What I've learned - pt. 1 - food

So. I'm done. I still can't believe that I made it.

I've been struggling a bit since finishing. Day 90 dovetailed nicely with me running out of groceries and my fridge being filled with a bunch of containers each filled with a little bit of something that I had been eating in the past weeks; a little rice, a few shriveled pieces of broccoli, a couple spicy and now stinky shrimp, etc. So besides milk, mega awesome whole wheat sesame bagels, tomatoes (it's still tomato town over here) and carrots, I haven't had much pcp friendly food around. That's my own damn fault, I just need to go grocery shopping, but without the imperitive of the diet I don't feel the panicked need to do groceries. I will clean out the fridge and do groceries today, though.

So I haven't been magically transformed into someone who always has the pantry stocked and always has a meal ready and waiting. I'm still the same person struggling with keeping myself and my partner fed. But I see that with just a tiny bit of planning, I can keep food in the house, always have something to eat, and can avoid getting groceries and then coming home with a bunch of stuff and feeling like there's still nothing to eat.

I'm still wrestling with my tastes too. I haven't magically stopped liking all the things that I loved to eat before. Some of them do taste gross, but some of them still sway me with their cunning and calculated masses of butter and salt. That's ok. I'm human. Our bodies evolved to stock up on fat to ensure survival. I can't undo centuries of evolution in 90 days. What is easier to deal with is our cultural eating habit of a meal being either made of up a giant piece of meat or processed carbs and fat. That one I can look at and see how messed up it is, and feel how messed up it is when I partake of it. One of the two most important things that I learned from this whole endeavor is how much better I feel when I'm not fueling myself almost entirely on processed carbs and fat. I was a vegetarian for a long time, but didn't really eat that many vegetables, and when I started eating meat again, it wasn't that much meat. So most of my meals were things like grilled cheese, pb and j, mac and cheese, pasta with some sort of sauce and a bunch of cheese, pierogi, etc etc etc. Processed carbs and fat. No wonder I was chubby and sleepy all the time. I've been eating a lot of what were previously normal meals lately and I can feel the difference. I've been tired and sluggish and it's been hard to get out of bed. And hungry! I've been so hungry. The fiber is an amazing wonder.

The way things taste is really interesting. Especially sweet things. Fruit tastes sweeter to me than it used to, but I can taste the sour in there too at the same time. Sometimes an apple is just the most outstanding taste explosion. Other things can taste too sweet, usually vegetables, tomatoes and squash in particular. I made a butternut squash curry soup the other day and it was just way too sweet, I couldn't eat it. But then desserts don't taste that much sweeter to me, but they do make my teeth hurt. Weird.

The other most important thing I've learned from pcp is the power of breakfast. The pcp breakfast is a beautiful thing. I've kept up with that and it's probably the only reason I don't feel like total crap. I've stopped with the egg and am instead drinking more milk, but all the same it's great. My office had an "appreciation breakfast" for us the other day and all that was there were pastries, muffins, and bagels. How can you fuel yourself for the day with nothing but processed carbs, sugar, and caffeine. No wonder people drink like 5000 cups of coffee a day just to keep going.

Before doing pcp, I was aware in an abstract way that food is the body's fuel and that what you eat affects how you feel, but since I'd always been eating the same things I couldn't really see how better food makes you feel better. Now I've felt it and lived it and it's so clear how much what you eat affects how you feel.

Ok. I still need to write about working out and maybe drinking needs its own post. But right now I have groceries to buy and a fridge to clean out.

91. Day 90 wrap up

So I did the day 1 workout and man what a difference. I did the 5 sets of 50 jumps all in one go and didn't trip at all. My jumping is still pretty poor and I trip all the time so it was nice to finish everything out with one solid jumping session. The exercises were eye opening. I remember not necessarily thinking that the exercises were hard, but seeing that I was getting pretty close to all that I could do in the given reps, so it was really nice to be able to go back and do them again and breeze through them, although I did get sweatier than I expected.

Then I did 8ma and tried out the new ab exercise that I finally dug up. Circle crunches. Kindof like a combination of side crunches and regular ones. They're one of those movements that are just kindof hard for me to get my body to coordinate and I can't manage to get the circles to be symmetrical. I was doing them really slow and it's kindof cool to feel each set of ab muscles working.

Also, in the absence of a forum to stay in touch, I made a facebook group. It's a closed group so you have to get approved to join, but I you can just hit the request to join button and I'll approve it. Here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=122595677792293 If you want to search by name instead it's called Peak Condition Alumni.

I'm still sorting through my thoughts to sum everything up. It's totally so hard, I've definitely had a wild ride over here. I am experiencing one thing really acutely in the hours since I've been done: now that all the rules are off, I'm totally having the urge to go try everything I used to like to see how it tastes now. I'm of two minds about this. 1) I want to keep on the diet and just stay strong 2) I want to just try everything all at once and just eat until I'm sick to really cure me of my stupid old food cravings. I'm trying to find a middle balance. I ate like I would have on a previous "normal" day at work today: blueberry muffin and cup of coffee for breakfast, grilled cheese and onion rings for lunch, oreo cake when I came home for lunch and I was so tired and hungry all day. I ate a nice dinner though, chicken pad thai with a bunch of spinach stir fried in and not too many noodles. It was so pungent/savory compared to pcp eating. Fish sauce and ketchup will do that though.

90. Not done yet

This won't be my last post; I'm still collecting my thoughts and still have to do today's workout. But I just had to stop in and say, my word yesterday's workout was hard, but I made it through. Hooray!

Looking forward to today's easy street wrap-up.

87. Body of lead

My body just feels heavy after the supersets. Like every limb weighs 800 pounds. It's a good feeling. But still I'm so tired, I just napped all day after working out. Good for the body, not so good for the to-do list. I'm not so sure that I like the supersets but they do change up the feeling of the workout. I posted this and then read everybody's blogs and seem to be in the minority about the supersets. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm thrown off by the change in routine and the fact that the v-sit plank set was particularly hateful. Not sure. But I can definitely tell that my body would only be able to take about a week of these.

I did manage to make borsht today, although my grandmother would laugh if I told her it was borsht because this recipe is totally not Eastern European grandmother approved, only pcp approved.

2 lb beets, washed, peeled if super dirty, and chopped into pieces.

1 lb russet potatoes.

thyme

5 c veggie stock, hopefully homemade,

2 shallots or a small onion

a little bit of red wine vinegar

Roast beets, potatoes, and shallots with the thyme in a pan that has just enough olive oil in it so they don't stick. Roast about a half an hour to 45 minutes at about 350.

After the veggies are roasted, put them in a stock pot with the stock and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Then you can either leave it chunky or puree some or all of the veggies. Mix the vinegar in and serve hot or cold.

If you use chioggia beets (the ones with red and white stripes) the soup will end up an unappealing color but taste the same.

86. So strong

Guys we are so strong. I was doing the workout yesterday and I was struck by the fact that at the beginning, I would have never been able to do this. Like at first I really struggled with teh shoulder raises and could never get my arms up as high as Patrick's in the picture and now with a lot of struggling I can do 6 sets of them. That's crazy. The progression of the exercises is so slow/small that I didn't really realize it was happening; I mean intellectually I knew that today we were doing 17 instead of 15 or 6 sets instead of 5 but it never felt like there was a huge jump in hardness. Just a consistent hardness the whole time, although this past week has been really hard, but I might just be working harder in a burst of pre-finishing enthusiasm. But yeah we are so so so strong now!

I also did my homework. I'm starting school in January (I don't know if I told you guys that, but I got in to an accelerated bachelor's of nursing program and so will be doing that for a year and a half) and so I went over to check out the rec center under the guise that I wanted to see if I wanted to buy a membership for the three months before I start school. I was actually pretty impressed. It's brand new, spacious, bright and airy, which is a 180 from the gym I currently belong to (I got suckered into paying a flat rate for like 3 years, because you got a bunch of free personal training (turns out their trainers are jerks)) which is in the basement of a building downtown and feels cramped and stinky. There weren't a ton of people there, but there were some, just your general student types with a few older folks mixed in. There was the gaggle of skinny blondes yapping away while running on the ellipticals, there were some muscle-y looking dudes lifting weights, then a smattering of regular sized to overweight people using various cardio machines, but most of the people were playing basketball and there were two people playing squash or maybe raquetball. I forgot to ask about if I could jumprope there, but I'd assume I could because there was a ton of space. They offer classes too, not just like the normal cardio classes, but kung fu, boxing, ballet, belly dancing, and yoga. Being a member of gym also gets you access to the olympic sized pool and the smaller pool. What I noticed most was that I didn't feel the crippling insecurity that I felt at my gym that usually resulted in me fleeing halfway through my workout. Everyone seemed either very nice or like they could care less about you, which I don't mind at all. I probably won't join before school starts because I'm cheap and can workout at home just as well, but once school starts I might take a class and use the pool and maybe see if I can learn to play sqaush.

So yeah the gym wasn't totally filled with gym bunnies and muscleheads, and a lot of people could stand to get off the treadmill and with a jumprope, but it wasn't all bad and it was nice to see people playing.

85. OMGZ T - 5!!!!!

Guys I cried last night. Cried so much. Cried all through my jumps. I was/am so sad that this was my last pcp weekend. And then I looked at the website and the orange bar is touching some of our little blue guys, and I'm really not ready to be there/here yet.
That being said, we could probably add being able to cry through your jumps to the list of indications that you're doing them at the right speed. Crying and talking, they're both the same right?

Also, I made the mistake of looking at this week's workouts. I knew I shouldn't have, but I did and holy moly supersets.

82. Not feelin' it...

my body that is. PCP things are good. But I'm just feeling blah about my body. I know that Patrick told me not to look at it til the last day, but Jordan needed pants and I needed clothes so we ended up at the outlet mall to go to the Levis outlet. I was pretty excited about getting some new jeans, as my one pair have holes in the thighs (they had just started when pcp started, if only I had been with Team Sexxay, maybe my pants would still be in good shape). We walked in and I knew this wasn't going to go well as sometimes all the outlet has are juniors pants in any of the styles I would be interested in, such was the case this time. I figured I should still be able to find a pair that was ok, just to tide me over, but no, every single pair I tried on was wretched. I know that it was just the teenage girl cuts, but I looked awful in every single pair I tried on, if I could get them on in the first place. Some more strike outs at a few different stores and all that time in front of full length mirrors and I was feeling pretty bad. Then we went to a concert. The concert was at Oberlin College, which if you're not familiar with it seems like it recently has become the college for rich, little hipsters to go if their parents are willing to spend $50,000 a year for them to practice looking contemptuous at everyone except their friends and to learn four syllable words to tell people you think you're smarter/cooler than them . The show was filled with more 18 year old girls wearing spandex than gymnastics meet. They were all there being tiny and pretentious and I was there feeling like a whale, an old, boring whale.

I'm just sad. For as good as I feel, I still feel bad about my body. I feel like I saw a ton of changes during the first month or month and a half, but nothing much has happened since then. Everyone else has had these massive changes and while I definitely have had some change, I'm still fatter than what everyone else started out as. I was really afraid before this started that I would be the fat girl and everyone else would be so much better than me, and it's true I'm the fat girl, although I think I do as decently at the exercises as everyone else. I just feel like I have so much farther to come and that when I get released back into the wild, so to speak, next week that whatever I've got won't be enough to keep things from rolling backwards and then I'll be just as heavy as before. In better shape, but just as chubby. It's not like all this effort is for naught, it's just I would like to be able to buy some pants without it being a fucking emotional nightmare.

80. Eating too much

So after 80 days I still find myself overeating sometimes, the thing that's different now is that now I'm chowing down on a big plate of vegetables instead of pasta or ice cream. Sounds great right? It is except it seems I haven't yet learned one very important lesson: don't go too crazy with the stalk-y cruciferous veggies. I ate a ton of broccoli today and now I am totally, uncomfortably bloated and gassy. It was just so good that I didn't want to stop eating it. I stir-fried it with a spicy tomato garlic sauce that I invented to be my pcp-friendly sriracha stand in, and some shirmp and man was it a good meal, but the broccoli was hands-down the best.

Here's the "recipe" for the garlic chili sauce.
1 birds eye chili or other red asian chili (more if you like mega spicy)
6 cloves of garlic (or more or less)
2 plum tomatoes, seeded

Chop everything up and throw it in the blender. Blend until saucy. Put on everything.

79. Flying By

Man, I cannot believe it's day 79 already. We've been doing this for so long I can't really remember what life was like before we started, but at the same time I feel like I'm just getting started. I'm not ready to let go yet, not ready to go back to regular life. I know I've got 10 days to go, but I'm really getting sad to be done. I know that a lot of it can stay the same, I can keep exercising the same way and keep eating the same stuff, but I'm going to miss everybody and their blogs and whatnot.

Ok. enough emotional nonsense. Does anyone else feel like the new diet is so much food? I know I'll get used to it but boy do I feel like I'm eating way too much. Especially dinner, but that's probably because I'm still mourning the loss of the apple dinner a little bit.

And a question for Patrick -- why are chest dips the second best exercise we can do for wellness? Is it because they're really super hard and make all your muscles work?

I can't decide if I dislike them because I can't do them/they hurt my wrists and shoulders or if I can't do them because I dislike them and therefore don't work as hard on them as I do on things that I like, like pull-ups.
Have I told you how much I like pull-ups? I still can't do a full one by myself but think the Jordan-assisted ones are the best things ever. I know that I'm not doing all the work, but they make me feel so strong! And to think the very first day of inclines pull-ups I couldn't move myself at all.

Oh and I indulged. The other night after firefighting class I had no interest in cooking, so we went to our local super good Vietnamese restaurant. I got pho, which is my favorite, but is also supposed to generally cure what ails you, so I figured it might be good for my stomach. It probably wasn't as many calories as it was supposed to and wasn't actually that unhealthy. The broth didn't seem that oily and the beef in the soup is lean, so aside from being a little salty, it was pretty decent pcp wise, I think. I did doctor it up with a ton of bean spouts and lime and some chilis so I got a bunch of veggies in there too. It tasted good. Not really really good. But not gross. So I'm happy that I'll still be able to eat some of the things that I loved before without finding them weird tasting. Mostly it was just nice to be able to stop and sit and be waited on and know that there wasn't a mound of dishes waiting for me afterwards. I did get a glass of iced sweet chyrsanthemum tea and it was so sweet I could only a sip or two before I was done.

77. Things I don't/won't miss - pt. 2

5. Salad dressing - I was in search of something to jazz up my daily eggs and went to poke around in the salad dressing aisle. It never occured to me to look at the ingrediants in these things before, because when I make salad dressing it's olive oil (or fancy nut oil if I'm being fancy), vinegar or lemon juice, herbs and spices and maybe a tiny bit of sugar if I'm vinegar happy, but store bought salad dressing -- that stuff is foul!!! It's all soybean oil and high-fructose corn syrup and sugar and weirdo stuff like zanthan gum. Eeeww. I've always been squicky about ranch dressing and other creamy things becaue really, shelf stable dairy is totally gross, except for some reason I can deal with Parmalat but I don't encounter that on a daily basis, but like ranch dressing and alfredo sauce -- barf. But now regular salad dressing is out too.

6. Wearing the same pair of athletic shoes till they have holes in them (which given my previous state of activity was like 8 years) - I bought new running shoes the other day because I've been getting shinsplints after the running part of firefighter class. I went a local running store where they make you bring in your old shoes and roll up your pants and walk and run barefoot and then pick out shoes that will help with whatever foot issues you have and then hooked me up with some new shoes. When I laced them up the first time it was like a choir of angels were singing hallelujah behind me. My feet were so snug and comfy it's great. I even seem to be jumping better in them, but that's maybe all in my head. I might keep the old ones to compare, so that when I put them on and then my new ones and they feel similar I'll know it's time for new shoes.

7. Upset stomach after eating - Right before I started pcp, it seemed like almost every time after I ate, regardless of what it was, my stomach would be upset or at least slightly grumbly. While I realize the irony of writing this, while I'm still dealing with this stupid puking thing, this is totally different than what I had before. Now I just eat and then I'm done and my stomach feels fine. I did find a bread that was so dense and wheaty that after I ate a sandwich made with it I would feel almost uncomfortably full, but now that I've stopped making sandwiches with it, my stomach is a happy camper post-eating (that super wheaty bread does make awesome toast in the morning, it's so flavorful putting anything on it would be a travesty).

8. Drinking - This is HUGE for me. Before pcp started and honestly still, most of my socializing occurs in bars. That's just how it is. There isn't a lot going on in Cleveland except for playing trivia, doing karaoke, and watching shows at bars. So I spend more time in bars than your average bear. Before, it was only on very rare occasions that I would go to a bar and not drink, usually when my stomach was upset or I was super tired already. Now, I've gotten to the point where I'm totally comfortable being at a bar with everyone around me drinking and not feeling awkward about not drinking. I also drank alot of the time to relieve social anxiety. I'm still anxious, awkward, and shy, but even after drinking I still felt that way, so it obviously wasn't working that much.

9. Hot dog cart hot dogs - I don't actually feel anything towards these guys. I'm not grossed out by them anymore than I am any other restaurant food. It's just that if I didn't have time to pack lunch and was busy, I would run downstairs and grab two and a bag of chips for lunch. PCP has forced me to pack lunch almost every day and on the days that I didn't, it didn't take that much longer to go down the street to the cafe and get a salad. I can take the extra three minutes to go get healthy food. I'm worth it. And also the hotdog cart lunch never really filled me up, so I'd hit the vending machine in the middle of the afternoon for a snack, so really I didn't save any time at all, and probably spent an equal amount of money.

10. Vending machines - The vending machine at work (only the candy one, not the pop ones) always used to tempt me when I was getting my lunch from the office fridge (they're totally positioned right there by the fridge and microwave for "convenience" which actually means putting them in your way to tempt you). Now I walk right by without giving it a second glance. Earlier this year we asked for some healthy things in them (not all healthy things, lord knows the ladies at work would riot if they couldn't get their candy or chips) - the vending company put in barbeque flavored peanuts and baked chips, woo healthy! But yeah, there is nothing in there that remotely holds any interest for me anymore.

11. Being totally food focused - I'm a foodie. I love food. I love trying new food. I love eating fancy food at good restaurants that I could never ever make myself. I used to spend hours reading food blogs and looking at local restaurants' menus and thinking about what I would order when we went there. A lot of that has stopped. Lunch doesn't have to be special or super good. It just needs to fill me up. A sandwich with some chicken, lettuce, tomato, and peppers is just as good as a sandwich with chicken, some sort of fancy condiment, and some cheese. Had you given me the option to go out and eat my favorite meal or 1000 calories worth of my favorite foods for the first indulgence I would have been in heaven and had a hard time choosing which favorite food. Now I'm having a hard time mustering up the interest in anything. Partially it's that I'm afraid that something heavy and rich will really upset my stomach, but part of it is that I just don't really care anymore. I made some really awesome okra pickles the other week. I only ate one of them because they probably totally violated the salt rule, but they were awesome and that was really enough. I made some tomato jam and some dill pickles and I can't wait to taste them. When the cabbage comes in during the fall, I'll make some saurkraut. I can't wait to eat that. But as for things I used to eat - gourmet meals from fancy restaurants, rich pastry from good bakeries, and ice cream and cheese and cured meats, not so much. I'm sure they'll come back into my life sooner or later, but right now I'm content without them. I'm happy that they don't capture my interest like they used to.

12. Chest-dips - Just so you didn't think I'm totally pcp-ified, I still hate chest dips. I can honestly say that I will probably never do another one after this ends. I don't know what it is but I despise them. And I'm ok with that. My entire wellness won't be thrown off if I don't continue to do them once I'm on my own.

76. The outside aisles of the supermarket

So when I said that the only things I have been buying from the middle of the supermarket are cleaning stuff and cat litter, I was only talking about what I have been buying for myself. What I neglected to mention was that Jordan and his sister who also lives with us, both have raging pop habits. So almost every time I go to the supermarket, into the cart goes a 12-pack of Coke, at least one, like clockwork. I bring it home and put it on top of the fridge and in a few days the carton is empty.

Every time I unload the pop and my healthy stuff from the car, every time I go out and pick up fast food for Jordan when he's hungry and doesn't want to/won't cook and there's nothing in the fridge that will fill him up, I feel bad/guilty. Sort of. I feel some responsibility to keep my partner healthy and feed him good food, but on the other hand he's an adult and he is free to eat what he wants regardless of the nutritional value. I've tried packing him lunches and making breakfast for him to eat on the way to work, and making big batches of stuff he can warm up for dinner since we are rarely eating at the same time and not really eating the same things if we are eating together, but somewhere along the way I always fall behind and he's back on the fast food track. A part of it is the sheer volume of food he eats - he's 6'5", weighs 190lbs and works at least 50 hours a week at a pretty physical job, plus works out/does fire class a few times a week. Another part, probably the bigger part is that he eats so much restaurant food that what I make just doesn't usually taste as good. I don't know how to make a lunch that packs enough calories to keep him going that can be eaten quickly in the van on the way to the next job.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but in trying to lay the foundations for keeping this healthy business up once pcp is done, I'm thinking about how feasible it is to do when one member of your family eats whatever you've made for dinner and then needs to supplement with three yogurts or a double cheeseburger.

75. Dude, stomach, what the hell is your problem?

Ok dudes, I thought I was finally feeling better, for about an hour this morning, and then I ended up contemplating pulling over on my drive in to work because I thought I was going to puke, and then actually puking at fire fighting class (not the smartest move to go, but I was so frickin restless that I thought maybe a big effort would be cathartic) but atleast I'm not incapacitating-ly tired anymore. Score! This stupid sickness thing does leave me with two questions:

1. Why when you're doing something really hard, do you get sick the minute things start to get easier. I was just starting to cruise along again, food was good, exercises were wicked hard, but my spirits were good, and then bam! super sick. Same thing always happened to me at the end of exams in school. I'd plow through studying, with tiny amounts of sleep and food and make it through to the end and then get so so sick on the way home and spend my entire break sleeping and being sick. I mean I guess it makes sense that when you push your body to the limit its going to break down, but I guess the main question for me is why doesn't the body break down during the hard parts, and instead waits until the stress abates to get sick?

2. What in the world made me sick? I feel like it lasted way to long to be food poisoning, besides which I'm only eating stuff I'm making with healthy foods? Did I not cook my eggs long enough? Did not wash something thorough enough?

I've been off the diet some in terms of grams and proportions, as one side effect of throwing up at least once a day is then later being totally starving. I've been keeping a lot to the brat diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast) with some egg and plain chicken and turkey and mushy veggies like tomatoes and avocado. So not so bad in the diet department for feeling mega gross, and really if I can eat healthily when I feel awful, I'd like to think I can keep it up when cooking doesn't feel like the hardest chore in the world.

I feel like my body has changed a lot, but I can't really be objective about it. The fact that I'm so used to seeing squishy Haley served me well at the beginning because I could see all the little changes, but now that I've gotten a little squishier, it's hard for me to notice what is less buff than it was a week ago, because I'm so used to squishy Haley that it's difficult to see the changes in reverse. I definitely feel weaker when I do the exercises, but still feel stronger than I was when I started. I can still see/feel the difference when I'm doing things like carrying groceries.

I would love to wake up tomorrow and have my stomach be fine, because I really feel like I'm wasting these precious few days of pcp. But I'm taking it as a good sign that Patrick's tip of the day was a total no-brainer for me. The only things that I can remember buying from the inner aisles of the store lately are cleaning supplies and cat litter. Hooray for doing something right.

72. Laid low but trying to get back up

So I'm sick, or was sick and am still trying to get back to normal or something. Starting shortly after my last post until Thursday-ish I was fevery, exhuasted, and super nauseated with some other GI issues, so I've been taking it easy lately. We had guests so I dragged myself out of bed more than I would have preferred, but took it super easy. I went for walks instead of juping most of the days, even though the most I could manage was much slower than a normal walk would be. Now my stomach is feeling better and I'm back to a normal temperature, but I'm still so exhausted; it's been a struggle to keep my eyes open all day at work. I jumped yesterday but didn't make it through all of the exercises. Failure came quickly with the Da Vinicis mostly because it was so tiring to lift my arms up, I couldn't do it for very long. Before I started my ab stuff I got down on the mat and just closed my eyes and dozed off. When I woke up I figured I should just go to bed.

I'm just so so tired and I've been sleeping so much. Maybe a weekend in bed will cure what ails me. I'm not used to being sluggish anymore.

66. Warning - PCP Philosophisizing Ahead

At the moment I'm in a very cocoon-y meditative introspective state. It started after reading Jenny's post about panarchy and that's when it really sunk in that this is bigger than getting fit for the firefighting test, this is about striving to reach a new place of normality, a quantifiably better normal. All of a sudden my mind just went silent (which is totally weird for me, because I'm pretty much the least mindful person around, my brain is always going off in 7000 different directions).

Today, I got up, went to class, came home, snuggled with the mister, did my pcp workout, baked some banana bread, worked on the house, cleaning and fixing, made dinner, and am now just finishing up with blogging and some cleaning before jumping into bed with my book. It was the kind of day that I think of when I think of life being good; relaxed and productive and really pleasant. This is my baseline for what life should be like.

Lately, things have been busy and so I haven't had as much time or mental energy for pcp. I've been great on the diet, but when working out, it hasn't been with as much care as it should be. I've done the exercises, gotten through, but haven't taken the time to really check my form and make sure I'm getting the most out of the exercises, and not going all the way to farthest amount of failure I can get to. I've been slacking. I kept telling myself that I'd get back up to par when life slowed down. But the thing is, life will never really slow down. Well will never slow down to the point at which I say, "ok, life is slow now; now is the time to do better with the workouts". It's a mistake to think that when life slows down there will be more space for well focused workouts. That's the wrong way of thinking about, because then you end up with life and working out and they're separate. They're not separate. They're one and the same. PCP/being healthy is life and life is PCP/being healthy. If try to separate them, you're only going find time for one: life or pcp. But when you realize that pcp is just another part of life and just get in there, that's when you've got it.

During the first month, I kept thinking, "oh in October when I don't have to workout ...". But no, that's not it at all. The 90 days don't matter. Well they do, I'm glad there's only 90 of them, I'm not sure I could pull off 120 or more, but they don't really matter. PCP doesn't end on day 90. By day 91, hopefully we've boosted ourselves up from our old normal to a new better normal so that when we don't have a workout prescribed or our daily grams measured out, we don't go back to our old ways, we start to find our way around daily life at our new, better level of normal.

End philosophisizing - Bicycles today were so hard. I don't know what it was but I was really struggling to get through the last two sets. Also, I did 6 sets of pull-ups with Jordan's help. He definitely had to help me way more at the end at the beginning. Patrick, is that the best way to approach them? Or should Jordan help me as little as possible so that I fail early on and then finish out the rest of the sets as inclined pull-ups?

63. Ch-ch-changes

Posted new pictures. Sorry for slacking about that, there's just something about the whole picture thing that feels weird and vain. But anyways, it's so powerful. Even though I haven't felt like any physical changes have been happening lately they totally have (I don't have a full-length mirror so I pretty much judge day to day progress based on my biceps). I am so much thinner in the hip/thigh/flank region as compared to my pictures up at the top. I'm so much less curvy, which is totally good. I never really minded/cared about being "curvy" but I always felt the my bottom half was out of proportion for my top half. Now things are shuffling out to be more proportional and I like it.

The inner changes are happening too. Yesterday I did 15 pull-ups with a lot of help from Jordan, but that was more than I've done before. I also did the max reps of everything else except the triceps dips. Firefighting class is getting easier too. The first class we did two reps of the run 1/4 mile, 5 floors of stairs, run 1/4 mile circuit, on Saturday we did 3 and on Monday and today we did 4. It's still hard, I still huff and puff and feel like a slow, out of shape, fatty but it's getting better and I recover a lot faster than many of the other folks, even if they're faster than me.

Yay progress. Go Team Badass!!

62. Ooof

So I almost died last night. Well not really, but I definitely could have fallen asleep on the floor at the end of my workout. I totally got two of those hot flashes that Patrick talked about in his email. Buh bye fat!

I went to firefighter workout and then did the pcp workout when I got home (skipped jumps because my legs were dead, will have to do them in the mornings on fire class days). Those chest dips get me every time. I was already weak from doing 75 push-ups at class but I always struggle with the dips. I skipped the push-ups since I'd already done 75 and my arms were shaking so much from the dips that I figured I'd just fall on my face anyways. Also, I sucked it up on the planks, worse than usual. One of the team sexxaaay-iers, I think it was Tara, noted that they were way better at the planks when they weren't looking at the clock, and I think that might happen for me too. Watching the time click by on my watch makes it seem like it lasts so long and when I tried having Jordan tell me when to go up and down, I was just longing to hear his voice. Maybe without the longing for the end, I could redirect my focus to something other than how terrible planks are and go longer.

61. Team Badass - Time for a Regroup!

Ok guys. We are 2/3's of the way through. Team Sexxay just finished, so we are the big kids now. It's time to regroup and recommit. We've all fallen a little silent lately, myself totally included. It's time to jump back into blogging with a fervor and to taking the weekly pictures. Let's blog it out and really get these changes to sink into our psyche so that they stay with us for life, so that this 90 day period of craziness isn't all for naught. We can do it. We're so close.

58. Feel the burn ...

and the burn feels good. Man, the legs just about killed me yesterday. They were shaking so badly when I stood up to do shoulders.



I think the plateau feeling is from the fact that I'm not awed by how strong I feel anymore. At first, I couldn't believe how strong I was getting and now it's just a steady progress so there are no huge jumps in how strenght feelings. There's something going on under my skin and flab because I'm still getting thinner.



I guess it's like the food. Feeling strong stops being new and just starts to be part of life. That's good, right? :-)

57. on the plateau...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I've hit a plateau I think. Maybe it's my disasterous two weeks ago showing or maybe everything is just happening beneath the surface, but things don't seem to be changing much at the moment. That's ok. Still I plug on.

Also dealing with lack of not necessarily appetite, but lack of interest in food. I think I need to mix it up more. I've been eating an awesome curry for lunch but it hasn't been filling me with awe the past couple of days, so I guess it's time to freeze the leftovers and move on to something else. I made a chunky mushroom and tomato sauce last night and ate it with whole wheat noodles today and it was totally unappetizing. The sauce tasted mega sweet, like sweeter than I can remember any jarred sauce tasting and I didn't add any sugar. Maybe it needed onions or more garlic or something. It wasn't bad, just not what I wanted. Also, I'm going to be honest -- whole wheat pasta pretty much blows, at least the boxed stuff, fresh is ok for some things. On the things tasting funny tip, celery and cucumbers have been tasting super salty.

And another thing, to any potential future pcpers, keep this in mind - pcp will give you tons of energy, super tons of energy, provided you are getting enough sleep; if you're not getting enough sleep, you will be a zombie, for serious. Maybe being a sleepy zombie and my plateau are related, but dang am I tired and I've been getting like 6.5 -7 hours of sleep. Need at least 8!

Also also, I haven't even looked at today's workout. I'm going to print it out now. I'm scared. Everytime Patrick writes something like "this is the real pcp now" or "we're entering into a new phase of the pcp" I feel like what he's really saying is "prepare to suffer suckers, bwahahaha".

56. Things I don't miss

1. Cheese!!!!!
I was walking past the fancy cheese section of the grocery store the other night and there was a special on some fancy looking Camembert that was tugging on heart strings (or my stomach strings). I didn't get it, but couldn't stop thinking about putting some on my dinner apple or getting some nice stinky blue cheese for the salad snack. That was really the first time I've missed cheese the whole project, which is odd because I love cheese, or did love cheese. I love cheese so much just thinking about it brings me joy, but before this I was consuming a lot of cheese that wasn't bringing me joy. It didn't have an amazing taste, it didn't really add anything to whatever I was eating, all it did was add some mental fillingness. Cheese on tacos, cheese grated liberally on pasta, cheese on sandwiches, quesadillas, even alot of the cheese on pizza -- tasteless and unnecessary.

I never thought I could live without cheese on almost everything, but I totally can.

2. Nuts
Nuts, natures snack food, right? High in protein and fiber, high in fat and calories too but at least it's good fat, right? Hungry between meals? Have a handfull of nuts! Bored at work and feeling snacky? Have some nuts. Nuts are the healthy snack, way better than chips or candy. I have a feeling that most people would agree with those statements. I was one of them. Nuts were another of my everyday foods. I always had a container of nuts to combat hunger attacks in my desk (in fact I still have some sliced almonds in there, they don't tempt me at all). I don't miss the nuts or their diet busting calory richness or face puffing saltyness.

3. Crappy chocolates and sweets
Yesterday some people at work came around passing out bags of chocolate "from the leadership team to say thankyou". Nice enough I guess, but geez guys you're trying to say thanks for all you do, and you're passing out bags of Wonka chocolate? Why not give us something nice and indulgent like Lindt or Valhronna or omg why not support a local business and buy some stuff from the chocolate shop that I work at. Why not give a few nice pieces as opposed to a bag of the crappy stuff (oh that's right, the crazed junkaholics that I work with would complain about how little/small it was). So they gave us this chocolate. Mine was dark, so I figured I might try a piece just to be nice and then give the rest away. Well I put it in my mouth, started to chew, and first of all it wasn't good and second it was so sweet it made my teeth hurt (and this was the dark kind) so I spit it out and put the rest of the bag by the printer and it was gone within hours. Then later someone sent out an email that there was cake leftover after a meeting and it was like an f-ing stampeed as people went to go get that cake. Gross.

There will still be a place in my life for homemade dark chocolate brownies or cookies and baklava from the Palestinian sweet shop down the street, but forget about that crappy cheap stuff, it's gone.

4. Midmorning or midafternoon hunger attacks
Breakfast is a wonderful thing. Now that I'm eating a hearty filling meal at the beginning of the day and have my morning fruit and a great lunch, I'm not plagued by hunger attacks anymore. Hooray!

55. Butt = kicked

I got my butt throughly kicked yesterday.
Just par for the course in pcp land, right?
Not so fast ... I did no jump roping yesterday.
C'mon Haley, yesterday's exercises were hard but they weren't that hard, especially if you didn't jump.
That's true the exercises were hard, but normal hard.
What kicked my but was ... dun dun dun ... my first fire fighter physical ability test pre-conditioning class.

Man that thing was hard. Hard in a totally different way then pcp is hard. Hard in a "I think I had my first experience with exercise induced asthma' hard. I was pretty nervous going in, as Jordan had gone on Saturday and talked about how hard but fun it was and gave me the scoop on what they did. I figured I'd give it a go and stop if it was too much. So we did a bunch of stretches and then we did 50 jumping jacks, 25 push-ups, 25 crunches, and 25 mountain climbers. I calmed down because that was super easy. The new people then got sent to walk the running course and the people who had been there before did that set again. So the running course... run a 1/4 mile then up the stairs... 5 floors worth (so is that 10 flights because you go up one and then turn and go up another to get to the next floor) and then down and then 1/4 back to the start. So we walked that once and ran it twice. It was hard. Really hard. I did all the running on the flat ok, but the stairs killed me I tried to run the first set as much as I could, but it was hard and I'm super afraid I'm going to fall and knock my teeth out. The second set I walked. After that then up to the gym for sortof sideways skipping in both directions and backwards running, then more stretching and arm exercises.
All things considered I did really well. I was strong in all the areas and exercises that the pcp works and really just struggled with the intense cardio which we don't do. Had I just gone in without having done this for almost two months I might have died.

So yeah. It was hard, but it was really fun in a way that this isn't. It was a super encouraging atmosphere and it was just nice to work out with other people.

It's going to be a regular Monday, Wednesday, Saturday thing from now on because in order to go to the actual test pre classes where you get to practice on the equipment you have to go to the pre-conditioning. It looks like the last part of pcp just got quite a bit more intense.

53. Indulged

So I had my indulgence last night. I'm not sure that I deserve it due to the diet disaster that was last weekend, but I did anyways. I had pancakes from IHOP. I hadn't really been intending on having pancakes, but they were on the list of potential things to have, and when the situation arose they were ideal.

They definitely didn't taste as good as I'd hoped. I was expecting a rich, buttery, pile of fluffy goodness and I didn't really get it. The butter wasn't indulgently salty and rich it was just greasy. I ordered the buttermilk pancakes and the waitress asked if I wanted 3 or 5 and in my head I knew I should only get 3 but figured since it was an indulgence I might as well go all out and get the 5. I only ended up eating two of them and three cups of coffee with fake milk creamer and then I was totally full. Totally completely stuffed. My stomach was a little upset, I'm not sure from what but it wasn't that big of a deal. Man I was really expecting better.

Oh and I had half of piece of bacon dipped in Nutella. That one little bit of greasy, salty, sweet disgustingness might have been more fulfilling than the entire stack of pancakes.

The one good thing that came out of this and the past few days has been that I think that I've demonstrated to myself that for the most part I'm not an emotional eater anymore or am on the road to not being an emotional eater . I'm more of a didn't manage to pack lunch, buy groceries, or some other aspect of bad planning that leads to eating out all the time type of eater. I haven't managed to pack myself a good lunch the past few days and have been ravenous the past few afternoons. If I wasn't doing this I would totally have grabbed a candy bar from the vending machine or stopped to get something to eat on the way home. But I just stuck it out and tried to find the biggest apple in the fridge to eat for dinner when I got home. So there you go, bad planning leads to poor eating.

Also, prior to going to IHOP my two friends and I had spent about an hour standing out in the rain visiting our collective best friend Ali's grave. She died relatively recently and none of us are anywhere near being over it. The evening easily could have devolved into a giant chocolate fueled pity party, but it didn't. We did go to IHOP and we did all eat things we don't normally eat - me non-pcp pancakes, my vegan friend pancakes and eggs, my other friend who doesn't eat sugar nutella crepes, and we all had a piece of nutella dipped bacon, but we all stopped before we gorged ourselves to the point of sickness (although my friend who doesn't eat sugar had a total, hilarious sugar high). I stopped after two pancakes. I didn't even feel the need to shovel the rest of the pancakes down to try to fill the ache. The ache was there, but I really knew that all those pancakes wouldn't help.

51. Thanks

I really just need to say thank you to everyone for the encouraging comments. I read them in my still nuts everything is crap state and they made me cry and then they made me feel so much better. So thank you. You're all amazing and wonderful.

So I'm still here, still hanging on. I feel like I've lost the momentum that I had previously had. Everything feels like a slog now. The jumps drag on now that I'm not counting and the exercises take so long with so many sets now (not to mention they're super hard now). But I'm pushing through. Head down, not very much enthusiasm, but sticking it out.

47. oh dear

I'm reading this book right now called Women, Food and God that seemed to help some previous pcpers get some insight into their relationship with food and eating and things. And there's this quote in the book that says: "our relationship to food is an exact microcosm of our relationship to life itself." Had you asked me last week if I agreed with this, I would have said no way... my life is in chaos but my relationship to food is good. But if you changed the word food to pcp and asked me today if I agreed, I would say yes, a thousand times yes.

In order to go on, I'm going to have to do something that I haven't done this whole entire six weeks that we've been going down this path: be honest. Transparency requires a courageous honesty that frankly I just don't have in me to provide. I self-censor everything, all the time, for everyone. It's like if I don't tell the whole truth, the weight of the issues won't come crashing down on me. If I can save face and seem like I've got it all together, I won't have to admit that I'll failing miserably. I can say that things are hard because they are hard, or that the diet is going ok and that I like it because it usually is ok and I usually like it, or that I'm getting muscles because I am getting muscles. But to say that I've been slacking and to say that I've just stopped the exercise part for a majority or the last week or that this weekend I barely ate anything I was supposed to, well to say those things, is terrifying and brings me to the dark place that always seems to be hovering a few steps behind me.

Ok, so here goes. My pcp is rapidly becoming at risk for being a failure, just like most of what I've taken on in my life already is. I haven't worked out for five days or six days or four days, I can't really remember. I tried to yesterday but the exercises were too hard, so I quit. This weekend was also shitty for eating. We went to see friends and I packed a cooler with all my food in it, but then I . just . didn't . eat . it. I could blame it on spending all my time with my pregnant friend who has all these crazy cravings. But the fact of the matter is: I didn't say no to the chips and dip. I didn't stop after just a few. I just didn't. I could have. But I didn't.

I don't know if the cheating on the pcp brought on the darkness or the darkness led to the cheating, either way I can't shake this despair that I feel about the project and my life. PCP is a microcosm of life. I make it about half way and then I get distracted or lazy or just let up and the whole thing ends in failure or at least mediocrity. In this case, my attention turned to french onion dip and sitting on my ass. When the going gets hard, Haley gets going, just in the opposite direction. It happens so much it feels like destiny. Americorps job #1, things get hard / I don't feel like I'm making a difference -- think about quitting, cry all the time, end up finishing the year, but stop caring. University #2, science classes get hard -- don't study harder or get extra help, cry a lot, switch major to religion. Religion major, get distracted by millions of possible future plans -- start slacking majorly, lose inquisitiveness, still get ok grades but don't apply for grad school. Future career plans, start a whole bunch of applications and things -- abandon most of them, move home, take menial/boring/easy Americorps job # 2. Americorps job #2, feel like a loser for taking such slack ass, not big, not important, not well paying, not even real job -- don't put in any more effort than possible, don't really care, think about quitting to get interesting job, don't. 1st real job -- don't move away from home, don't apply to jobs outside of Cleveland, apply to many jobs, get two interviews, take first job offered, end up with job that a baby monkey could do (doesn't even require adult monkey skills or mental capacity), loathe self and life. And on and on. Start fail, start abandon, start give up, start fail, repeat ad infinitum. I know it's not, but it feels like a curse, or something in my genes, or something inescapable in my upbringing, or something like that. I know it's not, I'm just lazy and distractible, but damn if I don't wish I could just hunker down and finish something. It doesn't even have to be done spectacularly, just finished. What's wrong with me that there's the huge disconnect between the things that I aspire to and then things I can manage to get done? Where do these road blocks come from?

It's so embarrassing to write all this. To read your blogs and see your progress and read about how you struggle but press on, how you don't give up or cheat. It would have been easier to fade away, like it seems someone does almost every cohort, but I promised myself that I wouldn't do that. I knew from before I ever wrote to Patrick that there was a huge chance that I would be the girl that disappeared, who couldn't hack it. I won't do that, but I'm really not sure where to go from here. Do I start again today, with today's exercises, knowing that I won't be able to do the kung fu sit-ups, that I don't have a place to do the kung fu sit-ups, but with an inclination that I could probably slog through today's exercises and get close to the right number or reps, or do I go back; start from where I left off? And if I press on, what do I do about the things that I cannot do this weeks amount of, like the chest dips? And will I ever be able to move myself more than an inch or so on the chest dips?

I feel like I should be asking for your forgiveness and your permission to come back. I broke the pact that we made to work hard and support each other through this. If it's ok, I'd like to come back, I'd like to try again, and I'd like to be totally honest with you (although I don't know that I can absolutely guarantee that one).

43. New pictures

Found the camera cord so new pictures are up.

Too sleepy for any more blogging.

42. Not so much a valley ...

as a freight train veering off the tracks or one side of an overloaded balance hitting the table or a tornado leveling an unsuspecting town. It wasn't the valley or maybe it was, but it feels more like a temporary moment of psychosis. I was fine at work, even had a humorous ranty post planned about the ladies at work who complain about needing to lose weight and then in the next breath mention that they cheated on their jenny craig or weightwatchers or whatever by eating six cupcakes or swooping down anytime there are sweets in the office. I started to lose it on the way home from work and then walked in to a house that was infested with fruitflies and my pants were falling down and I was just done. There was no pulling me back from the brink. I fell over the edge into a dinner of cheezeburgers french fries and ice cream. Fortunately Jordan was around to talk me down and help me get back on track. I had been planning on skipping the workout but he got me to at least do the triceps exercises and 8 minute abs, which are the muscle groups that need the most work. So even by the end of the night I was perking up, although I did cry myself to sleep.

I'd actually forgotten what it was like to be consumed with that sort of irrational emotional craziness. It used to consume me a couple of times a month and I'd just lose it and cry and cry and cry and eat crap and just feel insane and shitty. Yesterday was the first time I truly felt like that since we've started. Yeah I've had bad days and angry days but nothing like yesterday. Maybe Patrick's prediction of emotional stability is actually happening for me.

Today is much better. I still feel the visceral effects of the crazy attack which are a tired heaviness with a little bit of frailty thrown in, but mentally I'm great. My diet has been spot on today and I'm looking forward to the jumps when I get home. I'm starting to plan what I'm going to take when I go back to Pittsburg this weekend and bought a cooler to keep it all cold. I got the actual requirements for the firefighting test and on the surface it looks doable. Lots of stair climbing. They haven't told us when the test is but it's sometime between Sept. 27 and Oct. 31 so I should be at peak condition for it.

Thanks for the support guys. We can do this. I can do this. Go Team Badass and Team Sexxay and Team Patrick!

Also, I really need to buy a belt that I can wear to work. And, I just resisted the people that came around selling bakesale leftovers

41. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

If you don't want to read a lot of angry bitching you might as well skip this post.

I am so f-ing angry and resentful right now it's not even funny. I'm sick of devoting my life to cooking and cleaning up after cooking and then eating and cooking some more and more cleaning with some really hard exercise thrown in. And this is supposed to be in a somewhat modified form a lifestyle? Yeah right only if I want to devote the majority of my waking hours to eating and exercising. I'm sick of thinking about food. I'm sick of doing dishes. I'm sick of carting stinky laundry out of the house to wash it. I'm just tired. I feel like I've lost my life. I feel good, I'm strong, and I've lost 17 pounds, but how in god's name am I supposed to continue on down this path and have any semblance of a normal life again? I'm tired of craving something sweet and then spending ages telling myself that I don't need it or want it. It's so easy to say yes, so hard to say no.

I'm doing this to get fit for the firefighting physical agility test, but there's no way I'll score high enough to actually get a job. My knee is fucked, I'm still grossly out of shape, and the underparts of my arms still wiggle. Kill me now.

40. Whirl of a weekend

We went to visit friends in Pittsburgh this weekend and it was really nice although the pcp suffered. It didn't go poorly just vaguely ok, instead of the usual good or great. The exercises weren't done with their usual care but instead were quickly slogged through. The eating was mostly ok, but I definitely wasn't totally prepared for pcp on the road. There was a bit of pizza and then a tiny slice of pizza because the taste was just so overwhelmingly great that I couldn't stop, but mostly I just watched everyone else eating having had my apple and egg beforehand but having forgot my milk. Then there was some frozen yogurt after dinner. It was supposed to be the new kind of "trendy" frozen yogurt that was just plain yogurt frozen and then topped with whatever fruit you wanted. I figured that some frozen plain yogurt could work as a substitute for my forgotten milk, but alas it was sweetened. It wasn't as sweet as regular ice creamy frozen yogurt but it wasn't plain yogurt and I'd swear that the kiwi I had on top was sweetened too. I had two bites and handed it off.

Maybe it's from my routine getting thrown off but I have had no appetite recently and have been having a lot of trouble falling asleep. I get really tired and have to go to bed but once in bed I just lay there and can't actually fall asleep. So I'm a little sluggish today, but am getting back on track.

Also, I really need to find that darn camera cord to post some new pictures.

37. Mystery Pumpkins

Somebody left three pumpkins on my porch yesterday. Score! I'm fully intending on eating these bad boys, but I'm not sure I'm ready for roasty toasty fall food yet. I'm still stuck on salads and smoothies (although without the banana the dinner smoothie doesn't work so well). It seems like I might be the only one who's enjoying the fruit dinner, which I definitely am. I really do feel lighter and happier with just the apple, milk and egg. I'm even glad the banana is gone, because it just felt like too much. It's almost like my entire metabolism shifted or something, because before the fruit dinner, the regular dinner was way too much and now sometimes it seems like a struggle to eat my veggie snack at the end of the the day.

So the diet is still good. And even the socializing thing is going well. I'm getting comfortable at ordering soda water at bars and resisting the munchies. I haven't been to a potluck, which might prove to be my downfall, but I did successfully resist donuts, coffee cake, pie, and candy bars at work yesterday and supposedly there were donuts today too. I didn't even bother to go look. Usually I would have told myself that I didn't want/need any of whatever it was and then gone over to check it out anyways and end up walking away with a little something, but I didn't even go over to look. Progress!

Workouts are good, except for the leg exercises, they're killing my knee. Yesterday, the pain after one of the frog jumps was so intense it took my breath away. I gave up after that one and sat for a while to regain my composure and then pressed on. My arms and back are getting so strong. I haven't tried a real pull-up because I don't have a bar yet (fragile old doorframes don't like pull-up bars) but I think (hope) that maybe I'm getting close to being able to do one.

34.5 With visions of pcp weekend dancing in my head

Best workout I've had in a long time. Felt strong again. Hoorray! That's crazy to say, that I feel strong, I've never really felt strong before. Despite feeling strong almost everywhere, my triceps are pretty much non-existent it seems. Triceps dips then double katanas is total torture.

And to clarify, an hour and a half is total time for everything workout related: getting dressed, finding music, setting up chairs and bands, working out, and laying on the floor moaning afterwards. The working out part is pretty consistently just under an hour, unless I'm having a super crappy jumping day.

34. 1/3 of the way done. Can't believe it!

It doesn't seem like it's been 34 days already. Time is flying. It seems like as good a time as any to take a minute and reflect on what's changed.

If I get nothing else out of this whole project, I will have gotten a really intense wake-up call about my life and habits. When I think about myself I don't see a girl who eats fast food a couple times a week, lunch out every day, and has a drink or three almost every day. I don't see a girl who drives everywhere, doesn't really get any exercise, and I certainly don't see a girl who weighs 160 pounds. My mental image was definitely living in the past, from when I lived in Montreal, walked, bussed, or rode my bike everywhere, and grabbed whatever was fresh from the market to cook every day. There’s been talk on mostly Elena’s blog about how when you no longer have dissonance between what you actually look like and what you look like in your head that you have a sort of glow. I think I need to work on not just getting my body to the point where there’s no cognitive dissonance but the rest of my life too.

With every passing day I get closer to that version of me that I hold on to as being the best or most authentic. I think that’s why the diet is so easy and so good; it’s just a return to what feels right (minus butter, cheese, booze, and delicious baked goods). The workouts are harder not just because they require more effort than cooking does. It’s primarily a time management issue. When you try to shoehorn an hour and a half of working out into a day that already feels too busy, the results aren’t real pretty. I feel squeezed and strained and start to resent the workouts. Really I just need to calm down and cut something else out. With school being done at the end of the week, it will be better.

33. Still crap

Workout was still crap.

This is the last week of a seven-month super intense period of life. I just need to make it through this week and I'll be fine. Just need to find the emotional fortitude to do it.

Pictures are coming. Camera cord is lost do to moving stuff around in the house. Was put in safe place. Who knows where that safe place is now.

32. Rocks for dinner???

Seriously, have I been eating rocks for dinner? The past two days I've felt like my body is filled with lead or rocks or concrete or something. I just can't get going. The most jumps that I've been able to do without tripping lately is 10. 1300 jumps take forever when you trip every 10 or fewer jumps. And the exercises are killing me way sooner than they normally do. It is a major struggle to finish out the sets. I just keep plugging away, but man it would be nice to get some strength back. Blarg.

30.5 Ow my iliopsoas??

Is it your iliopsoas that you feel burning in your inner thighs when you're doing leg-ups? Whatever it is, I totally got a cramp in it during the last set of leg-ups. Might have possibly been the most acutely painful thing I've ever felt. But I powered through that last set and then rocked the v-sits. Is it weird that I like them? Everyone else seems to hate them; maybe its from doing them all the time for crew in high school?

I too like Elena and Sarah, cut the dawdling out of my workout and went with an active resting time of 15 seconds. Boy does speeding things up make a world of difference, not necessarily in the burn felt during the exercises, but with the mental attitude. I didn't feel like I was slogging away today. Listening to Sam Cooke might have helped too.

I'm going to have to get some stools. My antique dining room chairs can handle triceps dips but would have cracked if I braced myself on their backs, so I did mini-chest dips from the seats. Better than nothing. Next time will be better.

30. Would the real PCP please stand up

So yesterday was the first day of the "real" PCP, I think we're on to the second real PCP but I'm not sure. I say bring it on. The workout felt good, it went well. The combination of floor jumps and lunges were brutal. Brutal I tell you. I like the floor jumps, they're painful but totally fun, but I hate the lunges. They take forever and hurt my knee, so I went easy on them, but then I was angry at them and myself because I spent all this time doing half-assed lunges.

The total highlight of the entire thing was the DaVincis. I've totally made progress on those guys. for the first time I didn't feel like the bands were snapping my arms back down to my sides. Those muscles are growing! (I know the other ones are too but this progress is dramatic from the first day of them).

I even like the light dinner. Today I'm going to switch it up to banana, milk, raw egg smoothy with the apple separate, as yesterday I ate them all on their own and the banana gets me every time. There's just something about the texture that squicks me out. I was a little hungry and thrown off because my day started late and I haven't quite figured out the right times to be eating yet with these updates.

Also, does anyone have any advice on what to use for chest dips? Patrick's chairs look like they have a nice flat surface on the back to hold. Can I use regular chairs and just adjust my grip? I guess I'll try and see if I either tip the chair over or hurt my wrists.

29. Suckitude

Ok Patrick, I promise to never miss another workout again. Yesterday's made up workout was terrible. Well not the jumps, I did all the jumps with no knee pain so that was awesome, but everything else was terrible. I couldn't do nearly as many reps as I usually do, push-ups were particularly bad and my focus was just not there. I know it wasn't worthless but I feel like I got nothing out of it because I couldn't manage to put anything in to it.

About to tackle today's workout. I'm totally scared but hopefully I'll pull through.

28. So I indulged

That's right I actually indulged instead of a half-assed sortof indulgence. Monday night I was yet again at the gourmet hotdog bar playing trivia and had some tatertots with lots of dipping sauces. Trying to decide what to have was pretty hard because I've been pretty satisfied with what I'm eating lately, but I am missing some of that mental satisfaction or feeling of satiety and feel like maybe I'm missing some of the umami taste that comes from salt and fat and sugar. So that's how the tatertots came up. I'm missing intense tastes so what better way to get those than with a bunch of dipping sauces with fried potato puffs as the vehicle for getting them to my mouth.

I split a plate with two other people because an order of tots is huge even by normal standards and chose five sauces: housemade ketchup, chipotle hollandaise, black truffle honey mustard, saffron aioli, and tomato and garlic jam. The tots were surprisingly good, not too salty, but abotu half-way through mine I was full. I should have stopped then, but continued on and ended up uncomfortably full. The sauces weren't as great as I imagined. The tastes weren't as intense as I had hoped, they mostly tasted the same as they did before although the black truffle honey mustard tasted a lot sweeter and the chipotle hollandaise was almost disgustingly rich. It was weird, as I was eating I started to feel light-headed, almost high. The feeling passed and I was left with just a super full stomach.

The feeling full messed my plans for the evening. I was planning on working out after we got home to get the junk out of my system, but there was no way I was going to be able to with how full I was. It would have been a recipe for disaster or vomit. So I went to bed feeling super guilty about skipping the workout and planning on getting up and doing Monday's workout Tuesday morning and Tuesday's workout in the evening. Tuesday morning rolled around and I was tired. I don't know if it was too many kindof late nights catching up with me or the heavy work of digesting all those starches but there was no way I was getting out of bed to workout, or even go to work. I rolled over, grabbed the phone and called in a half vacation day to work and slept til 11.

I finally managed to workout around noon. I did half the day's jumps and my knee feels great. I got a new rope that's made out of rubber or plastic or something and it makes a huge difference. I totally don't get how to do the creep but went with it. The planks make me want to cry and the cats totally love to bother me while I'm doing them. I didn't end up working out in the evening. I went to a block club meeting that lasted forever and then came home and passed out. So I'm still a workout behind, but I'll do it tonight with the day's jumps. I know it's supposed to be a rest day, but the guilt of not doing the workout is gnawing at me and I feel like one slip-up and I'm on the brink of this huge lazy downward spiral.

I really need to recommit to blogging every day and checking in with everyone. I feel totally disconnected.

25. Ahoy there!

I got a worried email from Ilan, so I guess I need to get back in the swing of blogging. I haven't not been blogging because I'm concealing any horrendous pcp slip-ups or having any mental issues with the program. It's just it feels like life now, not so extraordinary to need blogged out. I make my food, I exercise, I don't really have any cravings except for when we go out to the bar that serves gourmet hotdogs with a choice of 50 different toppings or when I walk down the frozen pizza aisle at the grocery store when I'm already hungry, but I got those cravings before pcp too, so even they are nothing special. The way it is now, with the diet and the exercises, I could do this forever. I don't feel deprived or weird or wiped out or resentful. I feel like this is real life!

My knee still hurts so I'm not back to jumping yet, but I am walking and seeing huge progress in the exercises.

I am having an issue with the indulgence. I don't really want anything. Well that awesome hotdog, but that's way over the calorie limit and I'd really like to break myself of the association of eating a hotdog every time I go to that bar. It's my grandma's 80th birthday next Saturday and I think I might use it then so that I can get something besides a bowl of iceberg lettuce with some shaved carrots and red cabbage. So maybe a side of mac and cheese? I just don't know.

21. Ouch!

So I've hurt my knee or really it's more like my knee hurts, since I didn't do anything to it except PCP stuff. I've been trying to take it easy but it's really hard. After skipping lunges and squats for a few days and walking instead of jumping today, it felt better so I decided to try jumping again this morning.

Bad idea.

The knee hurt super alot and I only managed to do half the jumps. Then as I was walking back inside I got super nauseous and threw up in the yard. What a way to start the day. I am however really glad the neighbors weren't outside.

I know I need to chill out and let my knee heal so I don't mess up the rest of this, but it's so hard. Every day I feel the time flying by and every day that I rest or even don't try as hard as I possibly can feels like this missed opportunity. It hurts to jump but it hurts not to as well.

18. And I'm back

It has been a whirlwind of a week that probably culminated yesterday in me breaking down into tears 5 times in 3 hours (twice regarding food, twice regarding a take-home stats test and computers not running the needed software and once for having to work and being so so sick of work). I'm really looking forward to the emotional stability that Patrick talked about in today's email, because I'm obviously not there yet. I guess I'm still stuck in the zit stage.

Actually, I'm in the hello cheekbones stage. I woke up the other day and it was just like bam! I've got mega cheekbones. The lack of salt and booze is working wonders; my face hasn't been this un-puffy-chubby when I haven't just been sick in I can't remember how long. I can't stop looking at myself in the mirror, I still look mostly the same, but it's like when you get a dramatic haircut and every time you see yourself you just pause for a little bit to verify that you are indeed looking at yourself.

This weekend was mega stressful with work and a math test and more work and surprisingly enough, what kept me feeling grounded enough so that I didn't totally lose my mind was the diet. The diet is maybe not habit, but it definitely feels natural. I feel so good and really am not craving anything, except when I let myself get hungry by going too long between meals and then I get a sweets craving. I have no desire to drink at all, which is really surprising to me. I thought that I would miss it more, but I don't.

The exercises still aren't like that for me. I know that I'll probably never be a person who LOVES to workout, but I'd like to get to the point where I don't dread working out, well dread is too strong a word as I'm definitely making some progress on that front. But I still don't enjoy it really, especially the jumps. I love the resistance band stuff and the push-ups but the jumps and the lunges I'm not such a fan of. The lunges have been killing my knee so I only did two sets of them today. Getting down to exercising brings out my add tendencies. I get distracted, I dawdle, I stay on the internet after downloading my workout, I procrastinate. Starting tomorrow I'm printing out my workout sheets so that I have no reason to be on the computer when it's workout time. Hopefully it helps.

Oh and I ate the first tomatoes out of my garden today and they were intensely amazing. The flavor was almost overwhelming. Here they are:

A Green Zebra and a German Johnson. The Johnson is all cracked and looks ugly, but that's just what heirloom tomatoes do, and they make up for their looks with their amazing flavor.

14. Oops + Deliciousness

So I messed up a little bit. Once consciously and once unconsciously.

The conscious one I don't feel bad about at all. My partner Jordan, my friend Liz and I brewed our first batch of beer a little while ago and it was time to bottle it last night. After the bottling was done we all tried a little of the beer to see what it tasted like. I figure that I will never again have the chance to have the first sip of the first beer I brewed. I just had one sip and that was enough. The beer obviously needed more aging but it tasted like it was supposed to.

The unconscious one happened at work today. I'm taking vacation from my day job to work at my second job while the owners are on vacation, which is at a gourmet chocolate shop that also sells beer and wine. Everything is amazing, but so far it hasn't been too tempting. If anything I was craving feta or something equally as salty and cheesy. But this afternoon as I was standing around talking to my coworker, I just popped a chocolate in my mouth and didn't even realize it until I started to swallow. My coworker was like 'I thought your weren't allowed to eat that' and I'm not.

It's not really a big deal, not the end of the world. But now I can't stop thinking about the chocolate, I'm craving more. It's crazy how much of an effect that one chocolate had on my brain. For dinner I was eating some amazing garlic-y shrimp and all I could do was think about that chocolate. My tongue is tingling and the thoughts won't stop. It's interesting, because normally I don't even really like the chocolate that much and the chocolate I ate didn't taste that great to me (it was filled with salted caramel which tasted so salty). I guess this is a very visceral reminder of the pull food has over me.

On a happier, more delicious note, I made the most awesome shrimp today. I want to eat them for every meal. I had these when I was in Nicaragua and they were amazing then and they they are amazing now. I have been searching for a recipe that recreates them for two years and this morning I improvised almost a perfect match. Here's a recipe:

Camarones al Ajillo

Garlic, the fresher the better. I used a head from the farmers market that still had the greens attached.

Shrimp, frozen is fine maybe even better than fresh/thawed

Olive oil, if you so choose

• Chop up a bunch of garlic, like seriously a ton. I used an entire head of garlic for about 1 lb of shrimp.
• Heat up a pan, add a little oil if you're using it. I didn't and it was great.
• Add garlic, stir it around until it gets a little bit of golden coloring
• Add shrimp, and stir them so they get all coated with garlic. Maybe add a bit of water if your shrimp are not frozen.
• Cover your pan and let the shrimp cook through and then uncover and let most of the water evaporate.
• Eat! Yum! I ate mine with brown rice and asparagus. Add a little of the cooking water for extra flavor.
• Pack a tooth brush if you're eating this at work

12.5 FAIL

As weird as it sounds, I'm in love with doing the last set to failure. I'm slightly worried that the fact that I can do most of the exercises past the max reps means I'm doing them wrong, but I really like the goal that going towards failure gives me. I thrive on structure and the concreteness of failure really works for me. I had a really spectacular push-up fail where my arms totally gave out and I hit the ground forehead first.

And with the failure -- triumph, I actually moved myself during incline pull-ups!! It wasn't all the way up but it was motion, which is more than I could say when I started with them.

12. So much food

Does anyone else feel like they're eating massive amounts of food? Now that the initial hunger has worn off, I'm slightly overwhelmed by the food and the frequency of the eating. I feel like I'm just shoveling the food down the hatch and by the time I've finished feeling full from breakfast it's time for fruit and then lunch and so on.

I actually cheated a bit this weekend. I didn't eat the evening fruit on Saturday and skipped dinner and evening fruit yesterday. Saturday was honestly an accident, I totally forgot about it and didn't remember til I saw my apple on the counter Sunday morning. Last night, it was just exhuastion and poor planning. I got done work at 530 stopped by the store, did my workout, and then got to cooking dinner. By the time everything was done it was almost 10 and I wasn't really hungry and 8 hours of sleep seemed more appealing than eating.

I surprisingly wasn't starving when I woke up this morning but I was supper groggy. I packed all my food for the day and then instead of working out I laid on the couch with the cats. I meant to get up but then all of a sudden it was almost time to leave for work and I needed to shower. This is a pretty good illustration of my morning working out issues; I need a good hour or so to wake up enough to do anything other than go through the motions of the workout, but I can't really make an extra hour in my morning schedule without forgoing my 8 hours of sleep. But on Mondays and Wednesdays when I have class til 9, if I workout after I'm so wound up that I can't sleep well. Oh well, I'll work it out. The results are worth it. I don't drink coffee and don't really want to start, but maybe that's the key to revving myself up in the mornings.

Speaking of results. I still need to take week 2 pictures, and I don't have a full length mirror so I'm not sure whether there are any visible changes going on, but my body definitely feels different. My skin feels sortof tighter, especially on my calves. Also, I'm more aware of my muscles when I'm moving, or something like that. Also, I can do push-ups now! That is awesome. Hopefully by next week I'll have an handle on the triceps dips.

10. Small progress all around

This is going to be really quick because I have a hot date with my pillow for 10 hours of sleep.

Eating was way better today. I think because I managed to eat things that were more like what I normally eat, like a sandwich and pasta, instead of quinoa, plain chicken, and raw veggies. I like quinoa as much as the next girl, but the austere diet I've been keeping the past two days has been getting me down. There's a lot to be said about the power of bread to increase my (completely in my head) feelings of satiety.

It's crazy how much better I am at push-ups than 10 days ago. They actually look like push-ups now instead of me just flopping around on the floor. Still can't really move during the inclined pull-ups but I can feel it in my back now.

9. Lost my rhythm

The past two workouts have been super meh. I’m not sure what’s going on if it’s the enthusiasm wearing off, that I don’t deal with change well, or that I’m just an inveterate slackass (I hope it’s not this one). The jumps are fine; it’s the exercises that I just can’t seem to get going. The new exercises threw off the rhythm that I had and I’m struggling both with how to do them correctly and whether I’m putting the maximum effort into them. I was having the same feeling that I get at the gym, where the uncertainty just wells up and gets in the way of actually focusing on things and getting down to business. Once I finally got going though, I found that I really like the resistance band exercises. I don’t really understand how to work the inclined pull-ups. If I can’t get anything to move while keeping my body stiff, should I just strain against the table edge and my weight or should I bend at the waist and just pull my top half up?

With the new exercises and the diet starting at the same time and making some mediocre food choices that left me unfulfilled and hungry, I think it was just too much. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of the new exercises and the diet fairly quickly.

Today’s eating has already been better than yesterday’s. In my rush to get everything cooked and packed for work I ended up eating cold quinoa and a microwaved egg for breakfast and banana for snack. I don’t like eggs really to begin with and add to that the super mushy consistency of everything and I spent the morning until lunch feeling nauseated. Today I scrambled the egg and made chapatti, which was a marked improvement. I can tell that my perfectly seasoned cast-iron skillet is going to become my new best friend. Thursdays are my csa pick-up day and I can’t wait to figure out how to eat everything from this week. Also, carrots for breakfast rock.

I could use some guidance on when I should be eating. At work I tend to get absorbed in what I’m doing and not manage to eat til I’m starving, which then leads to mega hunger the rest of the day. Another question: potatoes – carb or veggie?

7. Jumps only!?!?!

So it was jumps only today, which was totally unexpected. When I opened the workout, I kept trying to scroll down for the exercises figuring my computer was displying funny. The lighter workout was appreciated today as my legs are the tightest and sorest they've been so far. I think I overdid the running and swimming at the beach. Even without the exercises today's workout was a struggle. I just couldn't get off the ground. It was like my legs were full of lead. I found my rhythm after a while, but I still tripped more than usual.

I'm looking forward to the diet tomorrow. I've got a bunch of veggies in the fridge and picked up some bananas and nectarines yesterday and I'll pick up my csa box tomorrow evening. That said, I'm super glad it isn't starting today. Mondays and Wedesdays are my hardest days because I go straight from work to class until 9pm, so it'll be nice to get a little experience with the cooking and food packing before I have to take almost all the food for the whole day with me.

I'll see how I'm feeling after class as to whether I go out for my last gourmet hotdog or if I'll just go with yesterday's dinner of lettuce and grapes (and too much wine, oops).

6. The first week is mental

Patrick said in one of his emails that the first week is mostly about mental changes and that's one of the reasons for the half portions. I don't know if this is the mental change that's supposed to be happening, but I've lost most of my interest in food. I don't know if it's the half portions, the anticipation of the new diet on Thursday, or the heat, but my interest in eating is gone. I still feel hungry, but nothing sounds good to me. I'm about to eat lunch and nothing around sounds even vaguely appealing. Greasy diner - no. Chinese buffet - no. Overpriced deli - no. Indian - no. Fancy sandwiches - no. Mediocre sushi - no. Sweets from the coffee shop - no. I need to eat, I'm hungry and my lunch hour is dwindling, I guess I'll pick up for gazpacho from the the sandwich place next door, but I'm not enthusiastic about it. I guess I'm succeeding in breaking the spell food holds over me, so that's good. I am completely ready for a more regimented eating schedule as I have devoted way too much mental energy to lunch today.

Workout is scheduled for the evening. We'll see if I can transform the swampy weather into a sauna with the power of positive thinking.

5.

I managed to do yesterday's workout without falling through the floor, which is always good. And also made it through the party only having 2 beers and didn't make up for the lack of drinking by eating everything in site. I just had a cupcake and some popcorn. I saw the most intense home fireworks display I've ever seen. They had big speakers with karaoke screens and fireworks going at both ends of my friend's street. I'm really surprised no one blew their hand off or started their house on fire.

As for today's workout, it was fine. I jumped outside and even at 8:30 it was really hot and humid which made for unpleasant jumping and difficulty breathing. It's like a swap here these days. The fourth set of jumps I tripped almost every other jump. It was super frustrating, but all the other sets were fine.

The exercises are good too. I'm still struggling with the push-ups but am enjoying the squats alot.

And now it is beach time again.

4. Beachy Keen

Haven't managed to workout yet. Woke up too late to do that and be on my way for everything else in the morning. Is anyone else sleeping tons? I slept for 11 hours last night and still didn't want to get up. I did, however, make it to the beach for lake running and swimming like I do every Sunday. Love the water so much. It was really wavy so I didn't get much actual running in, but I did some jumping and side stroke and I was way less sore when I got out. I've got tomorrow off, so I'm going back in the morning.

I'm about to go workout now, but it's an inferno outside so for the first time I'm going to jump inside. Hopefully I don't take out any light fixtures or break through the floor (my house is 115 years old and the wood floors are thin).

Barring any major injuries that might result from falling through the floor I'm going to a barbecue tonight. I'm really thankful we're still on halves because that means I can still drink. I have pretty bad social anxiety that I deal with by drinking too much usually, but even with half the drinks I think I still should be ok. It's nice to have a transition step between normal socializing and sober socializing.

Ok. Time for jumps. Hooray.

3. So hungry

Just got done with the day 3 workout. I am really loving the workouts, especially the jumps. I could jump all day if I had the time. The exercises are good too, although most of them feel awkward. I don't know if that's just I haven't done any of these for years or that I'm just really uncoordinated. I don't know if it's just enthusiasm for the brand new or if the gym just made we feel that uncomfortable, but I've never really enjoyed working out before, but I got out of bed today looking forward to exercising.

Sarah, this was probably the best push-up video I found. Patrick, does this look right to you?



So the workouts are great, but the eating is throwing me for a loop. I'm starving. I'm hungry when I wake up and still hungry after ever meal. I'm still doing the half-portions but after two days of constant headache from being hungry, I'm thinking about going back to normal portions but better food. Maybe it's an indication that I'm not eating too much, just eating too poorly and definitely drinking too much. I'm really looking forward to the actual diet part of this thing.

Day 1!!!!

I should be working and not blog posting so this will be short.

First off, hello fellow PCPers!

Next a bulleted list:

• Jumps! I did them! Woo jumps! I actually did 6 sets I think because I lost track and figured I should do another for good measure. I trip less when I go faster.
• Squats. I think I need to work on some flexibility too because I can't seem to get my thighs down as far as Patrick is in the picture.
• Push-ups. I don't understand the mechanics of them with the push-up bars. They were a big mess. I'm going to nerd out tonight and see if I can find push-up videos on youtube to add to my viewing along with strongest man in the world videos (to learn how to pick stuff up for the firefighting test).
• Sit-ups! Love them. I've always done them with my legs in the air and this way I felt my abs working way more. It was like hello little ab muscles, we've never met before.
• Breakfast. It's almost 11am and I'm starving. The half bowl of cereal isn't quite cutting it.

Okay. Bye for now. Lunch is soon, hopefully.

Hells Ya!

Haley's had enough of the excuses, and is getting REAL! RIGHT NOW!