day 68

So i did some photos and posted them, I will try to do this weekly now.  However when I go onto the site it seems I dropped an extra 60 kilos on one of them, its all the messing around renaming and file resizing etc it all got mixed up , anyway there is some improvement and everyone in Europe I met commented on how much weight I had lost, I am now at the lowest point for 10 years ( 72.6kgs ) apart from after a 1 week fast where I lost 5 kilos but I now realize this was really a test to see how badly you can atrophy your body in a week by not eating so not really such a smart thing to do .. The fat scales are an excellent purchase as I now realize its the fat %ages rather than anything else that you need to stick to as the pure weight tells you nothing about muscle/fat ratio which is the true measure to attack ...

Back home .... home sweet home ...

So I am now back in sing after france and the uk , Sorry for the absence of any blogging but the internet was flaky and my phone cut me off from data traffic after the bill went into the stratosphere ...

Anyway getting past the jet lag, I did my weigh in this morning and have dropped 2kgs and 2 belt holes over the 2.5 weeks as well as .5% of internal fat, and 1 year of body age. I was pretty ok on the diet and very so/so on the exercise, will do some pics tomorrow to show how things are moving . I think my weight will now be stable for a while if I work out hard as some of what I lost is probably muscle ...

The trip was tough to stay focused, too much going on and screaming kids all over the place made me appreciate what an oasis of calm my life in Singapore is, I have dropped a good few workout sessions so that is what I need to concentrate on now more than anything else, I think I will save them up and do them on the days following pcp which will mean I dont get to stop at 90 days anyway, will be in Singapore for a month straight now so no excuses from now on ...

finally back in the groove ...

Bit a while since I blogged, been traveling round the uk , London and Harrogate where my parents live, with a small kid there is just way too much to do and hassles to deal with while on the road and super slow dial up internet meant blogging was too painful,  pcp has been taking a bit of a back seat. Now we are in Antibes in the south of France in a lovely villa for the next week and are staying put with no distractions ( well not many ) so will be 100% focused !

day 45 , half way !!!

Soo halfway there , this weeks weigh in and stats were a bit of a disappointment , I thought I did a great week but only .8kgs and .5% fat loss, was hoping for twice as much. Ho Hum.

Patrick is right the motivation is starting to dwindle a bit now,and just as I leave for two weeks holiday in Europe, I have a week of my mothers cooking in the UK and then a week in the south of France so its going to be a double whammy of temptations ! Flying to London tonight so lets see if I can behave .....

Finding the timed skipping to be ok , getting about 1600 done so I guess the pace is pretty much the same as the old counted skips, there is a great iphone app that times the sets so I leave my phone on the floor and watch it count down, I am doing 2 min skipping and 20 secs rest time, the final few sets the rest time is tough to recover in ...

I had a super greasy salad the other day for lunch, I could not believe how oily it was, I don't think I would have noticed before, also was loaded with anchovies which were like salt bombs, I found after this I retained a lot of water, I am finding I can tell how much water I am retaining by how loose my wedding ring is, the salt has a big impact on how it slides around my finger !

The pull ups are not getting easier, I can now do a single proper one, but a set of 10 you have to be kidding ! I think being older I am not putting the muscle on so fast so on the arm exercises its tough to keep up , legs and abs no problem though ...

day 40

So first a confession, on Thursday night I had a bit of off piste indulgence, I shared a nice bottle of wine with a friend, oops, but it was lovely ! I'm not going to make excuses because when I saw it there already open when I arrived I knew what was going to happen... anyhow Friday and Saturday have been perfect pcp days and the weight is still dropping, Today I swapped the skipping for a 7.5k run and a swim, well more of a splash with my daughter ....

I'm not so starving hungry now, I still feel the milkshake is not enough at dinner but its bearable, I guess I am running quite a big energy deficit so post pcp to be in equilibrium I will be able to eat a decent bit more than I am at the moment.

I see the comments on lack of energy that other people seems to experience now and also from those in the group ahead, I am thinking while I still have fat to burn I will have a good energy level but when that fat becomes scarce I may droop a bit, for now I have very good energy levels and sleep a solid 8 or 9 hours a night, which is more than I used to.

The exercises seem to be about the right level, the dips I can't do full sets still and 6 sets of incline pull ups is too many but the others seem to just about get done, the planks after the sit ups today were tough but I can tell during the sit ups I am way better at them than day 1.

I have not even thought about trying the skipping first thing in the morning, it seems so uncivilized, Its usually lunchtime before I can even think about facing any exercise, I may give it a try this week, my current routine means I have to have a minimum of 3 showers a day and create a mountain of laundry as I shower in the morning then again after my skipping/run and again after my exercises.

Day 38

Had some fun last night rummaging around the old clothes boxes I have festering away in our bomb shelter, dug out some nice fitting jeans from yester-year which was like being re-united with an old friend, got my new belt today, there are plenty of holes to down and only one to expand to, that will be the warning hole that puts me back on the pcp diet in the future...

The skipping numbers seems to have stopped increasing at 1400, was not too bad today, I used to hate them but now its not really much hassle and recovery is faster so I am not still sweating when I come out the shower..

Had a nice lunch at Gunthers in Singapore today which serves excellent modern French, its actually as pcp friendly as you can get, fresh single oyster, small mushroom soup (around 100ml)  then sea bream with veg, no dessert and an espresso, lovely!  came home, skipped and weighed myself and was the obligatory 200 gm  lighter than the day before, I have dropped weight now 5 days in a row which helps the motivation ....

Some people seem to be complaining they are not sleeping well, I am sleeping like a baby ( or actually much better than a baby, our baby Heidi frequently wakes up bawling ) The diet and absence of rich food means that the indigestion that often kept me awake is a distant memory. Also I have decent energy levels through the day .

day 37

Swapped the skipping for a 5k run on the treadmill today, pushed it hard and was dripping with sweat at the end and had a nice swim to cool down. 

I am starving all the time at the moment and I have already had to have my "dinner" of a milkshake at 5pm as I just could not wait any longer. However the weight is dropping off and I am on the last hole now of the only belt that works so things are going in the right direction, will be going belt shopping soon and plan to hold off on the new wardrobe until day 90.  Had to put a suit on for the first time since pcp recently and I had to go with a 5 year old+ one as all the more recent ones had me swimming in them, I have quite a series of made to measure suits over the last 10 years which chart the inexorable girth growth so its quite interesting to see how far back I need to go to get a good fit.

More pistol squats tonight, they look easy on the picture but mine are very wobbly, I imagine by the end of pcp we will be doing them like dancing cossacks but for now the support is getting some heavy leaning on !   We also have the dips which I am still not up to doing properly but my arms are feeling a lot stronger so its only a matter of time ...

 

day 36

Finding the skipping is getting a bit easier, when we were around the 600 skips level it was taking me over 15 mins sometimes with all the breaks with puffing and panting, and when I finished I was pretty winded by it, now I think a combination of an improved efficient technique and less weight to jump up each time means its less tiring and I get the 1400 done now in less than the 15 minutes it used to take to do .

New diets today, my banana milkshake has been replaced by an apple milkshake hmmmm never had one of those before ....

day 35

End of week 5
Didn't really know how the stats would pan out this week as there were a bunch of dropped things due to various travel things, but it all seems to be going in the right direction, weight -1.3kg , fat -1.2%, body age -2 years , internal fat -.5% , muscle +.5% sub fat -1.1% , I suspect the climbing was waaaay more of a workout than the skipping and it was nice to have a few days off the rope, I think I may substitute 1 day in 3 or 4 with a decent run from now to give the knees a day off once in a while.

Done todays skips already, thinking of doing one of the missed workouts tonight or even an 8 minute abs which is a distant memory, when I lived in London last about 12 years ago my flat mate and I used to have a routine where we would call for pizza and while we waited for the delivery we would have to do an 8 minute abs, after saying good bye to our good spandex wearing friend a nice bottle of wine would be opened and then right on time the pizza would arrive .....

Yummy dinner ....

day 33

Still sore after the climb but the leg exercises were a lot easier than I thought they might be today, the problem I have is the upper body ones, yesterday I was a couple short of the incline pull ups , I cant even think about full pull ups, and today the chest dips were nasty and I can't even do them without a bit of support for my legs so they are not even proper dips ! I guess its being quite overweight means my upper body just is to weak at the moment to support my full weight and pull it about too, however these are the exercises I get the most burn on so there must be the most benefit in doing them, I only hope I can progress to doing proper pull ups and dips soon through building some muscle and having less weight to be pulling up  ...

My banana milkshake is a tasty treat at dinner time but I really would like to have a dinner with it rather than an apple !

Posted some pics last night , From the picture there is basically not a lot to see different from the start, however in the mirror I notice and feel a lot different ...