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!