Day 46

All right. Now I'm in a good mood (YAY!) and ready to reflect on my PCP journey so far.

Exercise

I've liked the variety in workout exercises. The lazy part of me, however, was and is less than enthusiastic about how painfully difficult many of them are. I'm getting more into (but not yet enthusiastic about) pushing myself but there are some exercises that I like better than others. For giggles, I ranked them (in decreasing excitement about doing them):

1. squat
2. lunge
3. sit-up
4. side crunch
5. floor jump
6. standing ovation
7. triceps extension
8. rowing
9. lawnmower
10. davinci
11. thumbs up curl
12. ski jumper
13. shoulder press
14. pull down
15. chicken wing
16. curl
17. outside curl
18. one-arm curl
19. shoulder fly
20. show-off
21. leg-up
22. forward shoulder raise
23. v-sit
24. creep
25. jumprope
26. pistol squat
27. double katana
28. triceps dip
29. elevated tricept dips
30. pull up
31. chest dip
32. push up
33. plank
34. bicycle

In general, I prefer leg and core exercises to upper-body workouts - and I prefer exercises that don't kill me to complete. Upon reflection, this isn't altogether surprising. The sports I've participated in have been:

• running
• skiing
• skating
• springboard diving
• Tang Soo Do

Only Tang Soo Do involved much upper body strength, unless you count pulling myself out of the pool when diving. Skiing, skating, and diving require decent core strength (especially diving). So I prefer exercises that play to my strengths. Or - more to the point perhaps - because upper body strength is my weakness I find the exercises more frustrating and dispiriting.

Today I could finish only ONE complete rep of the push-ups, and all the remaining reps had one or more breaks when my arms collapsed. I'm nowhere near pulling my full body weight on my pull-ups and dips and I'm still working to muscle collapse.

Leg-lifts got demoted because my left hip jumps in it's socket while doing them, and while not painful is certainly not comfortable.

Jump roping got demoted not so much because I hate jump roping, but because I CAN'T STAND COUNTING. It's just too boring.

I find that the pace of the exercise ramp-up is a little frustrating - but admittedly is directly related to my initial level of fitness. In the first few weeks I had no real difficulty with the exercises (push-ups excepted) and in hindsight would have benefited from a faster initial ramp up. In the last few weeks I've been a little frustrated because while my lower body is able to play catch-up ... my upper body has most definitely not and I feel as though I'm falling behind. Which is a bit frustrating.

It's also a bit humbling to realize how poor my initial upper body strength was.

Food

The first two weeks I found very difficult with the PCP diet - partly because I'm a bit detail oriented and always felt I was on the edge of cheating because my usual diet was variable enough that I had no idea what half-portions would have been appropriate.

I naturally prefer more hard and fast rules.

The second week was a nightmare of feeling nausea - it was just way too much food for me and I wasn't accustomed to it even at the end of the week. When a more sensible and reduced plan arrived week 3, I was relieved. I expected the plans to continue to reduce, and expected to find some difficulty in the other direction:being hungry.

To my surprise, while I've occasionally been ravenous, by and large I have found instead that my appetite has been suppressed and I haven't always been hungry for the food when one of the nine meals rolls around. Which I find SHOCKING. I really like the regular eating, which I think plays a huge role in my reduced appetite. I like the smaller dinners - though I miss having carbs at dinner time and right now am heartily sick of so much fruit and yogurt weighted at the end of the day. I haven't really had too much in the way of cravings (yesterday excepted), but I miss salt. I really miss cheese. And I miss being able to occasionally have a glass of wine.

I'm (usually) getting better about planning my meals ahead of time - but before starting the PCP, I'd grossly underestimated how much time I'd end up spending preparing and packaging my meals. Which, with the exercise, has been a significant chunk of my available free time and I've found that difficult to manage. I miss the freedom to eat without all the calculation and thinking. On the plus side, my grocery bills are moderately lower (see cheese, absence) as my normal diet was heavily vegetables and home-cooked meals to begin with - with significant amounts of expensive goodies. Moreover, I'm wasting practically no food (excepting all those poor egg-yolks ...) and have a more open refrigerator.

How I feel

I feel GREAT and am feeling more alert, stronger, and healthier. I occasionally hit snag days - and am sometimes upset by the hemmed in feeling that I have by adhering so strictly to the exercise and diet plan. But overall - very pleased and optimistic that what I'm doing will transfer more easily to regular habits than I thought it would before starting this project.

Looking ahead to the next 45 days!

Food

Breakfast

homemade rye bread

egg scrambled with pureed roasted red pepper and paprika

avocado

steamed broccoli rabe

milk

mid-morning snack

egg white

Lunch

chapati pizza with zucchini, red pepper, and avocado

broccoli rabe with tomato sauce and clams (yum!)

mid-afternoon snack

yogurt

Dinner

apple. banana. egg white

Evening Snack

fruit salad & yogurt