 300, 300, or something like that (with a fair # of trip-ups).  Last night I did sets of 400+, 400+, 300+, with maybe 3 or 4 trip-ups total, and felt great the whole time.  No idea where it all came from, but that was unexpectedly awesome.

In the oops department: I was sure I started this whole thing at 81.1kg, but looking in my notes from Day 1, I wrote down 80.1.  I have to assume that's correct and am not sure why I had 81.1 in my head.  So I'm not down as much weight as I thought I was but I've come to appreciate PCP as a whole lot more than a weight loss program, so hey, I am not stressing that oops too much, just wanted 80.1 on the record as the official starting #.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Day 21 - Hey that's 3 weeks!

Been a few days since I blogged, sorry.  It's been a very mixed bag in that time, periods of lots & lots of energy and optimism, periods of small cravings and exhaustion.  Saturday was great, I played softball in the early afternoon, and felt great running around in the outfield.  Felt light on my feet and had plenty of energy.  That was in stark contrast to 2 weeks ago, the last time I played, when we were 4 days into halfsies diets and while it felt like I was swinging hard at the ball I was hitting some of the softest laziest flies ever.  I mean I had zero energy in that one.  Anyway got home on Saturday after a fun day at the field, and blew through the workout.  Good times all around.  Sunday up early, workout, breakfast, off to spend some quality family time with wife/kid/sis/bro-in-law/niece.  Really nice weekend.  Actually on Sunday morning I broke my resistance bands, but I think they were a little wimpy anyway.  I today picked up a new, sturdier set more befitting a man of my burgeoning deltoids.  Sunday I finished the workout with the bands in the gym, as thankfully there was a decent set there.  

Anyway Sat & Sun were great, then somehow I woke up on Monday with a killer kink in my neck, I was exhausted all day and generally in a super shitty mood.  So, I had my first real moment of PCP weakness on the way home last night.  To my surprise it wasn't an irresistible food craving.  The food cravings are still coming (burgers, fries, diet cokes, chocolate, etc) but I seem to be able to put them out of my mind fairly quickly.  Rather, in a cab home I very briefly entertained the idea of going home, sitting on my couch, and skipping the workout.  I thought how awesome it would be just to sit on the couch and do nothing.....and then I thought about the blogs, the emails, and how I would have to pretty much own up to it and be "that guy".  This PCP program is well-designed in that regard: at least for me, the social networking (read: peer pressure) aspect of it protects me from myself.  It would just have been too embarrassing to not have done the workout.  Once I got down there, I was fine.  But damn it took a lot of willpower and the threat of embarrassment to get me there.

The difference in the good days & bad days for me seems to be sleep.  I have generally speaking NOT slept well since this thing started.  I spoke to Patrick about it late last week, and Fri/Sat were better, but Sunday was restless again.  And by restless I mean really, really f*cking frustrating.  But hopefully with some combination of breathing, less late night tv/computer action, and some other stuff, I can find a way to get a good night's sleep going forward.  We shall see.  Probably the most frustrating thing from yesterday though was that I found out that I'm apparently the only guy on Team Orange Crush It that has yet to sleep with Block's girlfriend.  WTF guys, I thought we were supposed to be a team???

On a more positive note I have noticed some solid changes with my body.  I put up Day 20 pics last night, and the differences seem only very small looking at the pictures.  But I am definitely thinner around the middle and elsewhere, and I think I am generally a little stronger.  When we started I was between the 4th & 5th notches on the belt, and am now between the 5th & 6th.  So that is all encouraging.

Day 16 - O Brave New World

It's a brave new world out there.

Temptation lurks everywhere

And that not just from maidens fair

But also finely coiffed oreo hair:

...the strongest oaths are straw
To the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious
Or else...

...So, yeah, I borrowed something of the above from Shakespeare.  Can you guess which part?

That's right, it was the hair.  Not many people know that about him.

Day 14 - Pictures, #'s, a nagging thought

I added a couple Day 10 pics, from post-Patrick workout.  The sweet red splotches on my back are from where he was helping me up on the pull-up bar.  Boy am I white.  At any rate I think there are some small improvements just in those first 10 days, but I'm not too concerned with it either way.  I'm also not concerned with immediate weight loss, though I am down about 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs) in these first two weeks.  I started at 81.1 kg, and am now at 78.5.  I would actually be perfectly happy to finish the program at 78.5 assuming it was comprised of a lot less fat and a whoooole lot more muscle.

Here are some other #'s I got from Patrick's fancy scale on Day 10:

Weight: 78.4

Body Fat%: 19.2

Visceral Fat%: 7.5

Basal Calories: 1771

Muscle Mass%: 35.0

Subcutaneous Fat%: 12.0

BMI: 23.4

Body Age: 38

I'm only 35!  I turn 36 in about a month but dammit, when I am finished that thing is going to say 29.  Patrick can you remind me what the basal calories thing is again -- is that the # of calories a day I need to maintain my current state of not so awesome?  And it should go...down, as I slowly morph into totally awesome?

One thought that's been with me the last few days.  It has to do with brain wiring.  I've read here and there on the blogs of PCPers who are further along than I that it's not just their bodies that are changing, but their brains as well.  That somehow along the way, their hardwiring is being re-done without them even realizing it, and their whole life approach and especially diet approach is different now.  As I walk the aisles of the grocery store, I wonder if that will happen to me, and I wonder how I will feel about it if it does.  I mean, at the moment I am totally cool with this diet but I don't see myself ever NOT loving fritos, pizza, blueberry cheesecake, etc.  Only time will tell.   

Day 13 - Catching up

Packing on Wednesday night for a 4-day trip to Tokyo I discovered I'd lost my jump rope.  PANIC!  It must have fallen out of my bag when I was changing after playing hoops (we played 2 halfcourt games, and by halfway through the 2nd game I had NOTHING left in my arms).  Anyway after I thought it through I calmed down and realized I could use the one in the gym before flying out Thursday morning, and since I was planning a trip down to Yokohama to train with Patrick on Friday, he would have one, and then I just needed to pick up a new one after that for Saturday.  Crisis averted.  While buying the new one at Don Quixote in Yokohama I also came across this lovely set of pink boxing gloves & pads:

...obviously it made me think of fellow PCPer Jason Block, and that foxy boxing phase he went through in college, back when he had his hair in pigtails.  These would be perfect for him, though I think he had his "sexy punch" tattoo removed in Thailand a couple years ago.

Anyhoooo, back to that workout with Patrick...intensity was the word of the day.  The jump rope didn't go so hot, thanks to a few factors:

- performance anxiety in front of sensei

- general crappiness at jumping rope, especially the slightly-too-short one he had for me

- the dual distractions of hurricane force winds and my agape jaw as a result from the casual yet intense jump rope clinic Patrick was putting on a few feet to my right.

When I finally finished my jumps though, he asked me how long I thought the rest of the workout would take, and I looked at all the exercises and said, hmm, about 30 minutes?  If I recall, we did it in 19.  It made me realize that my 20 second breaks are probably closer to 30+, and Patrick really drove home the burn and drove home the message.  It was exhausting, obviously, but felt terrific.

I finally uploaded some Day 1 pics, let the bidding begin ladies! No Block that does not mean you.

 

Days 5 & 6 - Two very different days

Doing Sunday's workout, less than 24 hours after reading Patrick's message saying we shouldn't be breathing too hard during the "low-intensity" workout, I got totally gassed jumping rope just in the first couple sets.  I mean my heart was pounding.  I'm usually a big stretcher but for whatever reason just didn't warm up enough and started doing it too cold.  I finished the workout but it took about 30 minutes, and I vowed that I would warm up a little better going forward.  I hadn't gotten this winded so quickly during any of the previous 4 days so I hope it was really just a lack of proper warming up.

So this morning (up at 6:45am on a holiday while my wife & daughter are out of the country?  Me??) I got on the treadmill first, put it on a slight incline and had a brisk 5 minute uphill(ish) walk to get the blood flowing, then did some stretching, then proceeded to bang out my first flawless jump rope session of the project so far.  Buh-BAM!  In fact, I went 70x4 and then did 100 on the last set to see if I could.  It really felt great.

Hey, do you know what I don't like?  Lunges.  There are a few problems.  In no particular order:

- They have a lot more moving parts than a squat, so much like my horrible, horrible golf swing, I feel like I'm rarely doing them the exact same way twice.

- Because of the above, I feel like I might frequently be doing them wrong, and generally feel like an idiot doing them.

- I don't like the word "glutes", but about halfway into a standard lunge workout, I generally start feeling it in the ol' ass muscles.  And then my thought process usually goes something like this: glutes --> gluteus --> gluteus maximus --> Maximus --> Commander of the armies of the North, general of the Felix legions, loyal servant to the true emporer Marucs Aureliuwait a minute how many lunges was that?  Dammit!

What I'm trying to say is lunges, they vex me.  I am terribly vexed.

Tomorrow: our first jump-only day. Trying to decide how to break down the 500 jumps.  I'm thinking 75x4 followed by 100x2.

Day 4, I want some more...

...to EAT that is.  It took me less than 30 seconds to eat that half sandwich for lunch.  And it would have been faster if I didn't take a couple seconds to hunch over and literally suck off the plate a small piece of tomato that had fallen out.  Anyway, I think my body will soon get used to these smaller portions but it hasn't quite happened yet.

The barbeque last night was fantastic.  I had 1 grilled prawn, half a piece of chicken, and small portions of 3 different salads (one of them was lettuce, crabmeat, figs, blue cheese, some other stuff...it was a whole lotta awesome.)  I also had a small portion of their homemade blueberry & raspberry crumble for dessert.  This was a victory of epic proportions since as recently as Tuesday I would have absolutely gone to town on that thing.  Everything, even in half portions, was really, really delicious.  Great evening.  Thanks Eddie & Chi.

I haven't been sleeping well since PCP started.  I find my mind racing at night, thinking about the next day's workout, about food, about all kinds of things.  So even though I said yesterday the morning workout was the way forward, today I shut the alarm off when it rang at 7:15, and slept until about 11.  Really needed that.  Woke up, had a quick bowl of cereal, and headed out to our first softball game of the season.  There's a reason we don't play in the summer in Hong Kong.  Holy sheee-yit was it hot out there today.  Anyway I did the workout after getting home and that wasn't easy.  I didn't feel like I had much energy during the game at all, and even less during the workout.  I wonder about how softball will be effected over the next couple months.  We'll see.

Lastly for today: I noticed a few other people said their feet are hurting.  Me too!  I'm a little sore all over, chest & calves mainly, but nothing so bad as the feet.  Guess I haven't used those good ol' feet muscles much lately.  I have a massage booked for tomorrow, can't wait.

Day 3 - Early morning workout, BBQ for dinner

Today was the first day I got up bright and early to do the workout, and it is definitely the way forward.  I have not been up that early (for anything not baby-related anyway) in a long, long time.  5:45am alarm, a couple of snoozes, some dilly-dallying, and off to the gym by 6:15.  It felt great not necessarily to "get it over with" per se, but just to start the day by being so productive.  Even though we're still in the very early stages, doing the workout that early gives me a sense of accomplishment, and I suspect it will every day that I make it the first thing I do.  Plus the jump rope was a lot smoother, I managed 4 of 5 sets straight through so I think it will all come together soon.  That said I am simultaneously both intrigued by, and fearing, the Day 7 500 jumps.  Like playing my brainiac cousin in Facebook scrabble, I know I might lose but I embrace the challenge.

Since this started, I have tried to eat not just halfsies but also healthy - salads and whatnot.  But tonight I think there will definitely be half a cheeseburger with my name on it as I head over to my buddy's BBQ.  

One thing I have noticed early on is how involved and committed PCPers past & present are in commenting & offering tips and encouragement.  And I've gotta say, it's awesome.  Thanks for the support.

To Block, McElwain, and anyone else on the road - stay strong!

Things are taking shape

...my gut is of course not yet one of those things, but it will be.  Ohhhh it will be.

What is taking shape, slowly, is my understanding of the program and of my own eating habits.  My rhythm jumping rope got a little better too.  It definitely helps to jump in front of a mirror.  I have to say, I was glad to see I wasn't the only one who had some problems with the jumping on Day One, and the flip side of that is that I also hope others are slowly finding the rhythm as well.

I am very hungry as I type, in the office at the end of Day Two, before heading home for half a dinner.  Half a dinner, which I have to condition myself to accept as a full dinner: the new portions aren't small - the old portions were too much.  There is no spoon.  But it's going to take some getting used to, as halfsies just ain't easy, and -- this may shock you -- I like eating delicious things in large quantities.  I split a mid-morning banana with Jasper; that was fairly pathetic, and then I had half a salad for lunch.  My office constantly has snacks lying around.  I don't even know where they come from half the time.  Every once in a while someone will do a Marks & Spencer's run to pick up a boatload of cookies and chocolate, or someone will pop some microwave popcorn, or someone will have brought chocolate back from a business trip.  There's just always something to munch on, and while restraint hasn't proved too hard yet...well yeah, I like eating delicious things.

By the way, speaking of microwave popcorn, The Microwave Popcorn (TM)  is one of two patented, original dances that I invented about 15 years ago down the Jersey shore.  Yes, that Jersey shore, but back before its cheesiness became syndicated.

Mmmmm, cheeeese.

...And so it begins

Workout 1 of 90 in the books, great to get it rolling.  It turns out that jumping rope is harder than I thought.  I knew it would take me a while to get the timing down, but of the 5 50-jump sets, I only did the 4th one clean, straight through with no hitting my feet or screwing up the timing.  Jumping rope will definitely take me a few days to get used to.

The rest of it felt good, and while the reps don't seem like much it gets tiring quickly with so little rest between sets.  I am stoked to be starting this project.

I might have to change my fitness pic since already 2 people have remarked that it looks like I'm getting arrested.  They were jumping jacks people, ok?