Hooray for friends, and a movie review.

First off, I have to say that on Friday I was thoroughly impressed by my friends. On two occasions that night, a different friend each time, they kept me on track. First, after the usual Friday Night Magic, a bunch of us decided to stick around and do a draft as practice for Nationals. As a result of an unexpectedly prolonged evening, myself and others found ourselves quite hungry. I had not planned for this and had no food. As I watched many others partake of several ordered pizzas, I started making plans. "Well, if I just have the crust, that's just like bread...right?" and "I could use my indulgence right now...on shitty pizza." My friend Jeremy heard me ask if someone was going to eat their crust and called me out on it saying "isn't that, like, terrible for you?" He was right. And so I stuck to my guns and declined the pizza.

The second time came about because I hadn't yet done my jump ropes for the day, and it was now midnight. I started muttering that I might just skip it, what's one day? My friend Aaron immediately jumped on my case and said no! I had to do 1200 jumps before bed! He was right, and I toughed it out and stuck with it.

Friends rock, even when they're half taunting you to break your routine.

Now, a movie review. I went and saw Transformers II yesterday, which has been getting scathing reviews. I loved it. I used my indulgence for popcorn (nothing wrong with that Sean.) as popcorn at movies is part of the whole package for me. It was delicious. Also, the movie. Now that was an indulgence. So much fun.

I figured out what the critics have been doing wrong. Yes, the character development of the robots was slim to none. Yes, the human characters, while more interesting, spent a lot of time running from explosions. And most of all Yes, the plot was contrived, cheesy, and full of holes. Here's the thing to keep in mind though: So was the plot of every single one of those cartoons. And most other cartoons from that era. And you know what? I loved. You know what I loved about those cartoons? It wasn't the plot, that's for sure.

The plot in those shows, and in this movie, is like a corn chip. It is merely a delivery mechanism for the juicy, sweet, spicy, filling salsa. The only thing that those old cartoons needed to have happen for myself and other grown up children to enjoy them again, is they needed to look better. I feel pretty confident that this movie is exactly what I would expect if all my friends and I had grown up into film makers and said "hey, we can remake our old cartoons, but this time with cooler graphics, the robots can swear and kill each other, and there can be hot chicks in it too! How can it not be awesome!!!"

And awesome it was. So all the critics out there berating the movie for a lame excuse for a plot... just pretend you are 8 years old again. Then you might get it. It doesn't need to be deep. It just needs to be cool.

Workout progress.

Got a full morning work out in for the first time in about a week. It was a little hard to get motivated, but once the jump ropes were done I sort of accidentally started the rest of the work out. I just sort of moved from one to the other without really paying attention. Still, the workout was tough. Here's a run down of how it went, since I haven't done an exercise report yet.

Squats were fine, those are old hat now.

Rowing was similar.

Pushups: it blows my mind that I can do 2 full sets of 10 real pushups now. Crazy! I had to go onto my knees halfway through the third set and for the fourth set though.

Double Katana: This was tough. Like, borderline impossible tough. I actually found I could only do two when I was actually standing on the band. So I used the door mount at around mid-calf height and found that this made the exercise doable, but even so I couldn't quite complete the second two sets. So i did a fourth half set.

Shoulder Fly: Tough but doable. 3 x 12 reps.

V-Sits: After the first 3 or 4, each sit-up was like a punch to the gut. They totally knock the wind out of me in a similar fashion. I get sort of stuck exhaling until maybe a second or two after I'm horizontal again, then it's a purely reflexive long deep inhale. I also feel these in my lower back a lot more than other ab workouts we were doing. I think this is what causes the wind to get knocked out of me.

I had no idea that more core muscles were so week. I don't know if these sit ups should suck so much, but it definitely feels like they are effective.

Also, I really like that jump rope has become almost meditative for me. I get a nice even burn in my calves and thighs, but I don't get winded the way I did when I started. If you had told me when we started at just 250 jumps a day that I would eventually bang out 1000+ like it was nothing, I would have called you crazy.

Some General Thoughts

When this project started, the workouts were tough, but not nearly the beating they've become in the last week. Where once they left me feeling invigorated and pumped, now I tend to finish up as a puddle of Jello. Especially Planks. That shit is tough. I had no idea my core was so weak. I would say I hope those get easier, but knowing Patrick, he'll switch us to something even harder the moment it starts to become "not so tough."

Keeping up with food has also been a challenge. I've been successful, pretty much across the board, but it's hard to find the motivation to not just make the same things each day. I guess mostly, I'm blown away by how much I have to plan ahead to be able to eat the right things. Gone are the days of just saying to myself "I think I want X" and then going out to eat it.

However, it makes basic life a little more challenging, and a little more satisfying at the same time. It reminds me very much of Peace Corps in that way.

Dice and Badasses

After Patrick's recommendation two days ago that we use some sort of counting method that's not just keeping our sets in our head, I decided to use one of my primary geek tools to do the job. So pulled out a 10 sided die (or a d10 in the proper parlance) and rotated it to the appropriate number after each set. It was great, though not ideal for a few reasons.

1) Sometimes it takes me a while to find the next number. Sometimes as much as 15 seconds. That's just annoying.

2) It is small and easily rolls to the wrong number.

3) It is small and not terribly satisfying to denote a completed set.

So last night while I was at the local game shop for a Magic tournament, I picked up this baby:

You can see my computer mouse on the left there for some scale. This is a d20, but it's big, heavy, and the numbers are sequential. And I love the fact that I am using the ultimate nerd object in an activity so rarely associated with geekery.

Also, I want to share with you the true inspiration for my PCP, since Sean was kind enough to tell us the story of Rufus. I don't have any pictures or videos for you, but a passage from one of my favorite books, Snow Crash. If you are at all a fan of cyberpunk then you need to read this book. The main character is a sword fighting, computer hacking badass named Hiro Protagonist. This passage is just after he meets the main villain, Raven, and really nails the thought process that lead me to PCP:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

For me, those thoughts didn't end at 25.

Some quick boosts.

The other day I was doing my jump ropes in the parking lot behind my apartment, which is shared with the bicycle shop next door. My landlord (who also owns the bicycle shop) came out of the store and as he was leaving shouted to me "Your too fit!" I laughed lots.

Last night, as I was jumping rope again (same parking lot) I turned around to rotate the 10 sided die I use to count my sets (a gamer through and through) I was startled to realize I had an audience. 4 of the neighbor kids and their friends were all gathered on the neighbor's back porch and were watching me. They started asking me why I was jumping rope (the answer being so that I would be super healthy) and if it was hard. They were impressed by how many I was doing and offered to help keep count. They were probably all like 6-8 years old. It was pretty freakin' awesome to see the way they were clearly impressed. I love kids.

Today my roommate ordered chicken wings from Wings Over Burlington. I seriously used to order wings like once a week. It was bad. They are so delicious though. Anyway, I turned away to go up and finish my workout just as the roommate who ordered wings started saying things like "Oh, I could do it..." to the other roommate and as I rounded the stairs I heard one of them say, "Yeah, but that's some impressive discipline." It made me feel pretty badass.

Bottom line, we may not look different yet, but people notice.

Deviations

So last night, after I finished 3rd in my magic tournament, I was invited out to dinner with a bunch of my friends (including the tournament winner). While I had packed a lunch for the tournament, I had not planned this far ahead. Never one to be antisocial I joined them. We went to a Mexican restaurant and I figured "Hey, tacos are basically just some meat, veggies, and a carbohydrate container...I'm pretty good at eyeballing my grams now and I can just go easy on the cheese.

Well we went, I declined the margarita, and did not partake of the chips and salsa despite being ravenous at this point (waaaaaay to salty). I ordered pretty much standard tacos with chicken and a side of rice. Once it arrived it was clear to me that this was clearly not really good PCP food. Still, I was starving, and if I didn't eat now, it was going to be a while before I could get home and cook myself some food. So I ate what I considered to be enough to fill my dietary needs and no more. This left maybe a third of the food on the plate.

What really struck me, was how unimpressed I was by the dish. Everyone was saying this was the best Mexican food in Vermont (A claim which I give to Bernie's in Montgomery Center anyway) but After the first bite or two, the flavor seemed kind of, overdone? I don't really know how to explain it. But honestly, by about halfway through, I think broiled chicken and steamed veggies sounded more appetizing. Also, as we left, I noticed that I felt fuller than after a PCP meal, but less satisfied. I felt heavy. The food clearly did not sit as comfortably as one of my own, extremely unexciting, meals. It actually wasn't until I got home and started doing my workout for the day that it felt like any of that overstuffed feeling was starting to go away.

All in all it was a very interesting experience and I'm kind of glad I slipped up a little, cause really, I think it makes dining out like I used to less tempting.

A lot of eggs.

Workout today was good. 900 is a lot of jump ropes. I've been trying to break it down into sets of 200 instead of just 100 as that seems to make it go by a little faster. I can get through the first set usually without any trips. After that though, depends on how tired/eager I am. Somewhere around jump 400 I start to feel the burn in my calves, which incidentally, are already noticeably more defined than pre PCP.

The rest of the workouts are pretty smooth now. Not that I mean they are easy, they still burn like hell, but I feel like I have a good idea of what I'm doing, and I get a pretty constant burn through all of them. I bought a 5lb resistance band to do the davinci's and shoulder raisesas my 15lb one that I bought first, I couldn't even get one rep up to the appropriate height. I still use the heavier one for rowing/ovations/curls though. Speaking of which, the outside curls made that little bump on my elbow pop again. I found that if I just don't release the arm quite all the way down, it's fine. This also actually keeps the muscles more heavily engaged the whole time, so is probably better anyway. Later today I plan to install my new pull up bar, so I can start doing real pull ups.

As I was perusing my various Magic strategy sites after my workout (trying to play at the obscene standards that I hold myself to takes a lot of time outside the game as well) I stumbled across an interesting article. This appears to be the launch of a new column that I will probably follow quite eagerly. What struck me about this article is that it absolutely nails what I love about gaming, and why I feel it is relevant to far more than just my leisure hours.

One of the things that you'll notice is that he compares Magic, and games in general, to other meditative activities, such as yoga, as something that "stills the writhing mind." This is absolutely true for me. When I play magic, that's all I'm doing. My mind is not focused on any of my outside stresses, and is completely absorbed in playing the best game of magic I can play. This also happens to me in other games. When I play a fighting game that I know well (the best example for me is Soul Calibur II on Game Cube) my mind is almost completely blank. All the combos and maneuvers I execute are no longer coming from conscious thought and execution, that would be too slow to respond, but rather from some deeper intuition that does not take the time to verbalize itself in my mind. That is to say, there is no inner monologue, I am just in the game. This must be what people talk about when they refer to being "in the zone."

My point is that you should all at least look at this article because for me a lot of the things it points out, I see manifest when I am doing my workouts. I think I am also already seeing the effects of PCP in heightening my mental magic game. This weekend there is a sealed (that is you get a bunch of packs to build your deck from) Grand Prix Trial to earn some byes for Grand Prix Boston later this summer. I'll let you all know how it goes and if I think PCP helped me at all.

Also, I might finally be getting tired of eggs. They're still fine, but I'm nowhere near as excited to eat them as I was. 5 a day is a lot.

Hungry again and weird elbow bumps.

The beginning of this week the exercises were definitely a challenge. Today though, man did I feel the burn. A fair number of the exercises I couldn't get more than the minimum number of reps on all but the first set. Totally intense, but man did I feel like a badass at the end of it.

Switching to the real pushups made me notice something interesting. During college, I dislocated my elbow. For a good long while I couldn't fully extend it, but now I just can't lock it. That and it healed with some extra bone on the outside of the joint end of my lower arm. A few weeks ago I gave it a good solid bump and noticed a visible bump that I couldn't decide if it was new or not, but it was slightly moveable. Well, doing the full pushups, my arms kind of naturally rotate a little bit, and when they do, that bump catches and then pops back into the join. Not painful, but holy crap does it feel odd. If I focus and don't let my arms rotate so much, it doesn't do that. Also, all of this means that my left elbow tends to stiffen up a lot quicker than my right during the exercises.

A week ago, my diet seemed insanely huge. Today, my dinner of lean steak, baked potato, and steamed zuccini left me still wanting more. I guess that means my metabolism is getting suitably ramped up. It's hard to find time at work to get my morning and afternoon snacks in though, since I only get one half hour lunch break. On the days I get up super early and get my workout done in the morning I just eat my snack when I get to work, and eat the other before I head home. Other days though, I have to kind of grab bites of it here and there. I've started keeping a bottle of that Kefir drinkable yogurt stuff so I can get my yogurt portion quickly, and I'm pretty good at sucking down a hard boiled egg in under a minute. Still, bits and bites over the course of the morning seems to be the way to do it.

This post is kind of rambly now, so I'll sign off for now. But yeah, rock on everyone! Feel the burn!

Temptation

In the last three days people have been brought in cake, donuts, and now cookies to snack on. I really want a cookie. They are mint milano. I will resist though.

Added Benefits.

Several months ago I got turned on to this financial monitoring service called mint.com by one of my coworkers. I've been using it for some time now to track where my spending goes. If you haven't checked it out before I highly recommend that you do (www.mint.com). Among other helpful things, it will automatically generate these nifty little graphs and charts of where your money goes, as it automatically categorizes all your purchases (though you can change them if it gets them wrong).

Anyway, my point is that I was poking around today and notice something entertaining about my food expenditures for the last month.

Well, first let me show you what my average food spending looked like pre PCP:

Nothing I would consider too unreasonable for someone living in more or less the bustling metropolis of their state. Though I should point out that the alcohol portion is grossly underrepresented as this did not account for anything paid for in cold hard cash, just credit/debit card purchases. Alcohol should have been probably atleast twice that. Still, about half my spending was on groceries, the other half eating out. Nothing too outrageous, I always thought.

Now look at my food spending so far this month, all post PCP:

Holy crap what a difference. Almost my entire food budget spent on groceries to do my own cooking. And in this case the alcohol is probably spot on, as I think I only went to the pub once during the first week. Also, it looks as though my overall food budget (counting booze) will be lower than average. This is not what I expected with the huge quantities of food I've been shoveling in my face hole, 'specially with buying some type of meat almost daily to keep up with the protein requirement. All one of the nice side effects of PCP I guess.

Also, this project has actually gotten me cooking reasonably often for the first time since Peace Corps really. My excuse was always that's it's hard to just cook for yourself, but when you're eating like a family of four, that just goes out the window. Tonight I had cajun catfish with steamed spinach and a baked potato. There's extra spinach and potato in the fridge for tomorrow's meals, so all I have to do is pick up another chunk of animal for dinner and I'm set. Did I mention that I am going through almost a dozen eggs every two days ( 4 whites and 1 whole egg). Crazy. I'm digging it though. All this food I'm eating sits really well, unlike when I used to eat like 2 slices of pizza and follow it up with a few beers and some fries at the pub only a couple hours later.

Also I bought dates at the local coop today. Dried dates were always one of my favorite snacks in Niger and I hadn't had them since I've been home. They are super expensive here in Ameriki, but man are they as good as ever. Those may have to become a weekly or biweekly treat.

Stuff.

I slept in today. I didn't intend to. I woke up to my backup alarm at 6:30 (I usually can wake up a few minutes before my itunes alarm at 6:00), I hit the snooze button, and then I woke up again at 8:00. This has happened a couple of times in the last week. I think my body is basically forcing me to get enough sleep. On all occasions I had stayed up until about 1 or 2, and that just wasn't going to work. Kinda funny how the body will over ride all of your own intentions if it knows better. Anyway, it meant I was kind of in a rush today to get my food together, and had to put off the workout until the evening. I'm still not sure if I like working out in the morning or after work better.

Also, today I bought two things for my PCP, a pull up bar (to be installed tomorrow) and an ipod shuffle. As the jump rope counts get higher and higher I find myself wanting to be able to listen to podcasts or music. However my workout shorts have no pockets, and I hate the silly armbands I would have to get for my ipod touch. So, I bought a shuffle today to just clip on the bottom of my t-shirt. It'll be great when I bike around town and stuff too actually. Plus, hey, new gadget!

Woo!

Today I got through the first 200 jumps without miss! I did stop for about 15sec after the first hundred, more so I didn't lose count than because I was winded. The last 2 sets of 200 were a lot harder though and took a bit more willpower to get through.

Last night I went to a BBQ/birthday party with some friends of mine. It was the first time I'd been to a social event like that since being on the actual diet. Turns out, the average potluck bbq has a lot of stuff we can eat. I was able to have a sizable grilled chicken breast, and plenty of veggies in various salads. There was also plenty of bread products to choose from for my carbs.

I got some strange looks when I was offered a beer and declined. I'm known to be quite the social drinker and it was something new for my friends to see me turning down beer after beer. Still, I've been in that situation before, and it's interesting to notice how much less people tend to drink with just a single person of influence like that.

Slog, slog, slog.

Wow, Patrick's email last night was spot on. Definitely hit a low point this morning. Well, it sort of started yesterday. I decided not to do my jump ropes in the morning yesterday. Just couldn't bring myself to get out there and do it. So I did the strength stuff and called it good. Before I knew it it was 11:30 and I still hadn't jumped. So I got out there in the rain and pounded out my 650.

This morning, woke up with a bit of a headache and really didn't want to do anything. But I did the mule thing, kept my head down, and got it done. Everything was just a little off today. First 100 jumps were fine but after that I had trouble getting through more than 20 without tripping up. It's amazing how lack of motivation can really effect your performance like that. I'd been getting good enough to get through as many as 200 without error.

Still, between Patrick's email, and reading everyone's posts, I'm able to keep pushing through. I'm already noticing some changes. Meals still look like a lot of food, but I am finding that I am hungry again by the next one now. It's a lot of food, but clearly I am using it. Also, talking to people about it helps a lot. Most of my friends just seem sort of amused that I am doing this to myself, but a couple seem genuinely intrigued and seem to be motivated to resume/continue their own fitness efforts as a result. That makes it easier to keep going.

On being full.

I've only been awake for about 3 hours and I feel like I'm already being forced to think about my next food intake (morning snack). With a 3 meal + 3 snack meal plan, I basically am eating roughly every 2-3 hours. This is not unusual to me, as I normally start to feel hungry about 3 hours after a meal. But I'm eating so much with each meal that really, I don't feel hungry by the time the next rolls around. It's like the meals are just frequent enough that my usual snacking out of habit (as opposed to out of hunger) is preempted. I'm all ready eating by the time my body gets bored and decides I should eat for the hell of it.

That said, I don't feel gorged or anything. I don't have that Thanksgiving "please god no more food" feeling. I don't feel sluggish, or lethargic. If anything I would describe how I feel as just "dense." I feel solid. Between the muscle building exercises and a pretty full diet, I feel like there's a lot of quality in the space that I occupy.

The First Test

As I have mentioned, I got a real taste of the kind of willpower this project is going to require this weekend. Two of my dear friends got married, and I was honored to be one of the groomsmen. Before I discuss the temptations I faced, let me first point out that I look damn good in a kilt.

Weddings. Like any American celebration, one of the key elements is food and drink. Lots of it. Being at the end of week 1 of PCP and still on the half diet, I was full of trepidation. I have never been so mindful of every bite in my life. Presented with an entire afternoon of non stop food, wave after wave coming from the kitchen, the hardest part is just maintaining a concept of how much you have eaten, thus far. Being a special occasion and all, I allowed myself some flexibility, but tried to keep focus and not just eat everything I could.

While there is no way I ate as little as I had been eating thus far, I think I did an impressive job of not giving in to the constant flow of food. I only made one trip to the buffet line, and made a conscious effort to take small amounts of each thing. However much I put on my plate that looked reasonable, I would take one scoop/slice/piece/whatever less. I also tried to space out my consumption. I had one or two appetizers when I arrived at the reception, then stopped. Maybe two hours later we had the meal proper and I had only one plate. I then let the cake sit on my table for a good long while before I finally dove in, and even then, I didn't finish the slice.

It was all delicious of course. I did not let my reduction of quantity impair my taste buds at all. If anything it was more delicious since I knew with each morsel I was not going to get a refill. So I enjoyed it while I could. Also, while the diet may not have been a 100% success, I did take my jumprope and pushup bars and was able to get my workout in every morning even though I was far from home. I felt really good about this and got some rather startled looks from some of my earlier to rise friends. They've never known me to be an athletic person.

In the end it was wonderful, challenging, and satisfying. Being able to move about at the after party without being overwhelmingly full like everyone else gave me a little twinge of pride. Though I was absolutely amazed when people at the hotel started ordering pizzas and hamburgers in the still fairly early evening. These were they same people I had seen going up to the buffet 2 or 3 times and piling in the appetizers in the beginning. My stomach definitely wanted more food, but it was also certainly not hungry in the way it is if I skip lunch or push dinner back an hour. Much like when I stayed voluntarily sober for 9 months and really started to see how much my peers drank, with my burgeoning PCP eyes I feel like I am really seeing how americans eat, and it's kind of frightening.

My lunch is enormous!

Lunch blows me away with how large it is. Yesterday I got caught out shopping and (I must confess) purchased a veggie wrap at the local sandwich shop. I ate half out and the other half when I got home. Upon weighing the remaining half it seems to me that the whole thing was about right, if mostly a rough estimate.

Today however I set about making my own sandwich. In case you hadn't guessed, sandwiches are kind of my staple lunch. You just can't fuck em up. Anyway, I weighed out my ingredients and realized I would have to make two sliced bread sandwiches to fit it all in. Two!

This is my half way completed lunch. Jebus that's a lot of food. It would certainly look like less if it were in the form of, say, a single foot long sub. I'm going to have to invest in some grinder rolls for my sandwiches I think.

Part of my shopping excursion yesterday was to buy a new bathroom scale, also. I was most surprised to find that post workout I was registering a mere 137lbs. That's 10 lbs lighter than what I was getting on the scale at work. Granted I was fully clothed, but I did subtract about 6 or 7 lbs to take that into account. So, either I radically underestimate the amount of clothing I wear... or I have already shed between 6-10 lbs already. I have no idea where that weight would have come from if I have lost it, but there you go. I asked Patrick if this should change my suggested diet at all. I'll find out when he wakes up I'm sure. Gotta wait for Japan time.

Slooooooww Doooooowwwwn! -Mother Nature

Ok I swear some time soon (read: next 24 hours or so) I will slow down enough to actually write a real post. Cause I definitely think the wedding experience is worth sharing. But for now I'll start with what I had for dinner.

I went with an old staple from my Peace Corps experience. I cooked a ton of pasta and stuck it in the fridge, so I can just measure out how much I need for my carb portion. Then I measured out my fresh veggies (today it was onion, peppers, and tomatoes) and sauteed them in a tiny tiny amount of olive oil. Once they were almost done, I added some canned tuna (it's just fish and spring water in the can and one can fills my protein req). The great thing about this is between the tomatoes and the tuna, you don't really need any spices at all. And it's quite tasty. I recommend it. And it's good cold for lunch the next day.

If you want a PCP challenge...

Go to a wedding. I just got back from being in one of my best friends' wedding all weekend. I kept up with the exercises and made a valiant effort at staying on diet. I am tired now. More on the actual experience of the weekend later.

For Good or for Awesome

Last night when I mentioned that I was on a half diet and explained the PCP to one of my good friends, he looked at me funny and asked what I was conditioning for. I told him that I was conditioning for Awesome!

Riding the Edge

Over the past 3 days, I have eaten only enough in a sitting to make me feel not hungry. By only enough I mean precisely enough. No more, no less. Just to the point where I don't need food anymore. Sure I might still want food, but my body is basing this craving on old habits.

The result is I spend most of the day with almost that feeling you get when you've just worked for several hours and suddenly you remember that you haven't eaten in a while. You weren't hungry until that moment, but man food sounds good. It's a good feeling, because you are already feeling the anticipation of how good that first bite of a sandwich is going to taste, and then there's many bites after that. Normally when I feel this is when I sit down and inhale half my meal before I even know what I'm doing. Then I slow down and fill up.

What I have discovered is that knowing that I will not fill up changes the way that I eat, or at least changes my mental approach to eating. I've been more or less a practicer of active mindfulness for a while now. This was something new. As I bit into my half a tuna sandwich at lunch today, I consciously slowed down because I knew there was no more. If I just leapt to it I would be done eating in just a couple of minutes.

So I stopped, and bit down slowly. I carefully chewed the morsel of food, tasting the creamy mayonnaise, the sweet relish, and the oh so faint metallic taste of the fish. I swallowed. The feeling of that food sliding down my throat was so satisfying. I felt it all the way down. As corny as it sounds, riding this edge of hunger where I know that I have eaten enough, but my body with it's old habits craves more, it is not unlike riding the edge of an orgasm. The sensations were the same, if not equally intense. But I have that same longing to just finish it, I just want to eat until I am full! At the same time, the feeling of getting there is so delicious that I don't want it to end. Before the finish I am so beautifully aware of everything. Afterwards I know that I will not care about any of this anymore.

I may be eating less, but I think that I am really enjoying my food a lot more. This heightened mindfulness of eating is exactly the sort of awakening experience I love. It happened so many times over the course of my Peace Corps experience that I got hooked. I was expecting the PCP to be a similar experience, but I did not expect it this soon. It makes the hard moments (like resisting the bag of oreos at my friends house last night) feel all the better. This is life worth living!

Day 2, getting on track

Holy crap I feel like I just don't stop moving lately. As of about the middle of last week I went from nothing happening to everything moving. I love it! It kind of feels like after the better part of a year of life moving at a trickle, I'm suddenly rushing downstream towards who knows what, but it's exciting, a little unnerving, and all very very good!

Just to give an idea of what I have going on right now (most of which I will write about at length at some point):

-Just moved into a new apartment.

-Maintaining connection with a very strange, sounds to good to be true, person who's trying to get me to work on a global social justice project (this will take some explanation as it's just too weird how it's panning out).

-Trying to apply to grad schools/looking for better jobs (like maybe one that's actually associated with a career)

-Working on qualifying for the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour

-Peak Condition Project

The last two are my number 1 and 2 priorities this summer. But yeah, all this while also working full time. Crazy.

This morning's work out went splendidly. Did the jump-ropes in the parking lot behind my house and got significantly fewer odd looks from passing locals. I did notice that yesterday and today after the 3rd set I start to get kind of a headache type feeling in the right side of my head. Always the same spot. It goes away literally like 5 min after I stop, but it's still annoying as it makes the last sets a little unpleasant.

Lunges, pushups, sit-ups were all as easy/hard as I expected. That is, easy at first, but getting those last one or two are a push. I worry that I might not have found quite the right pushup position yet as I still mostly feel it in my arms. Patrick, any thoughts on this? Will it get better when I get some bars?

Goals for the next day or two are to actually bookmark/follow people's blogs in some sort of organized fashion so I can properly participate in the community aspect. Community is a huge part in everything I do. I find more and more that if I can't share something with others, I quickly loose interest.

Also, you may find it interesting to check out my blog from my peace corps experience: peacebass.blogspot.com. I've made a couple of posts since I've been back but i'd say it's mostly a dead blog now. Anyway, check it out.

Day 1 in the bag

Whew, even though there's not a whole lot of pressure yet, just the declaration of "Day 1" really put me in a whole different mental place. I was just very much aware of how my physical self felt all day.

I tend not to eat a lot in one go anyway, so the idea of eating half of "not a lot" was kind of unnerving. I rarely eat a whole plate of food when I eat out anyway, so mostly today I made a conscious effort to eat a portion of what I would eat to feel full. In this way I just ate until I was "not painfully hungry." Which is kind of what I usually do, just more frequently than I did today. Maintaining a baseline feeling of mild hunger has really brought me to a very mindful physical state. I look forward to seeing how this progresses as mindfulness has been a huge part of my life since I came back from Peace Corps last year.

The exercises today were tough, but doable. Very similar to the sort of workouts I started doing in Peace Corps, minus the jump rope. Coupled with my daily uphill both ways bike ride to work, and the yoga I did yesterday, I feel pretty pumped. Hope that feeling keeps up.

Well, time to post a pick and make some dinner, I'll try to write a post tomorrow covering some of my reasons for doing this project. G'night all.