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