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.