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.

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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.