The Whinging Wall

Right, to date, I've had ups and downs, some pain, some frustration and a lot of poor motivation, and this has translated into procrastination on many occasions. However, I have tried to do everything exercise-wise throughout the PCP.

This weekend I hit a motivational wall. It probably didn't help that for most of yesterday I felt nauseous and spent a couple of hours shivering from something but I just couldn't face the exercises. My right shoulder is still giving my gip which makes me dread all the things that support my weight through the shoulders. Plus Sydney has decided that Spring wasn't such a good idea and to try Winter again. And a bunch of mates were around last night having drinks before going out for the night. (how's my litany of petty whinging going?)

This morning I did my overdue quarterly taxes in the and prepared a batch of Shaona's tandoori chicken (what's happened to Shaona by the way - are you still with us, dear?) but eventually convinced myself to do the skipping by mid-afternoon. Started badly, but I picked up the pace and got it done. I didn't progress into the main work out though.

Instead, I visited my friends, Pete and Liz and their delightful daughter, Stella and caught up on the last few weeks. All day I felt shit about the encroaching workout - and felt horribly unmotivated. Finally, though, at 8pm I started and it was actually okay. Sure, my shoulder hurt, and the dips weren't deep enough and I hit failure too quickly and I'm a weak little pansy. But I did it and I feel much more positive again. Truth be told, I've been in a funk and not feeling great about my own progress, but I think I just need to talk myself back to a good state.

We have 2 weeks left on this project. Yes, it's tough; yes, it's a little stale and boring, and yes, it feels like my body is betraying me at times.

So I need to use all the great slogans everyone has thrown at me and dig deep for one last 14 day push and get the motherfucker done.

To inthinity and beyond!

Peak Condition Envy

It's great to see how far we've all come in the last 10 weeks, but if you really want to burst your bubble, try going to see a Cirque du Soleil show.

This was the major mistake I made with my life yesterday evening. Those people are incredible - the sheer discipline it must take to get in the kind of shape where you can do a plank on one hand without a fucking floor under your feet is phenomenal; to chuck other acrobats around like they're confetti; and let's not even get started on the contortionist or the trapeze people.

Anyway, this is about personal goal setting. Maybe I'll set mine to be about 1/5th as fit & strong as one of those dudes in a year.

Oh, and at least they have clowns too to remind us of how much shitter we could be too!

Missed Hake

For some reason I decided I would treat myself this afternoon to a processed drink. Granted, it was calorie-free Coke Zero, so not likely to do much in terms of calories.

It was pretty much undrinkable. Yes, there were some overtones of something resembling fruit, but they were swamped by a saltiness I wasn't expecting (salt is not listed as an ingredient) and left a bitter chemical aftertaste I couldn't stomach. I got about 50ml in and gave up. It maybe be worth breaking the rules for an odd alcoholic beverage, but Coke Zero is a waste of indiscipline.

Oh, so 'fessing up, I have had the drinking day I wrote at length about, another night where I had a few vodka-sodas (though I feel I made up somewhat by going for a 3.5 hour bush walk the next day) and two other evenings where I had a glass of red wine ... well, I couldn't finish one of the glasses. This has not been an alcohol free PCP but it has been mostly abstemious.

Max the Envelope!

Has anyone else had any slogans going through their heads more lately? It's funny how they pop into your head whether from an ironic source or a serious one and I guess they do actually help.

Of course there's the PCPer's favourite, "JFD".

From a personal trainer I once had (whose actual nickname was (I'm not kidding) Steve Machine) there's "Last set, best set" - great for pushing out those last annoying reps.

Another one from a great trainer was "Replace 'should' with 'must'".

There's a whole selection from Ranier Wolfcastle:

Now step over to the abdominator and I will shout slogans at you:

Push, harder, Go past the max! Reach over the top! Master your ass! Overshoot the extreme! Max the envelope!! 

Blast through the burn, ride the zone.

 And of course, my current favourite: "Honey badger don't give a shit!"

What motivational slogans help you get to and through your workouts?

A Leaahrrning Computah!

It's been a while since I presented any new data and I'm sure you've all been hungering for an update (except Coops, obviously). Well, here it is, kiddies - a map of some pretty aggressive weight-loss. I'm down pretty much 11kg since day 1 (or 10kg since day 0 which represents 1kg per week). This is about as much as I would want to lose per week and, while it has involved an amount of sacrifice and hard work, it hasn't been that bad - at least not from the diet side.

Yes, giving up the beer was tough at first, but needed to be done anyway given the regularity of my drinking. The food, on the other hand, was not that much of a shock. The first week, when we went to half-portions was by far the toughest. I genuinely felt like I was going to keel over at times. Since the nutrition plan started on week 2 though, I've rarely felt hungry (and only when I've been delayed in eating for some reason).

Here's where today's graph is up to. Pretty nice, huh?

But there's more to talk about in today's post. Remember, the Noel-inator is a Learrhnning Computah. My "detailed files" constitute a longitudinal study of my own weight loss efforts. First off, here's the first time I ever tracked such an effort in 2005. I was starting from a worse place than I was at the start of PCP and my long-term efforts revolved around cardio training (started on the stair-master and progressed to running a few times a week). Food plan was 3 meals a day, trying to be healthy most of the week - but alcohol wasn't cut out. I did lose a shed-load of weight, but it took much, much longer than on PCP. Notably, my muscle mass also suffered. Right now I'm 74kg and (if the scales are to be trusted) about 10kg of that is fat. When I was 74kg in this graph, I was 12kg fat (using the same scales). That's actually quite a big difference and a massive apparent  advantage of the PCP approach.

By 2007 I had put back on quite a bit of this weight though I was much more active than I had been in 2005. A friend and I gave ourselves a challenge to lose some weight and the element of competition (or at least mutual accountability) probably helped me achieve faster results. I lost 9Kg in 4 months. However, I still drank at weekends and really just managed to achieve the loss by doing a lot of cardio and most likely eating too little. Looking back on it I felt quite lethargic and moody during this process. By the end people commented that I looked a bit gaunt rather than saying I looked good.

Notably, my fat/non-fat ratio was as good or better than during PCP. This is especially surprising given I started at 20% at 80Kg (for PCP I started at 20% but at 85Kg). In any case, my body definitely looks healthier and better this time around - more muscle tone and better skin, etc.

So - what are the big long-term lessons from all of this? Here's my summary:

1. No matter what anyone says, graphs are a great motivational tool! Incremental changes can be hard to see, but being able to look back at a dataset and see where you started and where you've got to really helps the push ... if you're a giant nerd like I am.
2. I am a fucking idiot for ever putting weight back on after putting in so much effort to lose it. Note these graphs stop abruptly when I reach my goal. I need to make fitness a part of my life constantly and not just something I do intensely periodically. And, of course, this isn't just about weight control but general fitness too. I saw the other participant from the 2007 effort about a year later and, for shame, I realised I had put back on a bunch of weight while he had improved further. He had incorporated an approach to well-bring into his life in a much more healthy and consistent manner than I had (mind you, he has also become a personal trainer, so now he has a professional interest in remaining fit too!).
3. PCP does offer much more than just weight-loss. That said, I feel better, I didn't suffer the mood-swings of yore in getting to where I am now and - even if this thing was just about weight-loss - it has been much more effective on that simple measure too.

With just over three weeks to go, I may not quite get back to my leanest or fittest point in my life, but I also won't see the completion of the project as an end in itself. Rather, I see it as a springboard to more and bigger goals. I'll certainly be taking Patrick's advice and cutting back the intensity after day 90, but I'm already ready to take on another challenge after I get back from my holidays.

So, now, time to get the head back down for the last and presumably hardest 3 weeks of the PCP.

PCP Compliant Sex (Arnie's got it all wrong)

I've created a video of PCP Compliant Sex for you all to learn from. Note the strange exercises incorporated and the personalised nutritional advice from Patrick. Don't worry about the final scene - we don't have to do this till the final week.

Enjoy!

Fun Week

Well, I could start by complaining about various failings in my exercise regime, but instead I'd like to bask in the enjoyment of seeing not one but two great concerts last week. The reformed Pulp were in cracking form and Jarvis Cocker is a spindly inspiration of how to throw shapes will into your forties. All the old favourites were out - funny to think I was listening to these 17 years ago.

Elbow presented a very different concert. Live, their music is quite anthemic and yet retains the complexity that makes it, as I thought a few times in the concert, not shit (unlike other anthemic rock bands such as, oh, I dunno, let's say Coldplay - fucking shitty cunting Coldplay - who I hope never to see live, unless equipped with a sniper rifle). Yes, Guy Garvey is not exactly a PCP-like inspiration but his voice is astonishing and I found it hard at first to believe it was emerging from this fat Manc.

These were very buoying events in another cloistered PCP week. I managed to have one beer between both concerts which you could argue is one too many, but it was nice all the same. And now, here we are ending week nine and skating towards the end times.

So, now to the bad bits. Workouts are still showing some troublesome signs.

Skipping is still plagued by trips and stops, but all I can do is immediately reset and restart. I do try to keep to 100 a minute but if I've not done 400 by the end of 4 minutes, will finish them out (obviously if I do more, I do more). I also find myself accelerating for the last 50-60 in the set and in some ways this produces a better rhythm - but for now, it's unsustainable for 4 minutes. I am disappointed with all the stops but I guess if I'm sweating by the end of set 2 and buggered by the end of set 4, I must be doing something right.

For the strength exercises I've noticed a pattern in things I find hard to make progress on. I have a chronic rotator cuff looseness in my right shoulder which tends to cause me pain or screws up my form before I've really failed the target muscle (or so it seems). Most affected are chest dips, tricep dips and if I try to do Kung-Fu sit-ups with an overhand grip, I can hardly stand the pain after about 15 seconds (thankfully I can do a side-grip using some parallel rings). I have yet to complete a full pull-up and apart from being (a) puny and (b) fat I think the bodgy shoulder can again be somewhat implicated in this. Obviously on actual shoulder exercises I notice an imbalance between left and right too, but it's improving.

The other thing I find excruciating is the seated bicycle (but not due to shoulder - more due to these being ri-cock-ulously difficult). Thoughts pass through my head during these like "death cannot come soon enough". Planks are a stroll in the park by comparison. On both of these, I've noticed the fatigue in the thighs from the leg-work the previous day is a factor too.

So, what do I enjoy? Biceps are good. Triceps are decent notwithstanding the shoulder pain mentioned. Push-ups are variable (sometimes I knock out almost all reps on my toes, other times, I fail to knees half-way through the final 2 sets). Ovations look great in the mirror as do all shoulder exercises. It's great in Da Vincis to see a mass of shoulder-muscle gathering up the band. Leg-ups and V-sits are improved dramatically though the 3rd and 4th sets of V-sits are still a bit ragged. Side crunches are too easy which tells me I'm not doing them right. Leg exercises are obviously very hard (especially last few reps of floor jumps and creeps) but doable.

And that's about it. Nutrition plan is going 95% fine. I have the odd lunch out at weekends to pretend I'm a normal person - compliant lunches are easier to attain than any other meal. I don't find myself being hungry very often so have found myself eating an afternoon snack late now and then after forgetting. But I'm trying assiduously to stick to the prescribed quantities of everything. Weight-loss seems to have settled at about 1kg per week, which is awesome. More about that later.