to arms!

Today was a whole lotta arms - bicep curls and single-arm curls and elevated triceps dips and the dreaded double-katana...everything else paled in comparison. Once again I did every last set to failure, which is damn easy given my spindly little arms.
Ah but that post workout workout banana and cocoa-flavored protein makes it all worth it.
Also had an interesting conversation with a co-worker along the same pattern as many previous conversations:
Wow you have lost alot of weight! Do share your secret!
Diet and exercise?
An hour every day? But my kids/hair/job/hobby...
Eat what? Oh, but I LOVE carbs and ramen and fries!
It costs how much? I mean I spend that much on organic chocolate every month but still!

I just keep thinking: my first entry on this blog was all my excuses. These are not new, nor unique! Like Patrick says: what is more selfish, being healthy and available to friends and family, or eating crap, being fat and sick and a burden and dying young? How much is your health worth? Spend all your money on organic food to stuff your face, or dine sensibly on readily available fruits and veggies?
I have no idea what it is like to be anyone other than me, so I sure people are legitimately incapable of taking charge and taking care. But I am capable and I am doing it. At best I hope to inspire friends and family and strangers that PCP - and wellness in general - is totally doable. At worst, I am doing this solely for my own egotistical benefit. Either way, at least I am doing it!

bento dinner

Mixed veggies, double egg-whites.

pasta bento

With veggie dirt, spinach, fish sausage.

breakfast

Egg with mixed veggies, wee bowl of oatmeal.

to failure!

So yesterday Patrick told me to do the last set of everything smaller, no muscle rest, as many times as I could until total muscle failure.
So I did.
And it hurts.
Alot.
Squats I get, Creeps I don't. I think I need a video or something; they don't hurt much so I must be doing them wrong.
I did, however, fail to fail the DaVincis. Must of knocked out about 50 small and tight and I wasn't really getting anything but tired and bored; didn't feel a burn much in the chest...then again I don't really feel much chest burn unless I do many, many pushups.
And I kinda failed to fail on the chest dips, too. Need to use higher chairs, methinks. Benches I used were too low; I couldn't really dip very deep. But the last set I just bobbed a gazillion times with my arms half bent and it most certainly failed painfully.
V-sits continue to be my nemesis, but I tried doing them more slowly and controlled; just concentrated on rolling up my abs like a tortilla from both ends. Easier to find a balance point like that and yup, it hurt and I failed at the end.

Amusing thing about the gym: they offered me a piece of candy on my way out.
Umm....huh?

BTW, am totally loving the post-workout small banana* and 1 spoonful of protein powder. Sates me just fine, and feels like I get to celebrate a good workout with some yummy fruit and cocoa-flavored goodness.

* Patrick: "Everyone keeps asking me 'How big is a small banana?'. So I tell them: 'Smaller than a big banana.'"

salad dinner

Baby greens, tomato, bell-pepper tossed with balsamico and sesame.

leftovers lunch

Yakiudon piled with veggies, fish sausage.

open face brekkie

Veggies on egg, bagel

getting serious

Did the first real workout with Patrick tonight. The way he states it, we are going to focus on buidling up leg muscle: great big fat burning factories. So lots of squats and lunges and hops and other tortuous thigh-building.
Everything is more: chest? Pull-ups AND rows. Abs? crunches AND planks. And shoulders every day.
Numbers continue to look good: fat down, muscle up. As I am already pretty bulky, in order to keep building muscle, the last set of everything I must do in small movements, never letting the muscles relax, and to total failure. Want to tear up as much muscle fiber as possible.
And besides all the egg-whites every day, also have to have some protein powder to maximize muscle build.
Turning my body into a serious fat-burning meat-building machine. These next few weeks will be key; really hard, and tons of fun.

low cholesterol dinner

Mixed veggies, double egg whites.

thoughts on week 5

New diet plan this week: meal portions slightly smaller, but more snacks and more fruit! Sweet! (pardon the pun.) And more egg whites. Damn I eat me alots of eggs.
I am now basically eating something every 3 hours from when I have breakfast @ 7am, so hunger control isn't much of an issue; as soon as I get hungry, it's time for a snack/meal.
Will head to Patrick's YG this evening for Results of Week 4 photo and stats measurement; don't feel like my stomach is drastically smaller but maybe that's because I have already lost near 5 kilos in one month; quite a drop.
Less concerned with my weight though than with the body fat % and how much muscle I put on. Exercise program from here on out gets much more challenging; time to burn fat, eat protein and build muscle!

chicken and veggies and veggies wrap lunch

Self explanatory.

week 5 brekkie

bagel with veggie egg - tomato and green pepper.

dinner

Chicken with veggies and veggie mix: garlic stems, bell-pepper, mushrooms, onion.

wrap lunch

Chicken and mixed veggies with tortilla.

egg wrap breakfast

Left-over veggies egg wrap, bagel.

prison rations dinner

Vegetable blend grilled until the consistency of dirt, canned tuna in water, egg white.

What exactly is this unappetizing looking vegetable dirt? Into my cuisinart I put: two onions, two carrots, some burdock root, some leafy greens (arugula maybe? not sure), and several cloves of garlic, and blended it all up until it was real pasty.

Then I dumped it into my non-stick frying pan and cooked over low heat, stirring randomly, for about 1.5 hours. At some point I added black vinegar and some cooking sake. Eventually the onions caramelized and everything got nice and browned. What started as a full pan ended up as only several hundred grams of delicious vegetable dirt blend!

Though I suspect I have probably banished all the actual nutritional content from the veggies...well I never claimed to be a good cook, but at least I eat what I make!

indulgence post-mortem

With a bowl of rice, that lunch was 450 grams. After eating it I felt well and truly bloated. Not pleasant. I distinctly remember pre-PCP eating like that ALL the time, and I am sure it did not feel good afterwards then either. Near half a kilo of food is more than plenty, especially when most of it is rice.

After eating I really felt gluttonous and kinda gross (the oil in the eggplant wasn't helping either.)

A sunny afternoon it had become, so I walked half an hour down to the local Starbucks, had a nice tea, and read a book for a few hours, digesting and feeling fat.

Got home with no interest in eating my required snack, so I did my exercises. I cut a few centimeters off of New Hotness as Patrick suggested and my jumping speed went up about 5%. Wow, jumping over 1000 times is FUN. Patrick has told us to try and mix it up with different jumps, so every now and then I alternate feet for a 10 or 20, but really for now I prefer to just stare straight ahead, keep my feet together, relax everything, and bounce up and down as steadily as I can, going into a serious jumper's high zone.

What I did not enjoy was how my stuffed gut was bouncing around. Urmph. Uncomfortable.

Managed to get through the rest of the workout -- why so few squats? Did 100 a few days ago, only 60 today...I am sure Patrick has his reasons; all will be revealed in due time!

Double-katanas were brutal: perfectly isolate the triceps and I could only manage 10 on the last set. Total muscle failure: excellent! Also my resistance band is so short I had to do them on my knees, band looped under my ankles. Standing up the band even at max stretch doesn't come up past my shoulders. Maybe need a longer band...

V-sits still suck. Maybe I am coming up too much with the upper body? Feel like once I am up I can't get back down, and have no left-right balance either. But damn I feel them burning into my abdomen.

So, lesson learned from the indulgence: instead of doing something simple like a piece of chocolate cake, I figured I'd just do a little more of what the diet plan says: a bit more rice, veggies with more oil and flavoring than usual, etc. It tasted great, but I certainly regretted it later. I am coming to an understanding of what is a reasonable portion of food to keep me healthy and alive. Being hungry after a meal certainly sucks, but being so bloated my now far more noticeable distended belly sticks out sucks even more.

I don't feel guilty -- I am sure part of the point of the indulgence is stress relief but also part of it is to learn how I have changed, especially my relationship to food. Plus I don't think I've OD'd on calories or spiked my blood sugar levels or anything; have not seriously derailed PCP, but learned a valuable lesson about my old eating habits.

Tomorrow is jumps only, but if I still feel like my gut does now, I am going to have to go off-plan and do some exercise or spend a few hours in the dojo, at least so I can mentally feel like I am not slipping backwards!

indulgence lunch @ Organic House

Brown rice, spinach with sesame, cashew chicken (minus cashews), eggplant mix, mini-tomatoes.
Indulgence indeed!

saturday brekkie

Vegetable grilled mix, tomato egg, bagel.

lunch workout

Totally and completely spaced out doing the jumps today. Very surreal. Had trouble getting started; kept tripping every 2-3 jumps. Realized I was thinking about it too much. So instead I focused on my posture: stand up straight, feet together, left and right hands even, try to keep the rope in a graceful balanced arc...noticed that I keep clipping my right foot. Maybe because I am left-handed and my left arm is out of sync with my right? Tried all kinds of things to smooth out the rope; moved my hands, out, in, forwards, backwards...and then I had done about 50 (I count in sets of 10; too much work to count from one to one-thousand.)
So: being mindful by not thinking about the jumps or the jumping, but trying to keep the rope smooth and the pa-TAP pa-TAP pa-TAP of the rope and my feeting hitting the floor in a nice rhythm.
Pull-ups continue to suck, but I managed to do all of the first set, though I could only get half-way up after the first one. But at least until the last set I was moving up and down. Final set I think I managed to kick my legs enough to raise my chin 10 centimeters. The final pull-ups was a bunch of isometric work: hanging with my arms slightly bent, absolutely REFUSING to go back down by simply incapable of bringing my body up any higher.
Annoying thing about pull-ups is they don't actually hurt that much, not like planks or shoulder presses. Patrick said that's because the back is just a giant slab of meat, unlike the thin shoulder which burns as soon as you do anything with it, and therefore the back doesn't really ever get to burn stage. Arms felt some tingle, but basically it's just a whole bunch of hanging there with bent arms that won't bend any more.
I figure at least I am working the some muscles or something, because I am dying after those. Planks are easier to deal with: just lay there straight and try to remember to breath. Of course breathing means moving my abdomen, which is not very helpful when trying to keep a still plank using my abs. Then again NOT breathing means tunnel vision and turning blue, as my abs are screaming for lots of fresh oxygen. The worst part is the trembles; I am literally shaking trying to maintain the plank. I use a timer: set it to 30 seconds, press START, close my eyes, and just try to breath. Don't bother counting or anticipating when it will end; too painful to try.
Just breathe, tremble, breathe, tremble...
Feels SO good to stop.

Also I continue to think about my indulgence. Maybe I am overdoing it, but I have been looking up the caloric count of various foods to see what falls within the acceptable 200-400 range: a few slices of meat for yakiniku, several pieces of sashimi...I am not particularly interested in having something sweet and I am making such good progress I don't want to derail myself by say pigging out on greasy Chinese food.
Wife and kids are gone this weekend so I will probably hit the office on Saturday to catch up on some work, run various errands, exercise in peace and quiet...and wonder what to indulge in.

pale dinner

Steamed onion, sliced turkey.

tofu lunch

Marinated tofu, steamed bell-pepper and broccolli, German serious sunflower seed bread.

friday brekkie

Egg bagel, long onions.

fail!

Got to the dojo this evening and did some kumitachi work with my man for over an hour. Felt great but did not get home until near 11pm. Changed quickly, grabbed my gear and headed to the Prison Yard for my jumps. Got a nice zoned out groove going on and knocked out 1100 in about 3 big sets.

And then I soon discovered that there is actually an ab workout worse than The Plank: V-sits. For the second time on PCP (1st being pull-ups) I achieved total Fail. First set of v-sits hurt like hell. Second set I was basically flopping around like a fish outta water, even managing rotate several radians in a counter-clockwise direction somehow. Third set barely happened. I counted digits to the max number of reps, and every time I counted I imagined my arms extending out towards my legs, which extended straight and, tucking into a nice V...the reality was more like fish-outta-water again.

The good news is it really, really hurt right where is was supposed to; general bellybutton area. Which means I am working the right muscles, which means I will do more of these forsaken things because I am doing it right. Most. Excellent.

Shrimp and veggies dinner

Shrimp and steamed bell-pepper, broccolli tossed with balsamico vinegar and Italian herbs.

Sandwich lunch

Turkey and tomato on serious grain German bread.

indulgence?

Patrick has just informed us that we get our first "indulgence" -- a few hundred calories of comfort food, both the celebrate 25 days of successful PCPing, and to demonstrate what some of that non-PCP stuff actually DOES to our body.
I am wracking my brain trying to come up with something that I really, really crave...and I can't think of anything.
So on a whim I checked out the calorie and contents of Japanese Starbucks drinks, figuring I'd treat myself to the traditional Tazo Chai Tea Latte (soymilk) I used to get religiously every afternoon. Seems a hot Venti with soy is a whopping...222 calories.
Compared to the 653 in a Venti Macha Cream Frapp, it's a bargain.
Actually given a plan of about 1500 calories a day, 222 is quite a bit, and falls nicely within the guidelines of an indulgence, so that might be it...
Am also thinking I should save the indulgence for the weekend, in case I am out with friends/family and need to splurge...not a bad option to have.
We shall see how it goes

egg florentine

With extra spinach. I have been informed by my good buddy Jenn that with spinach it is technically florentine, not benedict...then again with no sauce whatsoever, does it even count?

late dinner

Can o tuna, salad spinach, baby carrots.

I had lunch so late I ate my afternoon hard-boiled egg white, then did my exercises, wondering why I was so hungry. Uh, forgot to eat dinner, maybe?

Let's talk about planks. One 30 second plank is pretty uncomfortable. The second is downright annoying. And the third just hurts alot. As I lay on the floor after the last plank, twitching uncontrollably but otherwise motionless, the cutie on the stairmaster next to me gave me that pitiful "do I tell the staff and get this guy some medical attention?" look.
It was endearing.

Speaking of hard-boiled eggs, I have discovered that those on sale at the 7-11 down the street are absolutely DELICIOUS. Boiled to perfection consistently, with a near translucent yolk that reluctantly falls from the white, clinging tenatiously as best it can with feeble pudding-like tendrils before plummeting to its doom. So no more boiling at home; I am hooked. Plus I love the sheer command of will I muster every time I walk through a convenience store. They are just so damn convenient; every imaginable snack on hand tempting me with curious packaging and cheap prices.

But it all comes down to choice: I can have this. Or THIS.

Fajita lunch

Sliced turkey, tortillas, steamed bell-pepper and spinach.

aspareggus

Egg scrambled with garlic asparagus and broccolli, half burnt bagel

a haiku

In lieu of my typical post-workout ramblings and incoherent carb-less food whining, I present to you this haiku, in the traditional 5-7-5 style so favored by the renaissance court of feudal Japan:

PCP diet:
3 hard-boiled eggs a day,
sulfer stinky farts.

And that's all I have to say about that.

carbless dinner

Chicken with broccolli, eggplant, shrooms, bell-pepper...lonely without carbs!

turkey lunch

Sliced turkey with tortillas, asparagus steamed with garlic.

ugly eggs

Egg with grated carrot and broccolli, badly-sliced 7-grain and fig bagel half.

end of week 3

The photo is up from Day 22. First three weeks down, and now I think PCP starts getting serious. Serious cut in caloric intake, serious increase in exercise, serious change it seriousness.

Whenever I feel the slightest of angst or hunger pangs...I do abs. Situps, crunches, leg-lifts, whatever. This is not the time to get soft (I won't bother asking for a pardon for that pun.)

A PCP sempai now well past the two month mark told me today that these next few weeks are the killer: less food, more work. This is where the results start to show and the changes really stick.

I say: Bring it! Will power is at an all-time high; I can really see myself at the end of this, healthy and happy and loving it. I will not slack. I will not screw this up. I will power through my pull-ups by the sheer might of my stubborn will and will come crawling back for more.

I was actually trying to list up all the foods I miss eating, all the mad cravings I have, all the stuff I want to inhale once this is all over...and I can't, really.

Pizza? Since I don't do dairy, not really a big deal. I mean, sure occasionally a cheese-less thin-crust is nice, but must have? Nope.

Tonkatsu? Nothing finer than some deep fried pork, but really how much did I eat it before anyway? Couple times a year?

Ramen? Would love to have a bowl...once a quarter or so.

Chocolate? Well it would be good to get back into my childhood Swedish tradition of lordags goodis, aka Saturday Candy, but more than a little chocolate gives me a sugar and caffeine headache, so no thanks.

Fast food? Never really ate it.

Yakiniku? Ah, a large pile of grilled meat will do me fine...guess that goes on the list. But still, once every few months is enough eh?

Sushi? Actually can eat that now -- totally PCP-friendly, especially if I cut the rice entirely and just go sashimi.

Alcohol? I don't drink to begin with, so a non-starter.

Seriously, the one thing I absolutely want to gorge myself on: my wife's stupendous flavored tofu. She takes chunks of fried tofu and simmers them in a simple sauce of mirin, soy, and sake until they are saturated. Just so stupendously good, but it's basically chunks of soy, which isn't doing much for me on PCP, so I give myself one or two bites as part of my veggie portion and wait patiently for my stomach to be a washboard of fatless sinew before I dare inhale those holy cubes of goodness.

no carb dinner

Wife's leftover salmon with onions, carrots, shrooms, and spinach, hard-boiled egg.
Had a minimal lunch because we went to a pizza place that had nothing but pizza and sausage, and the diet starting today is all muscle-building egg whites and no carbs.

Headed down to Patrick's in the AM (national holiday today so no work!) with a friend who will start PCP in April. The exercises are getting more hardcore. The fun has begun!

week 4 (day 22) brekkie

Half 7-grain fig bagel, spinach, corn-off-the-cobb eggs.

steamed chicken and veggie dinner

Wife cooked: steamed chicken, mushrooms, cabbage, eggplant, bell-peppers.

Had a great day out in the beautiful sun and strong wind. Went to the park but it was water-logged so met up with daughter's boyfriend and headed to the local indoor kid's play area. Had lunch there, with my watching both son and daughter (wife off getting a massage!)

Eventually made it to the international grocery store and loaded up on fruits and veggies (Patrick, hint hint: we can cut down on carbs, but I want to eat more fruit!) before taking my daughter with me to get my head shaved at the barber shop.

NOTHING beats a straight razor on everything from the neck up, including forehead and ears!

Today's multiple wins include:

• Not eating ice cream at the Baskin Robbins
• Having no chocolate scone, just an iced tea, at Starbucks
• Eating my bento lunch whilst daughter stuffed herself on onigiri and chocolate bread
• Shopping at the supermarket and buying all the choice distressed veggies, fresh turkey slices, and skipping all the junk in the middle

shrimp bowl

With bell-pepper, grated carrots, and rice.

jumps & abs

Great weather yesterday so after brekkie and exercises, took my daughter to the local park for some sliding/swinging/climbing/sandbox fun. Met up with a friend after lunch (one of daugther's many boyfriends) and cooked them dinner. Wife made a fantastic and PCP-friendly meal, thank you darlin'!

Today the weather looks great again, so now that I've done my 1000 jumps (funny to think that three weeks ago I could possibly ever imagine nonchalantly saying I jumped rope a thousand times!) and some extra ab-work just for fun, it's time for the park again!

sunday breakfast

Leftover tomato egg, steamed bell-pepper, bagel.

wife made dinner!

Salmon with carrots, shrooms, and onions, baby leaf salad with mini-tomatoes, rice.

frize salad

With poached egg, dressing on the side. (Daughter ate the bacon.)

family brekkie

Tomato egg, spinach, wheat bagel.

Shrimp tortillas

With broccolli and grated carrots.

shrimp veggie bowl

Shrimp, spinach,bell peppers, rice.

breakfast

Spinach egg, cheerios in soy milk - portion weighed including milk.

exercise safety tip of the day

Safety Tip: When engaging in rowing with a resistance band, in lieu of somewhere to anchor the band (door handle, chair leg, etc.) do NOT wrap the band several times around your own outstretched feet and commence exercising.
Friction. Burns.

Request: If you are sharing the open studio room with someone jumping rope, do not arbitrarily assume that said jump-roper would love to listen to your j-pop techno remix therefore causing you to take off your personally sufficient headphones and plug you iPod into the studio speaker system to continue your ludicrious step-xercising.
That rhythm don't do me honey, and if your legs get any skinnier you're going to dislocate a knee walking into a strong breeze.

Recommendation: as much as you NEED to drink that VitoMaxProteinPowerMuscleBuildWith ChocoFlavorDynoSuperSupplement shake after you take a shower, you do NOT need to stand, nekkid, in front of the sinks violently shaking your drink mix. You DO need to put on a towel, especially if you're gonna shake like that. Very distracting, and not slightly disturbing.

emergency chili replacement dinner

tortillas, broccolli, and double-pack of natto in lieu of spoiled chili

how (not to) make prison chili

Start with Mom's White Chili Recipe, which I shan't reproduce here, and basically ignore alot of it, and fake the rest.
Ingredients:

• A bunch of ground chicken (I think I had about a kilo)
• Couple of carrots
• Some onions
• Cans of beans (pinto, garbanzo...whatever you got / whatever goes in "chili")
• Can of corn

I use our Le Creuset, which are the most awesomest kitchen dishes evHAR: basically a big iron pot coated in some nigh indestructable enamel. Heat it a little and it stay hot forever, slowly radiating heat from all over into whatever is in it...anyway any crock-pot / Dutch Oven kinda thing will do.
Chop up the onions. Chop up the carrots. Since this is prison-style, chop them badly; all different sizes and generally too big, to ensure uneven cooking and impractical eating. Put pot on stove, dump carrots and onions into pot, turn on heat. Cook for a bit. Dump in the chicken. Add some spice (aka Cumin + "Italian Seasoning" + black pepper if you want). MC MixAlot.

Dump the beans and corn into a bowl and SAVE THE JUICE from the beans and corn cans.

When the onions are translucent and the meat is nicely browned, dump in the strained beans + corn. Also pour in about a cup or so of the beans/corn juice.

Let sit on stove on low heat for hours / days.

Now the interesting caveat to this story: as you can see from below, I ate some chili for lunch a few hours ago.

The lovely wife just texted me to inform me that the chili smells funny and has probably gone bad. After I already ate my lunch.

I have some more chili in my other bento for dinner, so just to verify, I smelled it...yup. Smells not like what prison chili is supposed to smell like.

Oops.

The good news is I am quite healthy and hearty these days, so my stomach has not complained at all about eating a bunch of spoiled chili.

The bad news is I now have no protein for dinner...will go down to the AM/PM and buy some...I dunno what, actually. Cannot imagine they have any protein that I can eat. Maybe I'll just get some tofu or natto or something.

So the moral of the story is: cook the chili on the stove for long enough until the juice is all gone and it's a proper thick and chunky meal...but don't let it sit on the stove for so long that it spoils and smells like my socks after jumping rope 850 times.

The untimely death of the chili just means I will be piling into the 2 kilos of shrimp and cans of tuna in pure water even sooner!

bag and bento lunch

Bag of baby spinach, steamed bell-pepper,prison chili,tortillas

egg bagel brekkie

Spinach, left-over steamed onions

the gym, revisited

OK I take back all the bad things I said about the gym.

At 9pm it is awesome: studio is free so I can do my jumps and squats and lunges. Weight-lifting area is practically empty so I can (fail to) do my pull ups and resistance-band sets. Stretching area is open so I can do my pushups and sit-ups and then have a nice stretch before taking a shower and heading back to the office to collect my stuff and come home.

Cannot believe that it's only been a few weeks; the PCP is no longer Special and is now officially Routine: come home, prep some veggies and food, wash some dishes, pack tomorrow's lunch and dinner and snacks. Update blog. Sit zazen. Sleep.

Given that things are going so well, I thought I would list up some things that are annoying. Sadly, I cannot include jumping rope on this list, since I now count my jumps in sets an order of magnitude more than I did only a week ago. Today I knocked about my 850 jumps in sets of 200-300. Progress is freaky!

So, my list of Annoying PCP Things:

1. Pull-ups
2. Peeling hard-boiled eggs
3. Being asked "How much weight do you want to lose?" (Answer: none. I want to turn all my fat into muscle!)
4. Need to punch another hole in belt / acquire new belt
5. Lots more stinky laundry to do every day
6. Pull-ups
7. Working my abs until utter muscle failure and still not anywhere near the steel stomach awesomeness of my friend Hawaii
8. Pull-ups

bread and bento dinner

Grated carrots, boiled spinach, mini tomatoes, grilled ground chicken, genmai-pan (brown rice bread)

shrimp fajita lunch bento

bell peppers, onions, boiled shrimp, flour tortillas

sloppy egg brekkie

Egg with tomato and onion, bagel, decaf.

3 things

1) 3rd photo is up. Not much visible change from last week, but I am slowly cranking it out.
2) Still at work (conference call) so I hit the gym earlier (funny how I said I'd never go again!) and forgot my New Hotness, so I will do my jumps at home.
3) Will buy a second jump rope and keep it at work, in case I feel the urge to get my exercise on.

monocolor dinner bento

Prison chili, grated carrots, sprouts,tortilla

bento lunch

Prison chili, spinach, avocado, tortillas

data part 2

Figured I would let everyone know how I made the cool charts.
Easiest thing to do is go to the Google LiveChart Playground.
This is pre-loaded with my format and data for Weight and Muscle Mass.
The data is the part that looks like:

chd=t:73.7,72.2,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_
32.3,33.0,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_

Which is basically two sets of data, weight first. The underbars are placeholders, so every week replace the first underbar with the latest data.

I have also set the scaling to match my needs:

chds=65,75,30,40
chxr=2,65,75
3,30,40

The 65 and 75 are min and max values for the weight axis, the 30 and 40 are min and max for muscle mass. Be sure to change BOTH sets, so for example if you want the weight axis to be from 70 to 90, it would like like this (changes in bold):

chds=70,90,30,40
chxr=2,70,90
3,30,40

Then copy the URL link.
In blogger go to Layout, click on Add A Gadget, and select HTML/Javascript.
Make the title whatever you want, and for the content add an img tag with the URL as the src:

<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=lc&chs=200x150&chco=0000FF,FF0000&chdl=Weight%28LeftAxis%29%7CMuscleMass%28RightAxis%29&chdlp=t&chxt=x,x,y,r&chxl=0:%7C1%7C8%7C15%7C22%7C29%7C5%7C12%7C19%7C29%7C3%7C10%7C17%7C24%7C31%7C1:%7CMar%7C%7C%7C%7C%7CApr%7C%7C%7C%7CMay%7C%7C%7C%7C&chd=t:73.7,72.2,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_%7C32.3,33.0,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_&chds=65,75,30,40&chxr=2,65,75%7C3,30,40&chg=7.69,10&chxs=0,111111,8,0,lt,111111%7C1,111111,8,0,lt,111111%7C2,111111,8,0,lt,111111%7C3,111111,8,0,lt,111111" />

Hit Save and you are done!

one bowl brekkie

Eggy rice with cumin, steamed bell-peppers

8 minutes

Monstrously productive at work today - completely unrelated to the fact that my boss is out - so I left in time to meet Patrick at 8. Did a bunch of jumps and almost figured out foot-switching, but not quite. Then we tried pistol squats: ow. And inclined pushups: OW. For solidarity, Patrick did handstand pushups as I did mine with my feet on a block. Nice.
And more pullups which just burn SO good and my but it shall be awsome when I can knock out 6 of those in a row.
Then we did my soon-to-be-new-favorite: 8-Minute Abs! Oh yes bring me the 90s goodness!

colorless dinner

Brown rice, grilled chicken, steamed sprouts and bell pepper...I think I need to mix up the colors more!

data

Was inspired by my fellow PCPer's desire to add live graphs to the blog, so being the geek that I am I figured out how to use the Google Charts API, input my data, and plugged the resulting URLs into some HTML gadgets on the blog. Look to your right; new data every week!
(Watson, drop me an email; API looks complicated but it's actually not too bad. Happy to explain.)
Talking about data, people are noticing that I am losing weight, and they keep asking me how much weight I intend to lose, what my target weight is, etc.
Don't know, don't care.
I just say: "I wanna look good when I take my shirt off. And if I look good, I will feel good."

must. jump. rope.

So I am sitting at my desk, contemplating my newly smallerized portions, thinking I am not really hungry...but I AM bored.
So despite what I said last week, I grab my kit and head to the gym. I wrap a bandage around my arm to cover the ink that isn't hidden by my t-shirt, grab my New Hotness, and ask if the aerobics room is free. It is.
I start jumping.
In sets of 100.
about 10 times.
Hmm...interesting.
Still not quite satisfied, and basically thinking "OMGWTF" but just going with it, I do some squats. And some push-ups. Then so standing ovations, and thumbs up curls, and DaVincis, and finish with some gut-busting ab work, and then give myself a nice deep stretch and cool down.
Feeling better, I shower and head back to work.
Two boxes on my desk, full of chocolates. I ordered a bunch of chocolates to give to the ladies at work (White Day, one of the stranger traditions in Japan) so I spent the next 40 minutes wandering all over the building giving out chocolate, and politely refusing when I am offered a piece. It DOES look good...but not as good as I am gonna look in 10 weeks!
Finally I break out my lunch, and I come to a simple yet profound realization: no matter how hungry I am, eating ENOUGH will satiate me. There is no relationship between how hungry I am and how much I need to eat to be satisfied. Even if I don't eat all day, my PCP lunch is plenty.
The rest of the hungry I feel is just my brain remembering when I would stuff myself until bursting. Which now that I think about it actually did not feel very good. So I just stop eating when I am done, and I remember that bloating lethargic feeling I used to get.
Also (to take the conversation down a notch) I remember all the stomach problems I used to have, and I think back to the past week's expurgation and realize that eating actual food, and nothing but food, is just fine thanks, and my stomach, intestines, and bowels certainly appreciate it.
I will still do my PCP workout tonight when I go see Patrick at YG, I just couldn't wait that long; felt like a sloth just sitting at my desk all day waiting for the next meal.
And finally, it looks like everyone is getting really bad hayfever this week, now that the weather is warming up and it is properly becoming spring. People who have never had it before are sniffling and sneezing.
Except me.
PCP cured my goddamn hay fever.
It. Only. Gets. Better.

prison fajitas lunch

Grilled chicken, grated carrots and boiled spinach, wheat tortillas.

week 3 brekkie 1

left-over tomato egg, half bell-pepper, hard-boiled egg white, bagel half