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.