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.