Day 29 - The Powerhouse

Alright, alright...under severe peer pressure my pics have been posted.  Now everyone can share in the glory of my "powerhouse".  Not sure where that term came from - I think from one of my wife's yoga or pilates DVDs - but in any case my powerhouse definitely seems to have shrunk this month.  You can really see it in the side view comparisons, and according to our trusty house scale I am now 5 lbs lighter than I was at the beginning.  So...progress!

I've been on a course of antibiotics the past ten days and the exercises were really wiping me out, but that's now finished just in time to kick the PCP up to another level.  Can't wait to see what that entails...

Day 22 - Back in the groove

My business trip to Thailand went well, but I am glad to be back home where I have more control over my meal choices.  I did the best I could while in Bangkok (although did have a few drinks one night), but found it oddly comforting to get up this morning and weigh out my portions or veggies, carbs, etc.  I really haven't found the food part difficult as from the start I had abandoned any sense of enjoying my meals and just viewed them as the fuel required to complete the PCP.  I definitely don't intend to "dull down" my sense of taste, so I'll be interested to see how my diet evolves after the end of PCP.  I assume we'll meet somewhere in the middle...

The exercises are getting tougher to manage from a time perspective - 1050 jumps take awhile to complete - so most days I break it up and do the strength workouts in the morning and jumprope at night.  Seems to be working ok so far.

Now that I'm back I also intend to catch up on reading everyone's blog posts and posting more frequently on mine, and I guess I need to take some 'work in progress' photos and stats to see how things have changed from Day 1.  I think we lost one member of the group, but hope everyone else is hanging in there.  Hard to believe after this week we'll be a third of the way through!

Day 15 - 2 weeks down

Congrats fellow PCPers - we've got 2 weeks under our belts and still going strong!  I'm on a 1 week business trip to Bangkok, but am doing my best to stick with the routine.  I brought my jump rope and resistance bands with me so keeping up with the exercise has not been a problem, but the diet is a bit trickier as I find myself in client meetings all day followed by client lunches/dinners.  Breakfast at the hotel is a bit more under my control, although I'm just eyeballing the portions.  Yesterday lunch I had a sandwich that had beef and also some kind of processed sauce on it, but the portion size was not all that big and I washed it down later with a fruit snack so I think I attoned for my deviation.  I also missed a days exercise on the plane, so mixed in the Day 14 jumps yesterday for a total of 1500...definitely feeling that in my calves this morning...

Keep up the good work everyone!

Day 8 - Oh, the DaVinci...........

Wow - Patrick wasn't joking about the clack-clack of the roller coaster before plummeting into full-on PCP madness.  My wings are killing me after those DaVincis this morning, and the inverse pull-ups were a bit tricky since I had to balance my doorframe pull-up bar across a couple of bar stools.  I'll definitely need to get a better system in place if those are going to stay in the rotation.

I'm actually pretty pleased with the diet portions.  I was imagining a plate with just a few tiny pieces of food on it, but for breakfast this morning I had 2 whole wheat tortillas stuffed with raw spinach, egg and leftover sauteed veggies (those will be steamed from now on) and topped with a bit of salt-free salsa.  I was pleasantly full afterwards and didn't even max out my allotted number of grams.

I didn't have time for the full exercise before work, so did the strength portions and left the 600 skips/jumps for when I get home tonight.  I can only imagine how my calves are going to feel...

Day 5

5 days down, 85 to go... I'm actually enjoying the skipping rope, but the strength exercises are making it painfully clear just how out of shape I am.  The additional set of push-ups and the increased number of sit-ups really put me in my place today.  Today was the first day I was able to knock out the exercises in the morning, which I plan to keep up.  I didn't miss any days last week, but it's tough to do this stuff after a long work day and right before climbing into bed.

I'm doing ok with the half diet, but wary of what's coming.  I'll be in Thailand for a week on business soon and not sure how easy it will be to stay compliant once we get into the strict portion control, but I plan to do my best.  It will certainly be the first time I take a skipping rope on a business trip...

Got some extra motivation from a past PCP'er in the form of a YouTube video showing a Japanese zoo drill simulating a rhinosaurus escape.  For those of you who have ever lived in Japan, it's definitely worth watching.  I miss that crazy country...

Finally got ahold of a bathroom scale and did my initial weigh-in.  177lbs (80.2kg) on Day 5, probably dropped a pound this week, so we'll call it 178lbs (81kg) on Day 1.  Either way, looking forward to watching those numbers decrease over the coming weeks.

Day 1

Day 1 is done and dusted.  As suspected, so far the biggest obstacle is my unpredictable work schedule, which prevented me from getting in my Day 1 workout until just before I went to bed.  I'm going to try to get into a pattern where I get up an hour early to knock out the workout before going to the office as that should minimize the chances of disruption.  So far, so good on the half diet, although there were a few hours in the afternoon where I felt pretty hungry.  I'll try to post my Day 1 pics tonight after work.