So the end..

But hopefully a new beginning!

First things first.. the oscar acceptance speech bit (apologies but 3 months of PCP has a habit of turning you into a right little narcissist!)

I would  like to thank everyone who has supported, encouraged and motivated me throughout this project, it has astonished me how powerful that has been. Friends, family and even complete strangers  have been so positive and that made the difference when things got tough...  If you're reading this that means you! I cant thank you enough!! 

To Patrick and Chen.. Well done guys you have a fantastic thing going here.. I believe in a field full of gimmicks, money making scams and misguided and dangerous advice you are genuine and have a knowledge of your subject that comes from a dedication to helping people discover the benefits of a healthy lifestyle for themselves... I have nothing but admiration for this. I encourage you to try to keep this at the essence of the PCP and not allow it to be lost in the expansion and evolution as the PCP inevitably will .

To potential PCP'ers... Having been in your place but 3 months ago, I remember dreading putting up the photo's, the blogging, the no drinking, the no salt.. the self doubt..     "what am I doing.. can I do this?" you've been through it all I'm sure but let me tell you this.. you CAN do this.. seriously.. you will start enjoying it within a week no matter your starting point... feeling fitter within a week, losing a lot of weight within 2 weeks, receiving compliments within a month and embarrassed by them after 2... you may get a bit bored in the middle but you will be in an undefeatable mood by then. If you sign up and take the photos and upload them.. then you can smile.. you are done! I was 109kilos at the start of this and it was getting worse.. "I was good at sports at school".. bore off your fat now!  "I work from 7 til 7.. I don't have the time" "Ive got a wedding to go to and a holiday booked" trust me I had all the excuses you may be thinking of... you CAN do this.. and if you're a potential PCP'er you're already interested in the benefits but I can promise you they are far better and drastic than you currently imagine.. so I encourage you to go ahead.. sign up take the photos and amaze yourself at what you can achieve.

so to me.. I'm sorry to say I'm less interested in this bit as I'm wanting to look ahead but I started off at 109kilos and got down to 89K at a low.. my posture has drastically improved, I feel energised, I sleep better and I love exercising again but most of all I got back my self-confidence and belief that I could achieve anything I put my mind to..

Thanks for your support!

From..

 To..

On the Cult of Patrick..

When you are shown results that impress or amaze its easy to think the person who showed you these results have some kind of magic answer.. I liked a tv show in the UK which showed how vunerable we can be to this.. (Im sure its on Youtube if you can be bothered Wikipedia's take on it below)

Derren Brown: The System (2008)The System, in which Brown shared his "100 percent guaranteed" method for winning on the horses,
The show was based around the idea that a system could be developed to "guarantee a winner" of horse races. Cameras followed a member of the public, Khadisha, as Brown anonymously sent her correct predictions of five races in a row, before encouraging her to place as much money as she could on the sixth race. After Brown had placed a bet of £4,000 of Khadisha's money on a horse in the final race but before the race was run, he explained that "The System" did not really exist. He had started by contacting 7,776 people and split them into six groups without any of them knowing each other, giving each group a different horse. As each race had taken place 5⁄6 of the people had lost and were dropped from the system. Brown had a different person backing each horse in each race, and one individual, Khadisha, won five times in a row. He then explained to the losers the experiment. Brown expressed the opinion that the principle behind "The System" (essentially confirmation bias or survivorship bias) is what is behind belief in spiritualism or homeopathic and alternative medicine. Her face when she realised a race was about to start with her life savings on the line was the great realisation that she had done something she knew made no common or statistical sense but was blinded by the previous results shown to her.

Point being we're all seeing results, its easy to just attribute this success to Patrick and Chen having a system rather than try to understand whats happening and ending up more dependant than ever in fitness and exercise terms.. "how many grams of carbs should I eat normally?".. theres a natural tendancy for us to want to totally place our faith in someone providing these results.. Madoff investors and footballers thanking Jesus spring to mind.. I thought at the start Patrick slightly encouraged this through the mystical nature of the emails and the drip feed approach to sharing the information.. That they had some information on fitness others didn’t and that if we followed them we too would learn these secrets..

What I have come to realise about the PCP is that Patrick and Chen really havent told me anything new at all.. Theres some stuff but really that’s not the important point.. I had watched a film based on the Michael Pollan article and was familiar with principals. The structure and portion sizes and how to deploy them over the 3 months certainly work and make Patrick and Chen worth their relatively for this kind of thing modest fee, but revolutionary? Magic? My mum told me I should eat more veg!!! The exercises again.. With the exception of the kung fu situp Id done these all before and whilst as per my previous posts I have been impressed by the way Patrick builds these up I don’t credit him with anything other than being a good trainer on that front.. So theyre clearly knowledgable fellows but whilst I and others wonder why we have achieved more on PCP than any previous attempt at fitness the cult of patrick approach and that they have some kind of knowledge others don’t.. Well that just doesn’t sit easy.. But I still wondered why ?

My answer is that the PCP provides the same kind of self-help that Allan Carr does for smokers.. Allan Carr died of lung cancer having smoked 80 cigarettes a day for a large part of his life then one day gave up to become a prophet to those looking to quit.. His approach doesn’t look to tell smokers of how bad smoking is for them or try to give them some form of substitute, the method is based on you finding out how good the alternative is, how good being a non-smoker is, how good it feels and gradually opens you up to that so you ultimately don’t want to smoke because you prefer the alternative rather than try to replace cigarettes with patches and therefore having the feeling of "sacrificing" cigarettes. Same with being fat.. The guy who has to buy a business class seat coz he is too fat for economy knows McDonalds isnt healthy.. He isnt dumb.. but feels like its a great sacrifice to change his diet. Likewise I was overweight and felt depressed about it, I knew what I was doing wrong but the alternative seemed like such hard work.. So what I credit and thank the creators of PCP for.. Is helping me realise I enjoy the alternative to my previous lifestyle. There are elements of the PCP I would now choose as a preference. Chatting to Clive and he tells me about what he and Tracey have cooked up and how good it is, Allan C and Shoana always have great PCP recipes as well and chatting with Arnie about what we will carry on enjoying once were done are all signs to me that you go from feeling this is a sacrifice and planning your first normal meal when you finish to enjoying the alternative to the previous diet/exercise regime and enthusing about the future..

So whilst this project is very well thought out and clever... I like the carefully thought out motivational message last line of every email before you start your day from Patrick, hypnotists would be proud of that one but the idea you need Chen to determine the number of grams of carbs you need from a flickr photo sounds impressive.. Its just not as powerful a long term plan as you making those healthier choices yourself based upon preference which I am far more impressed they managed to encourage in me.. As is my mum

Day 70

Still enjoying my PCP.. 20 days to go and it feels a relatively short time to go.. really beginning to think about the gameplan for when Im done..

Been enjoying going for additional runs at the weekend and had a great breakthrough when I went from being able to do 1 individual pull up to 3 sets of 5... which I was stunned by.. literally just clicked. So whilst Patrick is ramping up the exercises there is something incredibly empowering about being set and completing these daily challenges.. skip a little longer.. do an extra couple of pressups.. weigh a little less... take the belt in a notch... put on the shirt that you felt too self-conscious to wear. Continually feeling as though you are succeeding is the real secret to the PCP for me.. Success is addictive!
From week 1 I feel as though and have been given proof that things are getting better.. you are surrounded by others succeeding as well so its not only nice to see friends feeling better but reassuring that this isnt some kind of fluke!

Day off

Well the tuesday only skipping day anyway...
Decided I would go for a run yesterday and went down Bowen road which is popular I know amongst the HK PCP'ers.
Have to say it was one of the nicest moments of the training so far, havent been on too many runs these past 2 months due to the PCP training not really including it so it was all the more noticeable as to how my fitness has improved. I cannot remember looking forward to, enjoying during and feeling so satisfied after exercise since I was at school. Made me think about watching the marathon on TV, the bloke who wins it always looks like he's just popped down the shops and the guy coming in 4th looks like he's had bricks in his shoes the whole way round.. amazing what encouragement and a good mindset can do.. I wouldnt say Im winning any marathons but have to say all nice things people say and questions youre asked about your plan are helping me push on to the end.. so cheers!!
Nice moment today when one of the girls in the office was trying  to pass round some biscuits that she'd brought back from holiday and myself and Clive both looked horrified at the thought... a month or two ago and we'd have conquered the tin between us!

Back from holiday

Back to HK and feeling the benefit of 2 weeks off work

So this was my big PCP obstacle.. 10 days in the land of pizza, pasta and gelato not to mention the wine! Glad to say although I will admit it wasnt the perfect PCP week it was as close as I was gonna get in the circumstances and was happy  I didnt abandon the diet, exercises or ethos. So I have come back motivated to see this through to find that what I thought was tough yesterday is the same but with one more set today!

Patrick made mention of a happy meal in his email about the endulgance.. Im sure his point was that on eating something fried or salty that we had craved and on tasting it we discovered that our "endulgance" wasn't really an endulgance at all and the healthy real foods were in fact far tastier and left us feeling better?!?!?.. Maybe not and he is just a nice guy giving us a day off? (doubt that.. The exercise plans show no other signs of this!!)To be honest he had this argument won with me a long while back and there was no way I was wasting an endulgance on bloody McDonalds! I therefore counted my endulgance as to these few meals where I went a little beyond the usual PCP diet whilst in Italy.. probably not the way its supposed to be done...

Italy is pretty PCP friendly I discovered.. They eat either incredibly healthy food with an emphasis on grilled vegetables and fish mostly all local and bought from a market rather than a supermarket and there seems to be a noticeable absence of processed foods from theyre diet as a result.. Fine they put too much olive oil on it all and eat too much pasta and bread but they certainly seem to go for "real food"... They then however go and totally ruin this by eating cream cakes and ice cream almost religiously or simply coating everything in molten cheese.. whilst in the arrivals hall of Catania airport awaiting Sachiko's flight.. I was the only person not eating Gelato at 10am.. They didn't show Don Corleone sucking away on a strawberry cornetto for his breakfast but honestly that's the reality people!! Stand outside either of the 2 Sicilian airports.. There will be a line of men in dark suits, shades on, next to a black merc getting stuck into 2 scoops of chocalate chip! Anyway found that fairly easy to skip and with the variety and freshness of the meat, fish and vegetables available it made the PCP diet "fantastico" which Italian Radio seems to use every other word.. Even when describing Bon Jovi!


Couple of friends in HK asking me about the plan and signing up for the start of August.. which is great news.. as part of the conversation I realised that 40 odd people started at the same time as myself and as far as I can tell they are all still here 50 odd days in.. have to say Im impressed with my fellow participants and it says a lot for the program.. anyway anyone thinking of signing up.. nothing to lose give it a crack!

2 weeks off

Currently on my 2 week holiday, which is being spent back home in England and a little trip to Italy...

This has been looked forward to for around 6 months although is very different a prospect to what it was going to be when I first booked it!

from a PCP standpoint it nicely breaks the 90 days up, gives me more time in the day to sleep workout and prepare the meals as well as benefit from relaxing and enjoying other things. The downside is that I had a great routine in Hong Kong and it was working and PCP is all about discipline and sticking to the plan every day and routine is the best friend of that. I have also entered a world of temptation.. try telling your mum you don't want her lasagna and you will have an egg white instead!

Anyway going well so far, managed to deal with the flight although did end up eating the airline meal and haven't missed a workout yet and have managed to stick to the diet as best as possible.. Although I would really appreciate a "indulgence" before the 22nd Patrick! See what you can do mate!

Good luck to those on week 1!!

Good luck to all the new joiners on the PCP.. Great to see a few familiar faces joining up!! Good for you..  Can honestly say for 1 months experience, the hardest thing is without doubt signing up, taking those photos and committing to this project....So you're done! I genuinely felt a lot better in less than 10 days and that for me was better than anything.. Ive been impressed at how this program gets you results fairly quickly both in the way I feel and improvement in the workouts which is vital as it provides the confidence and encouragement to press on. At the start of each week I have been daunted by the week aheads plan.. But by the end of the week been pleasantly surprised by thinking "well that wasn't so bad!"

So yet again I look down the list of next weeks workouts.. diet... And  think Oh Shit this is not gonnna be fun! In the good ol' days.. my pre-PCP workout regime involved running on a treadmill and when I was in relatively good nick (relative for me) then I could do around an hours run.. with the assistance of a few towells, decent aircon, one of those poor guys at the  gym whose job it is to mop up the gallons of sweat being produced by whale-like-wannabe-Paula Radcliffes such as myself, a bit of Jay-z "I got 99 problems" blaring away in my ears - yeah we all got fukkin problems Jay.. And a bottle of water from whichever mountain spring is currently in vogue..

So as I smuggly marched past the treadmills armed with my jump rope, pressup bars and a look of "yeah.. That's right.. I know what Im doing.. Despite the fact theres ALL this equipment I bring my own gear to the gym!!" it came back to me just how hard that used to be... for the guilt of my infrequent visits.. I would work really hard and got myself to the point of exhaustion seemingly for no real long term benefit.. Probably coz I was killing myself to the point of hating it and not being able to move for the next 3 days. But however unfit and infrequently you train it still hurts when you do it and you need to mentally deal with it.. So for one hour runs the lowest point would be that 20-30 mins.. Your knackered and not even half way! So you tell yourself just get to half way.. Then its downhill.. or get to 40 mins.. And then youre on the home straight and that'll feel good... And in terms of my PCP.. I feel Im at 23 mins... Its seems a long way to go despite feeling as though Ive been running for ages!!  So Im trying to tell myself... Just get to half way then you can hang on and let the competitive stubborn Al do the rest..  The other thing Ive noticed that's different is that despite being shattered after the workouts Im not getting the same muscle aches and stiffness the following days as I would have after a game of football or a run.. Im giving Patrick credit for this (begrudgingly) as it seems as though he steps the workouts up at enough of pace to test your limits without breaking you (although jury out for 2 months on that) but Im also hoping its something to do with getting fitter as well!!


Anyway speaking of targets.. got one out the way... promise not to think about it anymore.. just need to make sure that I dont let myself slip above that again! 

New diet..

So got through day 1 of the new regime, whilst the workouts are progressively getting more challenging and I struggle at certain exercises I feel as though Ive been successful so far in working the targeted muscle group to a real state of fatigue.. so whilst I wont be looking for many style marks Im glad I seemed to have rediscovered a bit of determination

The diet is the big concern as the tone of it has very much changed from "go on have a couple of eggs for breakfast" to "you gonna eat that apple core? coz there aint nothing else for you after that fatboy"

Having said that Im about to go to bed and to my surprise Im not hungry.. not at all..

2 things I dont like though:

1) I eat breakfast at work, I am waking up early and really looking forward to work as that equals breakfast which equals the first load of carbs since yesterday lunchtime

2) Ever since the PCP started I have come home via the shops, exercised, prepared the meals with my girlfriend and had dinner together. Its a nice little social routine  and this has been great for both of us as we both have realised we can exercise and eat healthily together and have both enjoyed the benefits. So in many senses the dinner (even when the carbs were slashed off the menu) was my hour of the day where I relaxed.. you suddenly turn that into some egg whites and an apple that changes the dynamic.. I didnt even sit down for tonights dinner!

Anyway... looking at getting from here to half way.. 2 long weeks!

Day 23 - All about numbers!

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Day 20

Day 20

So feeling the benefits of dramatically changing diet/exercise regime for the past 20 days.. Feel better and weighed in a few kilos lighter so happy with that.. but am slightly concerned  that the first band of flab and excess kilos were the easy ones and Im not even a quarter of a way through this.. So encouraged with the improvement but had just begun telling myself not to start celebrating at day 20 and getting lazy when Patrick sent this mornings note saying just that.. So need to press on! With work, working out, buying groceries, cooking, eating and sleeping I have really found I have no time left in the day. Im sure plenty of the PCPers out there have equally long days at work with no time to work out in the middle but I am surprised at just how little time I have to myself even having paused the social life. Before I started  this project I envisaged myself sat around the flat scratching my head for things to do and desperately resisting the temptation to take up a friends offer to meet up for a few beers.. I wrote out a list of stuff that I wanted to do that didn't involve eating or drinking that I wanted to fit in these 3 months, so far I don't think I've got beyond "play a bit more Playstation" so the other cultural extravaganzas may have to wait it would seem. I think being occupied mostly with shopping and preparing meals has been a blessing in disguise as its very much a distraction to the fact Im not socialising but also in the process I learnt that actually I can cook healthy tasty meals at a fraction of the cost and I actually quite enjoy it. On the social side I havent had the temptation I feared either.. Mostly due to friends knowing people on the PCP and being supportive and willing you to do well.. "Oh youre doing the same thing as Arnie.. He's trimmed up a ton".. "You should see what Eddie Jones missus makes him for lunch, this diet thing you guys are doing doesn't seem so bad".. "I cant believe how well Big Al's doing.. He's looking loads better" So Hong Kong is definitely talking PCP ironically quite a lot of that talk is in the bars.

Exercise - Im getting the skipping done, breaking it into sets of 100 and 200 a time, and after studying countless youtube videos of Floyd Mayweather have got the side to side technique sorted.. The issue is that my concentration and counting go wandering off (reassuring for anyone working in Finance) as I start daydreaming about Steak and Spag Bol while Im doing it.. I would find it a lot easier if we just had a set time to skip for and set an alarm so could just focus on the technique but I suppose the better we get the easier it comes.. Pull-ups are definitely the incline version and the thought of doing 2 successive real pullups is a way off.. The number of pressups I can do has gone up nicely so that remains my bellwether for general PCP progress.. I couldn't do 3 sets of 7 on day 1 and now squeezing out 4 sets of 10 which gives me something to grasp to when Im searching for signs that this is working!

Big Al has given me a few excellent ideas on the cooking front.. I have been eating a lot of soba and bagels as my carbs of choice with the odd helping of brown rice, with a lot of steamed fish and salad or steamed veg. I found the  Livestrong website as a good source of recipe ideas as well as finding nutritional information on food especially as you can find low sodium recipes.. Few things have crossed my mind.. Low fat cottage cheese has  similar nutritional info to that of yoghurt/protein.. Can this fit into the diet? And if so where? Also yoghurt as Allan pointed out on his blog can seriously vary on the sugar despite all being labelled as "NO FAT" this seems very dishonest and I wondered given most yoghurt has some sugar in except the really sour Greek version if there was  a tolerable level of sugar we could have in the low fat yoghurt we buy?

One last thing.. Watched Food Inc. whilst eating my PCP dinner last night.. Felt all noble.. If you havent seen it its not a bad one to watch for a bit of inspiration, it's a pretty interesting movie and one of the contributors is Michael Pollan who wrote that Unhappy Meals piece Patrick had us read the first week.

Day 9

So far so good.. Getting into a routine and really have prioritized the pcp over all other pursuits so far. I have found it extremely encouraging how supportive people are when you embark on this project which really does help.. So very much appreciate that!!
Few early signs of change.. Feeling good.. Definately feeling more awake in the evenings and more alert in general.. I am noticing I get real highs after eating and real short tempered lows at certain points.. I'm a bit like that anyway but something I noticed so apologies to Sachiko and the person who answers the phone for HSBC telephone banking.. My card really ought to have arrived by now but thats not your fault..
Exercise has been great so far.. My concern is that this sudden increase in the amount I'm doing leads to an injury.. Knees and groin a little sore.. So really trying to remember this a Marathon not sprint and to really stretch well.. But progress being made on that front, I like the fact that as the sets increase you see progress and every extra pressup I manage seems like a step in the right direction

Enjoying all the great suggestions keep them coming

John Wayne

5 days in and feeling good if a little sore! All the skipping and lunges have left me walking around like John Wayne.. But feeling good for 5 straight days of light eating and working out..
I think I have been more successful in halving the calories I've eaten rather than the actual quantity ive eaten.. Have definately cut the size of the portions right down but to say they'd all been halfsize is probably pushing it. What I am doing is not eating beyond the point of being "no longer hungry" to the point of being really full and I've limited my calories to under 1800 a day..
Day1 I weighed in at 109kg and tipped the scales this morning at 107kg so a small step in the right direction with a long way to go..
The one thing I have tried to do in addition to the exercises is take a 30min walk after dinner.. Usually I crash straight after dinner and I have found that this has helped me sleep better and feel far less tired.. Not sure if it does any good but it keeps me out the bars so that's a plus

Anyway so far so good.. The program seems to hit the right notes so far even if I can barely sit-down

First Day

Glad to be finally underway having spent the last few weeks agonising over whether this was for me.. well were here now so may as well go for it!! Best of luck to all those starting out today

OH Yeah

Here we go!