Internet's back.

Also, Lunch:

A little chicken breast, some lightly sauteed vegetables with garlic, basil, and some other tasty spices, and all on a bed of spicy rice. Plus some left over potato.

The system is down.

Just want to let you all know that my Internet has been down since yesterday morning. Eight now I'm just using the wi fi at a local cafe on my iPod touch. Turns out it makes a fine substitute laptop, though obviously not great for long-form writing, so I'll keep this short.

Workouts are going pretty well, though for some unexplainable reason I haven't been feeling wiped out at the end like I was for a while. I think I need to just step up te intensity and push through it a little bit faster. I may be resting a little bit too long. I will keep you all updated, especially when my intarwebs are working again.

I will say it's been kind of nice not having the web in the house though. Gets me back into myself like I was in the peace corps. It's too easy to loose your sense of place when you are connected to the global consciousness.

Fear the daa addiction. It is a real thing.

WTB moar hrs/day. PST THX

(Translation of above WoW trade slang) I would like to buy more hours in the day. Please let me know if you can make this happen. Thanks.

Choice vs Temptation

Today was tough with the unscheduled bouncing from party to party. I feel like I managed to stay on diet for the most part though. All except for two things. I had a very very small amount of strawberry daiquiri (which except for the rum was actually totally PCP safe) and I had a cookie.

I thought long and hard about this cookie. It was a bacon and chocolate chip cookie baked by one of my coworkers. The offering of the cookie in the first place was a catalyst for a conversation about PCP and what it is that I am doing. I explained about my diet and everything, and how there was nothing good in that cookie, nutritionally speaking. Some of my co-workers sympathized and encouraged me to stay on plan. Others saw it as a fun game to try and persuade me to eat the cookie. In a way, I feel like I beat them both.

I did not give in right away to the tempters. Rather I presented many arguments against the cookie and actually resisted temptation the entire time they were vocal. However, later in the party. I chose to eat one cookie. I think that is important that I resisted, and then made the conscious choice to try the cookie. What is the point of getting into peak health if it doesn't mean I can't enjoy the occasional and unconventional treat when it presents itself.

All weekend I have been tempted by BBQ, and greasy fries, and fried dough and such at various July 4th events. All of it called to me. All of it I resisted. But this bacon and chocolate cookie intrigued me enough that I chose this one instance to deviate from the plan and try something new that I had not encountered before. And I only ate one.

Does this count as cheating? Probably. But I feel like I demonstrated the level of control over my food choices that the PCP is about. I think this is what Patrick expects us to get out of our indulgence experiences (Though I already had my indulgence with popcorn at Transformers 2). It's like, after resisting to a point, I was no longer "giving in" but rather "choosing to enjoy" something that I knew was bad for me physically, but made my taste buds extremely happy.

Also, the Daiquiri was made by my boss, so I couldn't refuse totally :-P.

Back Satan!

Update: I sucked it up and did my workout. I resisted the temptation to let myself down by wussing out. Damn you Patrick and your motivational emails. I mean, thank you for helping me not be a lazy bum and crap out on my exercises. I will do the jump ropes after 3rd of July firworks (those are easy and fun and I would not be able to sleep if I missed them).

Vicious cycles.

I really like working out in the morning. I don't feel like I'm squeezing it in, it gets me pumped for the day, it's a peaceful time of day, and it doesn't loom over me all day (not that I don't want to do it, but it lurks as this extra hour of stuff I still have to do before I can sleep). Lately though I've been stuck in this vicious circle where I stay up late for a random reason, which means I sleep a little later, so I can't work out. However, most days of the week, the next chance I get to myself if not until like 10pm or later. So I stay up until midnight or even 1am working out, which means I can't get up early the next day, and so on and so forth. It's kinda sucked.

Well, last night I forgot to take my ADD meds before bed, so it wasn't until 11am that I even came close to getting out of bed. Now clearly my body needed the extra sleep, which is fine. But without my meds I am only capable of moving at the speed of an arthritic slug for about the first hour of my day. Seriously, getting up and taking a crap takes a lot of willpower. So needless to say I did not get to my work out this morning. Now, somehow, I managed to pull or strain something in my neck during the first hour just while eating breakfast/sitting at my computer. I'm going to try and get the jumpropes in (if my neck stops hurting), but I think in the interest of getting myself back on a good cycle I'm going to postpone today's workout and do it on Sunday.

I hate it when I basically scrap a morning like this. I feel like it's the one part of the day I reliably have just to myself. Sleeping in and being super groggy has also thrown off my diet for the day as I basically skipped straight to lunch. All in all, today is not a great day for PCP, but I will find the silver lining and take it as a "whoa, need to reset the cycles" day. Take it easy, and catch up on stuff. I'll try and get all my grams in too, but they may be a little differently distributed, making up stuff with later snacks/meals, etc.

Still here. More to come.

I'm still here and going strong. Fascinating interview on NPR with the guy that Matthew linked from the NYT the other day. I may have to buy his book.

I have a post about some very positive feedback I've gotten lately, but I've been busy. Look for it tonight.