58

Had another fantastic chuncky piece of grilled barramundi for lunch today. It can taste muddy from time to time, but when I get a piece like today that doesn't have that earthy flavour, it's so hard to beat. Had it on top of a bowl of "fried" vegetables, basically chopped shrooms, tomatoes, asparagus, onions, peppers fried without oil, just with a lid on the pan and and occasional top up of water. A few herbs, pepper and the usual helping of chopped chilli... very filling and good! Yesterday we bought a veritable smorgasbord of different kinds off fish fillets, so the next week of lunches is going to be fabulous.

One day to go before taking a good solid long week off work. Not going anywhere - not much point as I won't be allowed to demolish any breakfast buffets, so going to be taking it easy at home & spending some time in the garden....and probably quite a lot more on the trails or in the gym. Counting the minutes in the office & trying to fill in the time by doing stomach crunches at the desk. Basically lean back in your chair, press down with your hands on the desk top, lift your feet up and hold. Have to be careful not to grimace or your colleagues might think you have are attempting to fill your trousers, but it helps pass the time in a PCP friendly way.

56

We are getting dangerously close to being only one month to go. So here's a bit a of a boring progress update. The good news is that after plateauing for a bit, I finally cracked my second milestone of 120kg and came in at 119kg yesterday. I am now the same weight I was when I got married:  Six years have been repaired! I am gradually shrinking and down to the last notch on my belt, so it is happening, but...

This decelleration in weight loss over the last month has left me with a load to do to make my 110kg target. It's still achievable, but hopefully any muscle growth will slow and and the fat burn can accelerate from here. Just got to lose the gut somehow!

To kickstart the progress again, I have ramped up the aerobic stuff a bit recently and have been doing the sets and then 1hr at a time on the cross country machine (it helps that there have been some cracking rugby games on the telly over the last few days). Not sure if I can sustain this much, as often I can end up spending the best part of 2 hours in the gym at a time. But will do my best to keep at it and hopefully if I can spend a bit less time rolling around on the floor making noises like a mortally wounded gnu then I should be getting out a bit sooner. I'm also still mixing it up with squash and hiking, so its not quite as bad as all that. I haven't touched the rope since week three and (fingers crossed) the joints are holding together nicely for now.

Aside from all that, am sleeping a bit better, feeling good and enjoying the beautiful weather. I do however have a couple of PCP pitfalls ahead of me - my brother is coming to town for the first time next weekend and I have another good friend in town the week after...I need to come up with a damage limitation plan as the resolve will certainly be tested!

Some Thought for Food.

Brekkie looked good this morning: toast, mushrooms, asparagus topped off with scrambled egg with a little chopped chili! Tasted good too - no need for butter or salt! Thanks to darling wife for making eating simple food a pleasure!

Took a nice pic of my Salmon sando the other day too....I could have spent a bit more time making it look pretty but its definitely times like this that PCP seems a lot more approachable.

For me the food has to look right - a mush of brown pasta and brown meat and potato and...well lets just say I can see another reason why Patrick bangs on about different colours in vegetables. It just somehow looks healthy and tasty and with food, presentation is often 50% of the flavour!

Where I have the extra time, I'll definitely spend more of it on food artistry!

Happy Easter!

There's always something a little bit special about working on Hong Kong Holidays. The drive into a deserted Central is a real pleasure, a leisurely stroll into the office a little bit late, no noisy colleagues around and its great to sit and get stuff done. If I can really focus, I can be done and out by around 4pm and head off to the gym or play squash and then....

.....go to Mortons Steak House for happy hour (cheap cocktails and free steak sandwiches between 5pm and 7pm on weekdays).....

The dream sequence is now over. Sadly all that will have to wait. I'll be off instead to the supermarket for some more asparagus, mushrooms, low fat yoghurt, and Chocolate Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns dripping with warm melting butter...and...

...is this a dream within a dream?

Its a bit of a slow day. The motivation is still there and I'm managing to be a good boy, but I can't help missing the real joys of Easter and sadly I have to admit my brain hasn't yet become completely "PCP adjusted". I'm just glad I'm not doing this over Christmas as I'd be going completely insane by now!!

It is after all Good Friday, so BE GOOD!

Day Fiddy

Tired and sore today after some solid workouts over the last two days. Knee hurts after all those squats and I decided in my wisdom to use a new machine thingy they have that the gym to do those shoulder flys and its really got to a couple of muscles in my shoulders.

Glad to have something that is "eat as much as you can" on the menu as historically I've responded pretty well to that kind of encouragement! (although it used to be pizza rather than veggies).

Mentally things a bit better again - at the half way stage it was pretty depressing:

"man after all that, we're still only half way, f..."

....but now its swiftly becoming,

"Jeez, only 40 days to go, I'd better get this stuff done as I'm running out of time"

The fact that I've seen relatively little progress in my weight or my gut over the last 2-3 weeks is the worst. The only thing that's been keeping me going is the basic certainty that by doing my exercises its definitely better from than not doing my exercises. And the argument that muscle weighs more than fat is starting to wear a bit thin as I'd have to be some sort of Charles Atlas by now. The gut is proving to be remarkably stubborn at this moment, but as with my previous experience, these dieting things rarely end up being completely linear and there is often a tendency to plateau.

One thing I am going to change is that I have been going to the gym after work to make sure I get my exercises done early, but it means I tend to eat late, around 10pm (literally just before going to bed), which is really no good. So I think I'm going to try and get the food in somehow before the exercise and hopefully I can burn some of those calories before going to bed rather than while I'm sleeping.

Day 49

Have been a little wayward recently. Over the last week, I continued to do good sessions in the gym and "nail my grams", but on friday I played squash twice and didn't do my sets, on saturday I had another marathon 1 1/2 hour intensive squash session and also didn't do my sets. The good news is I played a bunch of guys that six months ago I couldn't get close to: the improvement in my power to weight ratio over the last month has been so much that I'm getting around really a lot more quickly, reaching things that were previously impossible and I find I have stamina to spare. I whipped them all! Its a good feeling, but I also know while i had a couple of excellent aerobic workouts, its really the strength training that makes this all possible, so I'll be very much back on the case this week.

The real naughtiness was that on Saturday night we had a dinner party at home. One of my very best friends is leaving Hong Kong this week after fifteen years and it was important for me to see him off in some kind of style. I knew we were due for an indulgence today, so I took it a couple of days early and did a barbeque with burgers, steaks, some decent wine. And a cheesecake from the Mandarin Cake Shop. Did I bust my calories? ..er..I think so. Did I feel sick afterwards? Yup. Do I regret it? Not this time. 

So some good news and bad, but we still have roughly six weeks to go and now that I have satisfied any cravings, cleared my schedule and done the things I need to do, you have my promise that I'll be back, glued to the program with no excuses for at least the next two weeks!

Day 44, Nearly Half Way

Have done some of pretty solid sessions over the last couple of days and last night managed 1 1/2 hours on a cross country machine which is up there for the longest continuous amount of exercise I've done - I've done longer and hard sports training sessions, but for non-stop fat burn this could be it!

I did actually set out just to do 30mins before doing the strength training, but then a really good TV show came on and I thought I'd watch the first five minutes and then a bit more and some more and then it turned out the show was an hour and not half an hour and then, well that was that. It was a highlights show of All Black victories against the Wallabies....I could quite happily watch the All Blacks play all day long and for that matter I could quite happily watch the Aussies get stuffed all day long (apologies to Aussies in the audience), so at least I know now what DVD's to add to my Christmas list...

I have been cheekily checking the scales again (I know i shouldn't), but am getting dangerously close to the second 120kg milestone: am off somewhere between 13-15kg (depending on where I stand on my scales - they are a bit crap). But the good news is that with six weeks to go, I'm well on target. The skin is definitely getting tighter around my face and complexion a lot better and if it wasn't for the massive bags under my eyes from lack of sleep, am sure I'd be looking a bit younger too!

Our PCP cousins who are about to leave us must be feeling some mixed emotions right now. I would imagine one side of the brain is focussed on a future of discipline, training, devotion, health and a strong sense of purpose.....and the other side is all sofa, beer and pizza. Either way, Good Luck!!!