round round bento bento dinner

Steamed veggies, salad with strawberries.

bento plus salad lunch

Brown rice and steamed veggies, chikuwa, spinach and lettuce salad with orange chunks and veggies...and raisins but this is the last time I put raisins in a salad! Not enough water content in dried fruits to make them PCP friendly.

post indulgence

So as you can tell from the pictures below, Thursday was a national holiday in Japan and I had me a damn huge BBQ. At least 30 people (1/3 of them kids) showed up, and my buddy Miri made all the food and worked the grill. We had a monstrous fruit salad, potato salad, pasta salad, wife made her famous salsa and guacamole, there were grilled veggies: eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, pumpkin, garlic, bamboo root, asparagus, sweet potato...grilled shrimp, pork chops, grilled chicken, bbq pork ribs, hamburgers, flank steak, hotdogs...banana bread, carrot cake, fudge brownies...plus even though I told everyone not to bring anything, they all ignored me and so we also had sushi, roll cream cake, fresh strawberries, champagne, beer, beer, and beer, cupcakes, manju, Taiwan sausages, grapes, spicy senbei, zakuro juice...
I dare say even though it was an Indulgence Day, I exercised supreme blackbelt skillz. Basically I grazed on grilled veggies all day: the pumpkin and zucchini were to die for! Had some chicken, a wee bit of pork (just the really crusty bits from the end), a bunch of shrimp, one piece of beef (wrapped around a grilled garlic clove), a tiny smattering of pasta salad and potato salad, a TON of salsa (which is only onions, tomato, green pepper, and garlic anyway) and instead of using tortilla chips I used Danish dark flat bread crackers (lowest carb count I could find) and ungrilled bell peppers. Stayed away from the guacamole (can't eat it even if I wanted to: allergic to dairy and it is loaded with sour cream I know because I helped my wife make it!) and had zero potato chips.
My real indulgence was allowing myself a piece of carrot cake (no frosting -- Miri brought fresh cream and cream cheese and sugar to make frosting but we managed to kill off the cake before she had time to even start!) which I enjoyed with Patrick. Miri's carrot cake is amazing: she grates her own carrots and makes the cake mix from scratch. It is moist, sweet, and delicious and tasted SO good.
In all I have successfully proven to myself, my family, and my friends that eating healthful foods and living well is NOT a sacrifice! Plus having Patrick there was great; everyone wanted to know what I'd been doing for the past couple months, and some people had actual, sincere interest in PCP. We shall see if any of them actually DO anything about it, but at the very least we have planted the seeds of doubt: it IS possible, ANYONE can do it, it is NOT a sacrifice, it is FUN, and it WORKS.
Wound the party down, cleaned up, got the kids bathed and ready for bed and was asleep by 9:30pm, so getting up today at 5:30 and cranking out the jumps and 8MA like always was easy.
Have not done the workout yet because I will do tomorrow's workout tonight at the gym so that I can do proper pull-ups and kung-fu abs.
Finally this morning Patrick sent me a photo of him when he was SERIOUSLY peaking, probably right after his own first PCP I guess. He is stunningly ripped, 8-packed, and looking good. I WANT ME THAT. And I. Will. Get. It!

prison chahan

Brown rice with mushrooms, carrot, brocolli, chikuwa, post workout banana.

carrot cake!

sweet.potato.

the carrot cake!!!

THIS is the real indulgence.

miri workin the grill to full effect

the legacy begins

Miri at work

indulgence time, first the basics!

bbq preparations begin...

vacation + bbq = indulgence

Today is technically the start of Golden Week in Japan; a series of national holidays that combine to be a good week or two of vacation time.

Thursday today is a holiday as are Monday - Wednesday next week. So back to work tomorrow, but TODAY, the crappy rain is cleared up, it is sunny and 21C and my friend Miri will be BBQing up a storm at my house. And of course I will partake of Indulgence #2 in a big way.

To keep a good rhythm, I got up at 5:30 like I always do, did my jumps and killer legs/shoulders/abs workout, had breakfast, and cleaned up getting ready for a house full of guests and kids.

To maximize the love-handle area, I do 8MA and try not to let my feet ever touch the floor. I extend and retract my legs as much as I can during all the different sets, keeping some serious pain in the lower abs. Thankfully failed a few times, which means it is working. Getting a burn on shoulder work is easy; basically flame on from the first set through the whole workout. Several weeks to go, and still need to bulk up my upper body and carve out the abs and chest and arms and back...but today, I indulge!

chahan breakfast

Brown fried rice with shrimp, onion, eggplant, brussel sprouts, post-workout banana and protein.

salad and steamed veggie dinner

Steamed tomato with eggplant, onion, peas, brussel sprouts, konyaku noodles, hijiki, hard-boiled eggs.

brown bento

Genmai and grilled white asparagus, mix of shrimp with onion,carrot, green bell-pepper, mushrooms, konyaku noodles, and coriander.

when > what you eat

I made a short comment on Watson's blog about the timing and size of meals that I'd like to expand on.
I don't know the history, but it seems most modern societies these days entail:

• A feeble, half-hearted attempt at breakfast (coffee and bagel on the way to work)
• A rushed, unhealthy lunch (fast food, quick bento)
• A huge meal at night, with alcohol, then to sleep shortly thereafter

This doesn't make much sense from a metabolism perspective. I believe the science basically backs up the theory that when you wake up, your blood sugar is low (haven't eaten since dinner and your body has been rebuilding whilst your brain has been organizing thoughts and memories all night) and so you NEED to eat to start the day.

Breakfast should be a full and proper balanced meal. That resets the metabolism, and you go for several hours burning through that. Then as the blood sugar starts to drop again, maybe a little pick-me-up at 10:30; no not a donut and coffee, how about an apple or some juicy seedless grapes? Lots of natural sucrose to get the energy back up.

Then a nice filling lunch; a proper sit-down affair, take the brain off the morning's harried activities, chat with friends, maybe even get outside to walk to and from a lovely restaurant or something (well OK maybe just sit at your desk and surf the web for 40 minutes whilst eating in peace.)

Around 3:30, as the energy boost from lunch is wearing off, another snack. Skip the cookies and coffee and go for a handful of strawberries, or a banana, maybe an orange? Depends what's in season.

Finally, as the day is winding down and the blood sugar is dropping again, have a well-balanced but none-too-large dinner, say before 7pm. Easy on the carbs, if any, lots of fibre-packed vegetables in different colors.

Then several hours later, after getting a nice head-start on digesting, go to bed, say at 11 or even midnight, and get up at 5:30am the next day absolutely famished because you haven't eaten in 10 hours. (Being realistic; though 8 hours of sleep is ideal, I don't know anyone who works for a living that can manage getting that much sleep.)

BUT, before having breakfast, how about jumping rope for 16 minutes whilst watching NHK news? Then 8MA, changed up to make it more challenging: don't ever put your feet down; keep them floating off the floor, sometimes even extending and retracting as you crunch and squeeze those abs -- no slacking!

Then rip through some seriously painful chest and bicep sets until failure, and finish it all up with four one-minute planks until you are quivering in pain and delirious with hunger.
(To keep it interesting, let your 1 year-old son loose so that he can use your planking body as a platform from which to support himself as he stands up, adding a nice 10 kilos of weight just when you don't need it.)

Actually before I go to bed at night, I usually spend some quality kitchen time "cooking". My definition of cooking entails prepping my lunch, dinner, and snacks for the next day. Which is really just a whole bunch of chopping and steaming vegetables, occasionally using the non-stick frying pan to grill up some mix of something, maybe boil some eggs.

I also try to empty the dishwasher, load it up again with whatever is there, and finish off whatever my wife has started. Sometimes I am not sure what she's in the middle of cooking and I don't want to screw it up as it's usually my daughter's bento and I have absolutely no sense of flavoring. But sometimes it's easy to see how I can add value. Last night there was a container of finely diced green bell-peppers, a couple of half-sliced peppers on the cutting board, and several other peppers sitting next to them. So, I picked up the knife and diced up the rest of the peppers and put them in the fridge. Also prepped up a bowl of genmai (brown rice) to be ready in the morning (which I will have with lunch today) and checked my pickled eggs (not quite ready yet.)

Love being in the zone when just working silently in the kitchen late at night -- an hour just flies by I get so into it. I haven't been sitting regularly lately, but I do think all the late-night kitchen work is the next best thing for resetting the psyche and stabilizing the body and mind. "Chef's high"?

post workout breakfast

Prison egg, turkey on bagel, banana and protein shake.

some more cheats

1. Usually I put cinnamon in my decaf coffee. Today I put in some honey. Couldn't taste it. Total waste of honey. Back to the cinnamon.
2. Bought some figs from the distressed goods bargain basket this weekend. Chopped them up and put them in my salad. Have been eating little bits of fig in my salad since Sunday. Also put in some raisins, and sometimes left-over strawberries. I am over-doing my fruit allocation...but raisins in spinach salad are so. good. Plus figs are damn tasty. Need to get more of those for my fruit snacks (apples I got last week are grainy and bland.)
3. Threw some extra mushrooms into my breakfast...fungus isn't really a veggie anyway, is it...?

Enough of this cheating crap. STRICT ADHERENCE. I already get to eat As Much As You Want (AMAYW) veggies for lunch and dinner, so really pointless to cheat on other stuff, eh.

Stop slackin'.

reality check

Updated the graphs to the right.
So, my lesson to myself for week 8: don't let the photograph lead me into a false sense of "accomplishment".
I failed week 8 in the sense that I did what I should not have done; I deviated from the progam with the best of intentions; worked too hard, putting in extra workouts and pushing myself too much, and ended up losing (a statistically irrelevant amount of) muscle mass, whilst my fat percentages did not change.
So Strong 9 is all about keeping the discipline.
I eat lots of veggies, because it is obvious that such mostly-water-nutrient-packed-flavorful-pieces-of-joy will not make me fat.
I do all my reps to utter, burning failure, because it is obvious that if I don't feel the pain, there is no gain.
I do NOT overdo it; one workout a day is plenty, though I still do 8MA every morning. But as it has become routine, I make it hurt more: float and tuck the legs on the side crunches, deep and slow and low on the leg lifts to really feel the lower abs, tension throughout all the crunches to make it hurt.
The goal for this week is to just build muscle, and that means tearing up muscle fiber, and that means not being able to stand up after lunges, pistol squats, and hops across the floor. That means I can barely reach my mouse my triceps hurt so much. I want to think I am having a heart attack my pectorals will burn so much after a chest workout. Carrying my daugther becomes an impossibility after monster shoulder workouts.

And to top it all off, I will finally take my #2 indulgence on Thursday. Inviting a bunch of folks over (including Patrick) to have a right and proper BBQ. My buddy Miri will be catering and running the grill, and I have asked for a bunch of veggies and a big fruit salad in addition to the standardly delicious burgers, dogs, shrimp kebabs, and of course her famous CARROT CAKE.

Other than that, the end is near and I feel an impending sense of closure...even started discussing with Patrick how to finish off this 3 months. Will probably take the day off of work, head down to Patrick's studio, do a final workout, take some photos, and then head to China Town for some right and proper non-PCP food.

But before that, BBQ + BurnBurnBurn. STRONG NINE!

round bento dinner

Steamed veggies, scary brown self-pickled eggs, olives, ito-konyaku.

Patrick asked about the pickled eggs, so here's my take on it:
First, I read this over on the most-awesomely names salt & fat blog. Basic concept seems to be 1 part vinegar to 1 part water...and other stuff.
The brown eggs here have been pickling for about a week in a combination of water, Japanese black vinegar, a couple cloves of garlic, and a bunch of paprika. They tasted: vinegary. I liked it, though; a deep, almost woody (?) flavor.
I have another jar in the fridge that I will crack open next week, as it takes a while for the juice to seep all the way through the white of the egg. That pickle juice is apple vinegar and a dollop of blueberry jam plus garlic. NO idea what that will taste like, but I am loving my experimental foods, and there is ZERO chance my daughter will steal and eat these; recently she has developed a strong love of hard-boiled egg-whites so whenever we go out and I pack snacks, I just double-up on seedless grapes (she likes green, I like red), hard-boiled eggs, apple slices, and bananas.
PCP = Perfecting Child's Palate!

bento lunch away from the office

At compliance training all day: white asparagus, pork and veggies, spinach salad, wheat tortillas.

bagel egg breakfast

Grilled white asparagus, brocolli, eggplant, mushrooms, chikuwa.

Week 8 results

Week 8
Originally uploaded by Peak Condition Ren

Six-pack: you. are. mine!
Another 4 weeks to lock it in and build it out a bit.

overkill

Lesson learned: as suspected I worked too hard last week, weight went down another kilo, but body fat percentage did not change and muscle mass went down slightly. So basically I worked too hard and burnt up evrything I could including muscle. Oops, all that hard work for just the wrong result! So the moral of the story is to just stick with the program. There are no short-cuts!

simple is best bento dinner

Steamed veggies, two hard-boiled eggs, side of namuru.

leftovers bento

Grilled lamb, spinach salad with fruit and garlic, steamed veggies, grilled mushrooms, wheat tortillas.

strong 9, day 57 brekkie

Egg on turkey, veggies, pumpernickel bread.

I have decided to call this Strong 9, not week 9, because week sounds like WEAK, and I will not be!

Abby was talking about kitchen mishaps; well mine pales in comparison to hers, but notice how my bread is all sliced? Turns out I thought it was an unsliced loaf, so I sliced off a chunk...and turns it out it was pre-sliced, the other way. Oops. So for the rest of the week I will have some nice short slices, even though this week my carbs allocation has gone up slightly. Which can mean only one thing: the beginning of the end!

Only a month to go; 4 short weeks. Time to feel the pressure! Morning 8MA is getting too easy, so need to check with Patrick to get something more challenging. Also I calculated that my last day of PCP is a Saturday, so I plan on going to Patrick's that day to finish in style. Planning too far ahead? Best just focus on today: will hit Patrick's this evening for results of strong 8 weigh-in and photos, etc. Must. Have. Six. Pack!

sunday feast with grandma

just. awesome.

Grandma came over and showed me some serious vegetable-steaming technique. Pumpkin, onion, leek, cucumber, various bell-peppers, brussel sprouts...also grilled up a bunch of mushrooms, including some huge mushroom steaks, and white asparagus with balsamico, and a mixed green (spinach, rucola, basil, etc.) salad topped with tomato, strawberries, and fig. The family shared a huge lamb roast and I had an egg-white omelet.

Brilliant meal to top off a beautiful day in the park.

lunch @ homeworks

Veggie and chickpea sandwich, turkey salad, non-oil dressing on the side.

pancake breakfast

With eggplant and corn scrambled egg.

big veggie salad

Spinach salad with egg-white, bell-pepper, brocolli, onion, peas, corn, naganegi...

failure -> discovery

Woke (well ok was roused by my daughter) and checked my exercise sheet for the day. Oops, pull-ups and kung-fu situps, both ofwhich require the pull-up bar. Which I have. What I do not have is a door frame onwhich I can use it. Every door in my apartment - in my entire BUILDING - either goes all the way up flush with the ceiling or simply has no upper frame onto which the cleverly designed pull-up bar can hook.
I do however have a new old kitchen table.
So I did inclined pull-ups under the table and discovered a few things:
1- I did all ten of all five sets, and the burn was relentless and inspiring.
2- If I grip the table with palms facing front, it is an awesome forearm workout too.
Obviously could not do kung-fu situps under the table so did 100 leg-lifts instead. A feeble replacement. As Patrick says: if you can do 100 of anything it is not working! So I need to solve the pull-up bar issue or get an ab workout that is at least as gnarly as kung-fu situps!

saturday family lunch

Spinach and onion salad with ito-konyaku, chikuwa, various veggies.

late breakfast

Granola with soy milk, steamed veggies, chikuwa, hard-boiled egg.

"normal" day

Did my jumps and 8MA as soon as I woke up. Then the rest of the workout, and finished just as the wife and son came in. Daughter slept like a dead thing again so after breakfast and whatnot, dragged her out of bed and got her fed and ready for school.

Took only the two bento and snacks today. Ate them at the proscribed time: AM snack 10:30ish, lunch 12:30ish, PM snack 4ish, dinner 7ish, evening snack 8:30ish. Was not hungry. Plenty of food. Interesting that my two buddies Todd and Jason are both complaining that their 2nd week PCP menus are way too much food. I don't remember having that problem, but I do remember the exercises jacking way up and the food coming way down in the following weeks.

Just gotta trust the program; Patrick and Chen know what they are doing.

So anyway I did NOT stress about not working out at lunch or after work. In fact at lunch I went and signed up at the local men's beauty and health salon for some permanent hair removal treatments; if I am gonna have a six-pack I wanna make sure it's visible! Plus I spend the time and money on looking good it is good motivation to make sure it does not relapse into a smooth, hairless fat gut hanging over the belt like it used to! So yeah it's totally narcissistic and silly, but whatever it takes to motivate!

I suspect I am done losing weight at this point; I am putting on muscle at a healthy clip and there really can't be THAT much fat left wrapped around my organs, so I predict I will drop maybe a little more and then rebound up as muscle starts to dominate.

Don't actually care what I weigh, just love the fact that I feel so. damn. good.

Tell everyone: being healthy and in shape is FUN!

round dinner bento

Brocolli, onion, bell-pepper, peas, grilled egg-white with basil leaves.

bento lunch

Baby orange tomato, steamed nanohana,fusili pasta, chikuwa, olives, spicy garlic.

I am probably eating too much garlic...like there is such a thing in this world! And DAMN but olives are tasty. I never really ate olives, now I can't get enough!

Took Patrick's advice, of course, and decided to just chill a bit. No more three work-outs a day silliness. Besides, with this wacky hot-cold-sunny-rainy weather I am feeling crummy; woke up with a scratchy throat today. So I just did the workout in the morning; jumps whilst watching NHK news, then 8MA, then the rest: chest dips and push-ups, ovations, bunch of bicep work, abs. Need to figure out how to keep my chair from sliding across the carpet when doing dips...who would have thought it would slide on deep pile carpet?

Also have decided to go back to the bento boxes -- more reasonable in size, more aesthetically pleasing. Today I took my time eating lunch, at least as much as is possible for me. One olive at a time, spitting out the pit. A couple of pieces of pasta at a time. Then a baby tomato half...I generally eat WAY too fast (being a younger brother it was that or starve as my older bro snagged all the food first) and as Patrick explained, it takes about 15 minutes for the stomach to tell the brain to release the chemicals that turn of hunger, so slowing down gives even reasonably small portions a chance to fill me up.

And honestly, it is more than enough food; watery vegetables and chewy protein a plenty. Need to remember how to enjoy tasting food, not shoveling nutrients into my mouth.

wife's left-overs for breakfast

Chicken with veggies in tomato sauce, egg on bagel.

the rest is history

A couple of random, potentially related thoughts on sleep/rest.

1. I had a huge jump in muscle this week, which Patrick attributes to the power nap I took on Saturday. After being out with my kid all day, I crashed about 4pm and sleep a good couple of hours like a dead thing. Not getting the proscribed 8 hours of sleep a night, these weekend afternoon naps will now be required, even if my kids don't/won't nap.
2. Speaking of 8 hours a night, since I get up at 5:30 and can generally get to bed before midnight, the math is easy, and it's not 8. BUT, I feel more energized and well-rested than I ever did, even on less than six hours of sleep.
3. Definitely over-did the exercises the past couple of days. At fighting this afternoon sensei told me to cut out 10 minutes early and let the therapist work on me. So I did, and for 10 glorious minutes I was stretched, kneaded, massaging, and tweaked about my shoulders, arms, and back. Felt very refreshing, but did not solve the core problem: tried to do too much. So this evening, I met up like I do every Thursday with my man at the Starbucks. He was beaten from lots of aikido, I was feeling it, so instead of working out we sat in 'bucks and talked budo and smack for an hour. Was most cathartic and really better than getting even more tired and worn out. So I rested the body and worked the mouth and ears.
4. Spending way too much time at night on food prep. As much I enjoy the calming repetition of chopping, steaming, bagging, I need to be more realistic about time management. Specifically, less time prepping food and give myself time in the evenings before bed to get my sitting practice back online. I did not used to spend this much time prepping food, so part of it probably some kind of something-avoidance mechanism. Anyway, it comes down to discipline: get outta the 8 Week Rut and get back On The Ball!

tomato sauce salad dinner

Side of grilled pumpkin, little yellow tomato, olives.

beat

OK, I think I have definitely overdone it...last couple of days have been hard work-outs, plus I went to fighting last night and this afternoon, and have to hit the dojo this evening.
Back and shoulders are seriously sore. Will take it very easy at the dojo tonight.
After fighting this afternoon, I stopped 10 minutes early and got a quick massage from the physical trainer there; helped immensely, but basically I need to rest, so tomorrow I will not over-do anything. I'll do the requisite exercises in the morning and then before lunch I will restrain myself...ok well maybe I'll do some pre-lunch jumps, and then I will spend a good 20 minutes just stretching.
Actually stretching is one thing I really doing more of , and I can feel that as my muscles get bigger and more defined, I am also more flexible. Love that.

lunch wraps

Steamed: nanohana, bell-pepper, eggplant, namuru, tomato-tuna and a wee bit of namahamu, wheat tortillas.

cheats

In the interest of complete transparency, here is a list of all the things I can think of for which I am cheating:

• Every day when I drink my protein powder, I used to have it in a glass of water. Recently I have been having it in a small (160ml) jar of soy milk. The high powder-to-liquid ratio makes the drink the viscosity of olive oil; thick and delicious cocoa delight.
• I put raisins in my salad.
• Sometimes I grill veggies in a non-stick frying pan, and use about a half-teaspoon of olive oil anyway.
• Every morning I am pretty sure my bagel half is over the carb allocation. I don't measure and I don't care because if I become the kind of guy who obsesses over a few grams of bagel enough to bring out the knife and trim it down, I have utterly failed PCP and become a nutri-nazi.
• Pull-ups.
• Ham on occasion.
• If there is a slice or two of apple left over after rationing my daily fruit snacks...I eat them.
• I typically sleep less than six hours a night. I get up at 5:30 and do my jumps and 8MA, and sometimes (like today) I knock out the whole workout, before breakfast. And I feel better and more energetic than I ever have before.
• Sometimes I do the squats and sit-ups straight through, instead of in X sets of Y reps.
• I also do the jumping straight through: I set the timer for Z minutes (X sets * Y minutes), turn on the morning news on TV, clip the little piggy timer to my waistband, and get jumpin'.
• I often buy hard-boiled eggs at the convenience store on the way to work, even though they boil them in salt-water. I am eating so many egg-whites these days I really cannot keep up boiling them at home.
• I use some mayo in my paprika-and-tuna-and-tomato. See comment about bagel above.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, here are a few things I am probably doing too much of:

• I sometimes jump two or three times a day...just because I want to.
• I do alot of ab work: 8MA every morning, no matter what. It is silly because the 6-pack is a 99% narcissistic ego muscle. But at least I can admit that!
• Even if I have already done my daily workout, I will go to the dojo or the gym just to DO something before having lunch. Often that ends up being sit-ups and pull-ups and push-ups.

one fry-pan breakfast

Egg on bagel, grilled pumpkin, fish-wrapped asparagus.

familiar looking dinner

stuffed bell-pepper, spinach salad tossed with spicy shrooms and sprouts and stuff.

valley in the peaks

Patrick has been warning us about the Week 8 Doldrums. Been PCPing long enough now for it to be basically routine, nothing special. Nothing really new either. Minutes for jumps instead of counting, Kung-Fu situps, but really now it's just taking what we've already been doing and recombining.
Specifically, the workouts are much more focused: three main body areas, multiple exercises x many reps x several sets. Today was back, triceps (!), and abs. Five sets of 10 pull-ups...are you frakking kidding me? And then a bunch of lawn-mowers, and pull-downs, and THEN all the triceps stuff: elevated dips, ski-jumpers, double-mutha-frakkin-katanas...serious could not lift my arms at the last one.
And THEN the kung-fu sits and crunches...which were by comparison not all that bad. I guess doing 8MA every morning is actually helping. I did the final 100 crunches in one big set; just knocked them out at a steady pace, feeling a nice burn on the last 20 or so but it was manageable.
Ask me two months ago if I thought I could non-chalantly knock out ONE HUNDRED CRUNCHES. Not bloody likely.
So the key for me to avoiding the valley of Week 8: perspective.
I have abs. I mean, they are feeble, and I need to have not eaten much, and just done a bunch of sit-ups, and be in the right lighting and flexing just so, but there is the hint of a six-pack dying to show itself to the world.
I can do 100 crunches in a row. Or 100 squats. Or 100 floor-jumps. Or 100 push-ups.
I can do some (more than one!) pull-ups. I can do a kung-fu sit-up. I can jump rope 1500 times...nah forget that: I can jump rope almost constantly for 16 minutes straight, whilst watching the boring NHK news on TV and thinking about how to cook my egg for breakfast.
So, yeah though I walk through the shadow of the valley of Week 8, I be peakin'.

Then again, I only have 38 days left. 38! That's barely a month! And in that time I am still looking to: chisel out the abs, knock a few more percentage points off of the body fat, do a full set of 10 real pull-ups (no faking the last few), and boil an egg to culinary perfection (new recipe I will try out tonight; letcha know how it goes.)
So much to do, so little time. Got to get crackin'. And I am a bit worried that I am getting kinda fanatical; I really HAVE to jump rope and do 8MA every morning before breakfast. Just doesn't feel right if I don't. I also have to do SOME kind of exercise before I eat lunch, or I feel like an indulgent sloth. Scary...

another random lunch

Bell-pepper stuffed with onion, eggplant, mushrooms, spinach salad tossed with garlic and chikuwa, wheat tortillas, post-work out banana.

breakfast

Egg on bagel, grilled brocolli, fish-wrapped asparagus.

After morning jumps (whilst watching the news on NHK; a good mindless combination) and 8MA, wife and son woke up. Soon looking much better after having been really sick for a week, wife looking much happier after visiting the Eatalian Festival again and stocking up on focaccia, mascarpone, ham, and olives. She also got me this awesome asparagus wrapped in fish, which is basically (for those who know Japanese food) an oden staple.

salad bag dinner part II

Spinach salad with raisins, mushrooms, sprouts, and sesame, side of egg-white.

i am a geek

Actually Todd is more of a geek than I am, but anyway Excel has some great linear trendlining features, and apparently the prediction is that my body fat percentage will end up at just over 10% when PCP is done. AWESOME. This linear trend prediction has a coefficient of determination (R^2) value of 0.9623, which means the models predictive likelihood is pretty good (mainly because the trend of data is pretty stable and easy to predict.)And thus I start a positive feedback loop: I have some pretty convincing math that I will get down to 10% body fat in 5 weeks. Therefore I am consciously and subconsciously motivated to achieve that, thus proving the tautology.I loves me some math!

completely random lunch

Korean namuru, baby yellow tomato, post-work out banana, chikuwa, wheat tortillas.

Week 7 results

Week 7
Originally uploaded by Peak Condition Ren

Good thing I decided to Man Up and do some body hair removal (note to self: when it says do not put the depilatory cream on your nipples, it wasn't kidding!) -- now we can really start seeing some PCP results! Today I rocked the whole exercise pre-breakfast. Big day of legs and shoulders, 14 minutes of jumping, 8MA. That leaves the rest of the day for fun: will try and hit fighting at lunch!

no bagel breakfast

For a change: granola, egg with spinach, brocolli, tomato-tuna.

week 7 results: WOW

Check out the graphs: weight slightly down, muscle mass WAY up, all measures of fat percentages down. Starting to show seriously good results; 5 more weeks of this and I will be most peak!

New menu is great, too. Tons of vegetables and more muscle-building protein.

In an experimental mood with salads this week as you can see from my dinner. This weekend though was a bit too much experimentation with garlic; stomach is a bit more touchy since I've been eating nothing but mildly flavored mostly raw foods, so the kimchee and garlic this weekend left me a little uncomfortable, but I am fine and most happy with progress so far.

Will try to do more exercises in the morning as that really makes the day feel good, and opens up my lunch breaks and evenings for fun stuff like hitting the dojo.

All in all, most satisfied, but still more to go. Need to start chiseling and carving muscles; more ab definition, cut lines on my back and arms and legs. The key now is less resistance and really focusing on form; every movement clean and isolate the target muscle. Workouts this week seem to group around a couple of major areas; legs and back, or chest and arms, etc. Will just focus and work on each rep one at a time.

To by PCP buddies who have just started: it IS worth it. Hang in there and you WILL see most satisfying results!

salad bag dinner

spinach and brocolli leaf with enoki and carrots, kimchee-ume flavor, tossed with sesame and raisins, side of egg-whites.

am snack plus lunch

Steamed brocolli, grilled pumpkin, tomato-tuna with paprika and cumin, wheat tortillas, egg-white, apple.

day 50, week 8 breakfast

Shrimp and bell-pepper, egg on bagel.

timing is everything

Yeah, as I had hoped, we are now just timing jumps as opposed to counting. Makes life much easier; I just set the kitchen timer and start spinning rope.

Also good adjustments to the meal plan this week: fewer carbs, more protein.

The muscle-building is in full effect, and I think I am STILL dropping fat. Will find out tonight when I visit Patrick for the week 7 results.

Had a great weekend; nice weather so out with the kids all day.

I always pack snacks for me and the kids, and my daughter now always steals some of my egg-whites and eats bananas and apple slices with me. Healthy habits that will last a lifetime.

Of course I did buy her some awesome Italian chocolates, too -- stuff I remember eating when I was her age growing up in Milan. But none for me, not for another 5 weeks.

Also amazingly we now get ANOTHER indulgence to use this week. Already?! And it's a big one, too -- a proper 500 calories or so, i.e. bust out a big unhealthy meal.

Hmm...will have to think about this...maybe a burrito?

Anyway start of Week Eight -- Go Team Go!

sunday family dinner

Grilled pumpkin, various left-over veggies, string beans with balsamico...

lunch with daughter

salads and fruit and left-over namuru.

sunday brekkie

Bagel docked at ground-chicken and spinach-egg island.

dinner shopping @ mitsukoshi

I am NOT eating: fried chicken nor sushi. But I loaded up on a bunch of traditional Japanese veggie dishes like renkon and carrots and bamboo roots and other stuff I can't even name.

I also called Patrick, when I was in the middle of shopping, to get the PCP info on kimchee. Executive Summary: super healthy, but too salty for PCP so treat it as a rare treat. Therefore I loaded up on namuru (white/orange/brown/green veggies that seem to accompany every Korean meal ever) and ate one piece of cucumber and one piece of kabu kimchee.

Considering that we spent all afternoon checking out the Italian (Eatalian) Fest upstairs and I spent all afternoon battling grandmas with sharp elbows who were going for the free samples of cheeses and wines and hams, and though I did have small (like finger-nail sized) samples of a couple of hams, I exercised MAD Black Belt skillz:

The final booth a guy was making biscotti right in front of me. They had a BUCKET of samples. I picked up a piece, feeling its warmth and hardness, and handed it to my daughter on my shoulders so she could experience the second-best cookie in the world (the first being the elusive and exclusive Chocolate Oliver Biscuit. Which is the first thing I eat when my PCP is done and my six-pack is secured.)

I did NOT stuff my face into the bowl and eat them all. I did not even lick my fingers.

Worse (or better), my daughter DID NOT WANT THE COOKIE (bless'd thing, the fool she is) and she gave it back to me. I took it in my hand AGAIN and shoveditinmymouth gave it to my wife so that she could enjoy it.

That cookie smelled better than I ever will, and looked almost as awesome as I will look on day 90, when the mere SIGHT of my rippled pectoral and abdominal musculature will make men cry, women sigh, and children gasp.

And then, biscotti, you are MINE.

lunch @ my new old table

Tortillas with tuna-tomato, various veggies and stuffed bell-pepper.

saturday brekkie

Ham on bagel, veggie omelet with carrots, mushrooms, onions, celery.

does this count?

Friday night and by 8pm I really needed a break, so I headed down to the practically empty gym. I use the gym several times a week, at my convenience. This late on a Friday I had my run of the place. Did my jump-rope and 8MA this morning before breakfast, so I went straight into the leg workout before tackling the monster back exercises. Tried to absolutely not cheat on the pull-ups: grip wide and thumbs out, I let myself hang completely down before pulling up. I think I got my chest up close enough to the bar to call it maximum motion three times. The rest of the forty were an exercise in failure. Interestingly, as awesome it would be to impress the lone hottie on the stair-master behind me by knocking out ten fully extended pull-ups near effortlessly, ala Patrick, such a massive testosterone display would not actually do me much good.
The whole point of doing four sets of ten is to fail, tearing muscle fiber, forcing it to rebuild bigger and stronger.
I must admit, I do not like counting reps. I really, really hate counting 1500 jumps. I lose focus, skip, double-count, and end up thinking more about what number I am on than what my muscles and body are doing.
I like that Patrick said to just keep the burn and go to failure on every last set. Much more fun.
I think soon we will graduate from counting jumps too. I am much looking forward to setting the kitchen timer and letting my brain do whatever as I spin New Hotness endlessly.
NOT counting to me is an important concept - just jumping, pulling, pushing, whatever, be it the first, fiftieth, or five thousandth. One of the things I love about the sword in which I train is that it was founded by a bit of an oddball who was both a reknowned samurai and a respected zen philosopher. He called his art "moving zen", and it has a simple yet intense focus of purpose that I get really into when I train.
And sometimes, on that last kung-fu sit-up, I do not think about the number of sets, the minutes on the clock, how much work I have left nor how little sleep I got. I suck air in, push air out, feel the callous on the base of my right middle finger, hear my pulse in my ears, taste my sweat dripping past my lip. And I just lift my legs, I am my abdominal muscle, struggling to curl, pulling against gravity squeezing tighter and tighter, starving for oxygen and ripping and burning for a forever moment to moment that never ends...I cannot think of a more fun and satisfying way to spend a Friday night!

stuffed bell-pepper dinner

Packed with onions, carrots, mushrooms...side of old celery with cumin-paprika mayo.