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.