You've come a long way , baby.

Doesn't feel real that we are actually half the way done. I think we are all the way to a more longer term change than just 45 days from today and I have to confess that  actually don't even know the date we finish.
Managed to work out at lunchtime today and just had a long yoga session which seems to have helped my legs, rugby at the weekend and yoga makes me realise that the PCP isn't so much a goal in itself, wrapped up in though we are but a means to open up more avenues of things to do.
Diet was OK , usual breakfast , took  steak and bread to work but didn't have time to get any veggies until 5ish and really missed them. Had my shake, following Richards recipe, - very tasty and have gone off the rails with a strawberry yoghurt. which i confess to fully enjoying.

Time for bed, am trying to get more sleep this week but resting adequately always seems to be the part of the PCP that I miss out.

Congratulations to everyone on getting this far- lets cane the rest of it.

Night

Day 44

Evening all.

Another late run today. Just finished workout . Jumped rope fine but legs will not lunge or squat yet. Will try tomorrow. No pull up bar so swapped days and really enjoyed the arms and abs today.
Diet good today- grilled up a tuna steak last night and took it along to the salad bar at work and teamed it up with everything that wasn't covered in oil or mayo.  Followed by quick egg white and plum- no apple in house tonight-oops.
Finding the switch to timed skipping a bit disruptive- I find myself still counting. Other than that its all good.

Night night

PCP= time machine

Yesterday The PCP managed to beam me back in time to a cold winter's day in Edinburgh sometime around 1991, as I played rugby for the 1st time in 20 years. It was hard going at times and this morning  i have a  strained left thigh and a dead right leg (for balance)  and am missing half a tooth but i really enjoyed myself. I was playing for a team called the Fat O ld Boys and our first game was against the Arabian Potbellies- I'm very glad that i don't quite live up to the names any more. If I hadn't started the PCP there's no way I would have even considered playing yesterday. All this pales in comparison to the PCPers who are doing the Tokyo Marathon this weekend -good luck to them-

Had to miss out  legs today but managed to skip and did the rest of the workout tonight while watching England beat France- setting things up for Scotland to spoil things nicely in a couple of weeks. I think this week is going to have to be a grind it out time-  am going to try really hard this week to blog every day.I  stuck to the diet today, maybe even missed a few carbs at lunch time,  I was very pleased to see as much as you like on the diet sheet- makes a change. Might hit the salad bar at work tomorrow- whoo hoo.

Thats all for now- keep going everyone.

3D breakfast

One of the collateral benefits of the PCP in our house is that , more often than not my 2 boys (7&4) join me in a poached eggs, tomatoes and brown toast  PCP breakfast, or as Joseph -4 - called it today a 3D breakfast. Compared to cheerios or toast and jam the PCP breakfast really is 3 dimensional so I think that's what we'll be calling it from now on.

Quick One

Things generally  going OK, not been feeling like blogging, so just a quick dip back in today. Dip- is that Freudian? New exercises are good, except katanas- they seem to disagree with an old shoulder injury, as do dips. Food is ok, missing my evening banana- though I'm enjoying the evening veggies more than I ever thought I would.
Will post pic soon, camera and computer having some sort of argument. 

Enjoying reading , if not writing  blog posts- good work everyone.

Update

Good points this week- workouts going fine, couple of late ones but getting most done early which is working well.Body fat measured at 20% today, 1st day of the PCP it came out as 30% on one of the in pharmacy machines they have here. I'm not sure if the first reading was reliable but today's was done by the health & wellness staff at college so I think it should be trustworthy. The good news is I'm no longer officially obese. Still plenty of room for improvement weight was up at 87/88kg then too and is now hovering around 80kg

Yoga was a blast again tonight, really noticing a big difference here and also ran around at rugby last night- might even be playing next weekend first time in 20 years. .....

I'm going to follow Geordie's lead and fess up here to a couple of cheats- Valentines I had a few bites of Russian Honey Cake and a couple of days later I had half a muffin- I'm not going to make any excuses here. On the whole I'm sticking with the diet, I can think of a handful of meals that have been eyeballed but almost everything is being weighed out to the gram, I'm faithfully taking my lunchbox to work but I'm still getting the urge to eat things I shouldn't know and again.

Right time for bed-

Keep going everyone

Week 5

Getting over my initial reaction to the removal of dinner as we know it - and strangely enough rather enjoyed my first banana/egg white /milk smoothie- added some cinammon, honey and a drop of vanilla extract- and it wasn't too bad. I have to admit  a lifelong dislike of egg whites and bananas-its a textural thing- meant i wasn't overjoyed with our new dinner arrangements. But lets see how it goes.

Work-outs have been good this week I still need to work on the pull-ups though and am going to try and fit some swimming in this week too.Stomach muscles are feeling stronger too and I like almost all the new exercises. Weight must be coming down as i could fit into a shirt today that I would have beeb busting out of (in all the wrong places) last month. I tweaked my back ( lifting an armchair in a coffee shop ???!) today so went a bit easy on the back exercise today.

Indulgence was yesterday 4 small homemade oatmeal raisin cookies- 4 might seem excessive but before the PCP I would have eaten 4 while walking through the kitchen so it seemed about right for an indulgence. I don't know if its because they are homemade and therefore relatively "clean" -oats, butter egg, mostly brown sugar and a little salt- but i felt none the worse for eating them -I was half expecting to feel at least a bit ill etc. So Patrick can we offiically sanction them as PCP approved cookies? What do you reckon?

That's quite enough from me tonight.

Last few days have been good- Monday was excellent -i went to the gym at work at lunchtime- really good to be back in a gym and feeling vaguely competent again. Managed to do 4-3-2 pull-ups which is s start at least- I remember when i could do 3x10 to round off a back routine, think that will take some time. Working out earlier is so much better for me so its the way I'm going to go- i think there will still be be a couple of midnight runs ervery week but they don't feel so healthy. Other success on Monday was my yoga session- i had had a couple of weeks off so i think this was the first one where i was feeling the benefits of PCP. Yoga felt much better, because my core  strength is much improved my stability was way up and i could concentrate on the stretch rather than just not falling over, nailed headstand and a few other things. Also a smaller gut was much easier to work around as well. That was a real positive moment this week. Staying positive i 'm getting some nice comments at work about looking slimmer- that's not hurting.

Looking forward to the indulgence does anyone know the calorie count in homemade oatmeal raisin cookies?

Ok guys keep on going

Week 4 pic

Day23

Sqeezed in the workout late tonight- today felt more like a maintanenance session rather than anything particularly dynamic- enjoyed the pull-downs.

Food was good except I forgot my carbs for lunch and had to settle for some thin white pitta rather than the brown seed-filled goodness that I had lined up. My wife very kindly made a very good roast chicken with no salt but lots of garlic and herbs for dinner - which i fully enjoyed my 90g of, but I need some carbs.

Going to use the gym at work tomorrow- should be good.

Day 22

New week, new work-outs , new diet. Diet numbers moving down, work-out numbers going up. 1st day  went alright. The creep and the plank should keep the exercise front interesting. Did my exercises while watching Scotland lose to France at least I was sharing their pain. Skipping was a bit sticky today, lots of stop starting, other stuff fine.

Food started well with my regular poached egg, tomatoes and rye toast- this is proper breakfast,lunch was adventurously taken out, in perhaps Sharjahs best- and admittedly only Japanese restaurant- had v nice Teriyaki salmon with only a dribble of sauce, some good edamame, dipped into some v good kimchi and had a bowl of miso - is this a good or a bad thing- it tasted like a good thing, which makes me think it must be a bad thing- can anyone confirm the PCP goodness of miso?  I was guessing at quantities and suspect that I wnt over on protein and under on veg- surprise surprise. Dinner is now carb free but i kept the Scottish theme going by using up 70g of veg on mash potato, as Patrick mentioned potato is a bona fide vegetable, this went well a small steak and some steamed veg.
So overall I think i might have been straying a little from the path today but it felt alright.

Hope everyone else is getting on with getting on.

Day 20 - Aaadrian

Been quite on the blogging front-but happy to report that diet and exercises are going just about to plan apart from a couple of nights where i've been working out at almost midnight. The work-outs are going fine with the exception of lunges- my bogie exercise.  The diet is going ok I'm finally the proud owner of a set of digital scales. I'm still trying to find things which I can cook that are PCP friendly but can then be added to to make them acceptable to 2 small boys. Had chicken pasta last night with brocolli and steamed red peppers and have to admit to a teaspoonful of pesto too.  That seemed to keep everyone quite happy.

Skipping is generally fine but calves are feeling a little heavy for the first 100 or so. If we're at 900 now what sort of numbers will be be lookin at come April. Still i have to admit the skipping makes me feel a little Rocky, which i quite like.

Mercifully , that's all for now.