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.