The Peak Condition Project - Patrick Reynolds

Day 125, Finished.

2008-07-23T20:50:00.015+09:00

(This is going to be a long and in-depth post, so by all means, save reading it for an hour when you can settle in and mindfully enjoy the time it takes)

One Year Older

About a year ago, around the time I was turning 28, this video was featured on YouTube.

I smiled and laughed a little but inside I was thinking, "Dude, that's exactly how I feel." I have spent my whole life thinking of myself as a "young person," but as 30 approaches I am forced more and more to the realization that yes, age is happening to me too.

I'm not saying, oh gosh, I'm 29, I'm so old, poor me. It just hits me in the gut sometimes that I too will lose my youth, get aged, and die, and that's a new feeling that I'm still working with.

So, that video in the back of my mind, I decided that before I turned 29 I would do something about the slow slide my body was on towards being overweight and out of shape. I can't reverse the aging process, but I sure as hell can make sure this still-young body lives up to its fullest potential. So, I'm not going to make a song about it, but I made this photo composition. One picture is from July 22, 2008, the other from July 23, 2008.

This photo kind of sums up my philosophy on aging. A birthday is a chance to look into a brighter future, not a bleaker one. As we get older we only gain more knowledge to help us live as well as we can. For example, if I happen to have a free afternoon now, I really use it to do something that makes me happy, whereas the 25 year old me would have wasted it lounging around. And when I'm 35 I'll probably do something even cooler with that time. So although our remaining years decrease, the quality of those years can increase, if we are paying attention to how we are living, rather than how long we've got left.

The Origins of the PCP

I've always been a bit of a contrarian, so I decided last year that upon turning 29 I would be going the opposite direction of most of my peers, whose jobs and responsibilities are gradually leading them to neglect their health. Not only would I be in good shape, I would be in killer shape. As the thought process evolved I realized I needed some kind of target to keep my eye on as I went through this. I had always liked Bruce Lee but had assumed his level of fitness was far beyond a normal person. But one day I was watching some old clips and I noticed that Bruce didn't have a ton of muscle mass, he was just lean as a whippet and strong where it counted. And the thought just occurred to me, "I can do that." Bruce Lee wasn't superhuman. He just stuck to some kind of plan and worked hard. If I could only find that plan!

Just as all of these ideas were simmering in my mind, I met Chen Zhongtao, who lives here in Yokohama and works at an international school above my studio. He's done it all, he studied kung fu since he was a child, and after a tour in the Chinese military he became a policeman and then a police trainer, before meeting his wife and moving to Japan. Chen mostly teaches kickboxing, but I kept pressing him about how to get a Kung Fu style look. What did I have to eat? What exercises did I need to do? I pestered him for about 2 months, until he finally said, "You really want to do this? I can make you a plan. But it's going to be a little hard." That was fine with me. Nothing worth doing is easy. So, on the back of a bank envelope, he wrote my first week's diet. He was right. It wasn't going to be easy.

I knew that if I just haphazardly tried to follow this plan, it would collapse in on itself. I needed some kind of structure. I was going to Kyoto in a week or two, and I noticed that just after my trip was the first day of spring. So I would be well rested, and the first day of spring seemed like a great starting point for a project that was all about growth and living up to your potential. I also noticed that exactly 4 months later would be my birthday. 4 months seemed like enough time to change my body. So there was my scheduling structure. A 4 month, 125 day plan.

Now I needed some kind of social structure to support my project. If I tried to do it all alone there's no way it would work. I could keep a little online diary of my efforts, and maybe a few people in my family would read it. And, I could take a daily photo, and post it online, to keep myself honest and to shame myself into sticking with it!

Now all the plan needed was a name. "In shape", "fit", "lean and mean"... all of these usual phrases didn't encompass the kind of dramatic change I was after. I didn't just want to lose a few pounds, I wanted be as fit as possible. I wanted to be in peak condition. That had a ring to it.

The rest is history. And that history has been painstakingly blogged right here.

I never meant the PCP to involve other people, or to become a book. I never thought something could work so well. I got to a point where I was getting in such good shape that I felt almost a moral obligation to share this plan with others. It's like, if you see a really good movie, you go tell all your friends, "hey, go see such and such, it really moved me." That same kind of impulse was in me, because the Peak Condition Project was having such a huge positive impact on my physique, energy levels, and that all important quality-of-life. To not share it would have been miserly.

At the same time I was getting dozens of emails asking if I could tell people how the PCP worked and if I could "PCP them." But I knew just giving someone the diets and exercises would result in failure. The PCP is a whole package. You have to have the social aspects in place. You have to have a hero to aim for, a community supporting you and holding you accountable. So I decided to take on 3 people, but to try and replicate my experience as much as possible.

You see, a few times a week I was meeting with Chen. He was checking my gains and making small adjustments to my diet and exercises. I wanted the three other PCP participants to get that same "personal trainer" feeling. So we use the blogosphere and Flickr to keep in touch, along with a daily email. And David, Corry, and Sean have been doing great, each of them having a very different but successful experience with this plan. As my project ends I hope everyone will click over to their blogs and follow their progress with as much enthusiasm as you followed mine. And starting soon 6 new people will begin their path towards Peak Condition. 3 international and 3 Japanese participants.

Chen and I have also completed a book version of the PCP which anyone can use at home. It contains everything we've learned about how to have a successful project. We're in the process of looking for a publisher now, so if you have any connections in that area please please (please) get in touch with me.

Ok, so, you've all been waiting for the jumpsuit pictures. Here they are, along with some of the lessons I learned from the Peak Condition Project.

What the PCP taught me.

Anything can be done. You just need 3 things. A plan. The discipline to stick with the plan. And the flexibility to change the plan when need arises.

I learned that I love fruit.

Having a strong, fit body makes a huge difference in daily life. It's like you've grown a set of wings.

Drinking your calories is a dumb way to live. Sodas, mochas, frappachinos, even juices, they all aren't worth the caloric intake. It's much nicer to chew your calories.

Flexibility is not lost with strength gain. If anything, it increases.

Your body wants to be fit and healthy. It's desperate to be like that. Even the smallest encouragements of a healthy diet and some exercise will get it moving towards wellness. It's not an uphill battle.

Keeping a daily blog for 125 days straight is not impossible. There are so many interesting and unusual things happening all around a person that there's always something to talk about.

Bodybuilding really is a sport. I gained a lot of respect for those guys, especially the all-natural ones.

For every fitness plan you find there's another one that will tell you to do the exact opposite. It doesn't really matter, just choose one and stick with it. Changing back and forth will only end in ruin.

Box splits are really, really hard.

The vast majority of the food we eat is spectacular in its unfitness for human consumption. If you stop eating crap you stop feeling like crap. Who would've thunk it!?

Doing something like this brings the best out in people. They get a gleam in their eyes that says, "I can do this!" It's a beautiful thing, that gleam.

4 months is unnecessary to reach Peak Condition. 90 days is plenty.

The kids section has pretty cool clothes.

When you eat right, the people around you eat right. Assuming you care about the people around you, eating right is a supremely loving thing to do for them. You don't have to sign them up or force vegetables down their throat. Just eat right yourself. You'll see what happens.

The entire fitness industry is a scam. You don't need to spend more than 20 dollars to get in the best shape of your life.

What you do need is time. Everyday. This is much harder to come by than money. Which is why the fitness industry is so big, as they promise to deliver results without the investment of time.

Jumpsuits are really easy to move in. I can see why Bruce Lee chose one.

The key to losing fat is not eating less, it's eating more of the right things.

The human body is capable of incredible energy levels, you just have to unlock them.

Even skinny people have a lot of fat inside them. It's just inside the muscle tissue.

95% of the people at a gym have no idea what they're doing. If you're spending a few hours a week working out but you don't look like me, something is wrong. Probably your diet.

The clothing industry mislabels everything so that people don't feel so fat. If you're wearing something that says 32 inch waist your waist is really 34 inches. And that "medium" shirt is really a large. When you get down to a body size that actually mimics what people are supposed to look like, nothing fits anymore.

Peak Condition is a state of mind, not body. The moment I decided I was truly fed up with eating poorly and not looking my best, I was in Peak Condition.

Anyone can do this. Anyone. You can do this.

Closing Thoughts

Finally, I want to end on a kind of serious note here. As you know Bruce Lee was my ideal and my inspiration throughout this project. No one else combined technique, discipline, and philosophy so completely. Bruce Lee was a self-made man. Through his own hard work he transformed himself from a skinny kid in the back alleys of Hong Kong to one of the most recognizable people in the world.

Throughout my project I kept a little Bruce Lee pin in my pocket or bag, and when times were tough, when I wanted to push through a grueling set or was really craving some cheesecake, I'd look at the pin and think, "Every good choice I make is a step towards Bruce, every bad choice I make is a step away." So in a very real sense the spirit of Bruce Lee infused this whole project, and infuses the others' PCPs, and I'd like to thank him, for whatever it's worth to thank a deceased person.

Which leads me to my second point. Bruce Lee should be 68 now. He should be around inspiring us, leading Jeet Kun Do trainings, writing books on philosophy, and kicking ass. But he's not. He's dead. He died when he was 32 years old.

There's a lot of controversy regarding cause of the brain swelling that killed Bruce, but one thing's for certain, his training and rigorous schedule were contributing factors. He had been working hard on two movies, on top of a training regimen that I couldn't even begin to do. His body fat was so low that he was hypersensitive to the drugs they gave him after a collapse the previous week. On top of that cannabis was found in his system as he sought relief from the pressures of fame and the pain of a back injury he suffered while weightlifting years before. And all of that stuff combined to end his life much, much too early.

It's clear to me that Bruce Lee, despite being "the fittest man in the world," was not in Peak Condition. Peak Condition is a matter of balance. Being at your absolute maximum without teetering over the edge into unhealthy overtraining. It's also keeping your schedule free for things you enjoy, keeping your stress levels in check, and choosing a lifestyle that makes you happy, not simply successful. It's having that piece of cake at a friend's birthday party, skipping a training session because you want to continue a good conversation, and realizing when you've achieved enough and dialing back your program.

It's easy to get carried away with this kind of thing. It's easy to suck the fun out of it and mercilessly hold yourself up to impossible standards. I was on the edge a few times, but with good friends who grounded me I kept my perspective and have learned how to live a normal balanced life while maintaining excellent physical condition.

Above the place where I do sit-ups, I put up this picture of Bruce Lee to inspire me. I took it down tonight, because I'm finished with that part of the project. Although I'll never say a bad word about him, I don't want to have the body of Bruce Lee anymore.

I want to have the body of Patrick Reynolds.

(Patrick's Peak Condition Project is finished. But he'll be back with more news and new participants very soon! Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!)

Day 124, What's in the Box? And the Answer is...

2008-07-22T22:24:00.007+09:00

Thanks everyone who cast their vote for what was in the box given to me on Day 78.

You all came up with the suggestions yourselves and I must say I'm really impressed. Have you ever read James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds? The book talks about how in experiment after experiment, a crowd's average guess is always better than a single person, even if that person is an expert. So, if you ask a roomful of people how many jelly beans are in a jar, their collective average answer will always be closer to the correct number than any one person's guess.

Well, let's see how The Wisdom of Crowds worked for my little contest, "What's in the Box?"

Here's the box.

Here's me opening it...

No way, it can't be....

It is! Damn! A Yellow Bruce Lee jumpsuit!

Which is exactly what you all predicted it would be. That's really incredible. Thanks everyone for your guesses. I'm not going to put it on until the project is really over tomorrow, that just wouldn't be right. Check back then for pictures of me in it, and for my final posting of my Peak Condition Project. What a ride!

Day 123, I Know This Great Little Bar...

2008-07-21T21:45:00.006+09:00

I can't believe this! As you remember, on Day 83 I detailed my efforts to find a suitable chin up bar around the Yokohama metropolitan area. The one I found was ok, but it was always populated by kids giving me a hard time, which is cute for, oh, about 45 seconds.

So recently I've been going to a community gym to use their bar set up, which is really out of my way and which I have to pay money to access.

Anyway, today, I took a walk because the weather was nice, and I took a backstreet behind my yoga studio which I rarely use. After about 30 seconds I came onto a little playground in front of Shinto shrine. And there it was. A perfectly designed chin-up bar. All by itself, without being attached to a jungle gym, in front of a peaceful little shrine and under a cherry blossom tree. I couldn't make this stuff up!

So, here's my magical bar. Isn't it great!?

Here's the most important exercise you can do from a bar. The classic pull-up. You'll notice the fingers point forwards. This will put muscle on your back faster than anything else.

After that is the chin-up, which mainly works the biceps. I don't need any bigger arms than I have so I don't do this one much. You can see that the fingers point backwards in a pull-up.

A fun variation is one hand in chin-up position, one in pull-up position. This will work a lot of muscles along the diagonal of the back.

I've done so many crunches over the course of this project that they don't really challenge me much anymore. So Chen started me doing my abs-work on the bar. Here are a few of the abs-workouts you can do with a parallel bar.

First is lifting the legs up to touch the bar. This requires every muscle of your abdomen at some point along the movement. The key is to control the return movement and not just swing down like a monkey It's a fun one!

Next is the same idea, but with the legs coming up at 45 degrees. This hits the entire line of obliques along the side of the body.

And finally, adding a fully extended kick at the end will require your entire core as well as superior upper body strength. This one isn't for the faint at heart! Holding the legs for a moment static in the air is even harder.

And lastly is a half kung-fu situp. With just a bar it's a little tricky to get the full Jackie Chan version, but this one works almost as well, with one arm providing stability. Start hanging from the knee joints.

And do a side crunch just like you would if you were on the floor.

It's almost funny. For all these weeks this perfect bar was just 30 seconds away. All it took was me breaking out of my habitual patterns and walking down a different street to find it.

Which is the PCP in a nutshell. Inside all of us is a strong, healthy, slim person who we just haven't found yet because we are stuck in the same old habits. Breaking up these samskaric patterns is hard at first, but the rewards to be found are immense.

Two more blog posts and my PCP is history! Tomorrow I'm going to open that box!

If you'd like to apply for round 2 of the PCP shoot me an email at thepeakconditionproject (at) gmail.com

Day 122, Admitting Defeat

2008-07-20T21:05:00.004+09:00

Man, I just can't get these box splits. I've still got two inches to go and that's not going to be made up in the next three days, so I'm going to admit defeat right here. Sadly, I will not be doing this before the end of my Peak Condition Project.

I worked really hard to get this split ready in time for the end of my project but it just wasn't in the cards for me. Part of the problem was that the leg training and squats I do for muscle building are exactly opposite of what you'd want to do for splits training. Getting thick, shortened quads makes getting this split take forever.

Still, I'm not very happy about it. I've never spent so much time working on one pose and not gotten it. Box splits are pretty unforgiving. If just one hip abductor is tight or wonky the whole thing is a shambles. It's been pretty humbling.

But I also enjoy the challenge and tonight I ordered a new book about how to work with your nervous system to get the most out of your stretches. Here are some of the highlights from the table of contents:

How Kabat's PNF fools your stretch reflex
The function of the Renshaw cell
Taking advantage of the inverse stretch reflex
Shutdown threshold isometrics
Mastering the Golgi Reflex tendon

So fun times ahead for me. A lot of people express bewilderment that I spend so much time learning these relatively silly things. Like, who cares if you can do a box split? But these physical goals are kind of a hobby for me. Some people make model airplanes, some people play raquetball, and a depressing majority of people just crash in front of the TV at night. I choose to spend my hobby time working on my body, not in a narcissistic way, but just because it's so interesting to see what it can do. And I turn this knowledge around for my students as soon as I've gotten a decent handle on it. I believe that information should flow smoothly and that giving knowledge away is always better than trying to hoard it for a few coins. So I'll stick to my weird stretches.

But I don't expect anyone to understand. I personally don't get much out of making model airplanes, but I'm sure it gives some people a tremendous feeling of well being. Whatever works for you, as long as it doesn't harm others, go for it.

Day 121, Productivity

2008-07-19T22:18:00.002+09:00

This week I got a commission to do 35 personlized logos for each member of a bank staff for an upcoming bank event. I had 5 days to finish this task.

I got it done in two, and the logos look awesome. I'll post them in this entry once they've been used.

I've noticed over the course of this project that new ideas come faster to me now that I'm fit and I can simply sit down, think about a design problem, and come to an elegant solution. Before I would spend hours in trial and error, or just procrastinating.

So the PCP is really paying for itself, if I take into account how much more work I can get done in a given day now.

7 a.m. yoga in the park lesson tomorrow, so I better get to bed.

Day 120, Your Turn

2008-07-18T16:40:00.012+09:00

Hey everyone. It's hard to believe but my Peak Condition Project will be finished in 5 days. I just wanted to take this chance to open up the blog to questions from any of you who have stuck with me through all of this. So, if there's anything you've been wanting to know about the project, ask it in the comments section, and I'll give you honest answers. If you prefer to ask me privately feel free to do so at thepeakconditionproject (at) gmail.com.

I know from the numbers that there are hundreds of lurkers on this page, which doesn't bother me, I'm a bit of a lurker myself, but consider this weekend a "lurker amnesty" and go ahead and unload your questions or comments, because, for all intents and purposes, it will be your last chance. And to everyone a deep gasho from the bottom of my heart for your support and encouragement.

Also if you'd like to try the PCP for yourself apply soon at the above mentioned email!

Okay, the questions are coming in fast, so I'm just going to add them to this post as they come in. I'll paraphrase, if you want to see the original question it will be in the comment section.

Q. What type of resistance bands did you use?
I just got a cheap set of three from some no-name maker. The key thing is that your set have detachable handles and a door anchor (which I will always think of as a "dongle") My set was nice because you could add a band or two for more resistance as you got stronger. It took me snapping two bands to figure that out.

Q. What's wrong with bananas? Why do all the PCPers fruit servings say "no bananas?"
Because we really hate yellow things. Nah. Because bananas are really high in carbohydrates, which we need to keep close track of during the weight loss Phase. There's nothing wrong with bananas, but they can throw off your plan a bit if you're not careful, especially when eaten at night.

Q. Is it really healthy and or sustainable to eat all those eggs? Quite apart from the gas issue, how about cholesterol ?
-You'll notice we only eat egg whites. The yolk of the egg contains all the fat and cholesterol found in eggs. So, we boil the eggs, open them, discard the yolk and just eat the protein rich egg white. No cholesterol! But it's not sustainable to eat all the eggs, it's just during the project. After the PCP ends we'll teach you how to maintain your muscle without eating eggs all day.

Q. How do you target your legs without weights? Is there a danger of developing "big torso, skinny legs" syndrome?
-We do squats, just plain old squats without a weight. Also lunges. And for big quad work we do floor jumps, which involves sinking down to the heels, and jumping two or three feet into the air, and repeating down the length of the room. We also do a ton of jumprope, which tones the legs. However to get at the second part of your question, on the PCP no one will develop a "big torso" because the weights are low and the reps high, you will get a strong, lean look, much like the man Bruce Lee himself.

Q. How can one "keep it PCP" in a college dorm setting?
So much of living in a dorm is "Home Alone" syndrome. No one is watching you, no one cares what you eat, so you order pizza 5 nights a week, just because you can. And don't even get me started on the drinking. Just remember, it's true, no one has any say over you anymore, once you move into a dorm. That also means when you gain 20 pounds and have the same complexion as that pizza you're eating, there's no one responsible for that mess except the person in the mirror.

This isn't to say I didn't eat all manner of horrible things in college, and gained 20 pounds. Everyone gets to be a young fool once.

Q. Is it more beneficial to build muscle, strength, and vitality with yoga or kung fu? I can choose only one for an upcoming class.
-Yoga. Yoga gives you the base for any other physical activity, because it builds core strength, improves balance, increases flexibility, and most overlooked, improves the quality of your breathing. Without those things, your (insert sport here, kung fu, tennis, curling, etc...) is going to suck. True, you can eventually build those things in your given sport, but getting a handle on yoga first is the fast track to success. I've spent a few months in all kinds of dojos in Japan, and I've found my yoga conditioning has me passing guys who've been there for years in just a few weeks. They find a million ways to dismiss this, but I know it's from the yoga.

But, if you just want to have a good time and kick some stuff, do the kung-fu.

Q. What will you focus on next? Mental Peak Condition?
- I'm going to take it easy for a few weeks before starting my next project. I'll be working on flexibility and using my in-shape body for martial arts. Chen and I are also working on The Kung Fu Body, which will be like the PCP but for the longer term, more of an overall approach for life.

Q. Will there be a PCP convention?
-That would be awesome. I'd really love to meet everyone in person and swap old war stories.

Q. Will the PCP ever really end?
-Yes and no. The strict diet and exercise will be toned down a lot, in fact that's what I've been learning to do this month. But the philosophy, that you should challenge yourself to be at the top of your form every day, even when you know you're feeling like crap, will stay with me forever.

Q. In the first weeks, how did you resist the temptation of non-PCP foods?
- I used a lot of little mental tricks. One of my favorite was asking myself "how many times in your life have you eaten (___________)? (cheesecake, lasagna, etc...) The answer would usually be in the hundreds. Then I would ask myself, "How many times in your life have you had low body fat and looked really fit? The answer was always zero. So, I could do something for the 101st time, or do something for the very first time. That kind of thinking, always focusing on the positive gains rather than what I couldn't have, made all the difference. Another helpful thing is keeping your mouth busy. In the first month when I really wanted something bad I drank a cup of coffee. I like coffee so there was some small satisfaction without any caloric impact.

Q. How will you incorporate the PCP into your normal life once it's over?
-This is my main area of interest right now, and I'll post what I learn online in some way or another. Some things are easy, like the exercise and diet, others are trickier, like, what level of fitness am I willing to settle for post project?

Q. Is the PCP only for reasonably fit people with strong willpower and good genetics?
-I'll be honest with you, at the start of this project I thought that this plan would be for people who are in good shape but want to reach peak performance. But as it's gone on I've realized that it works just as well for overweight people, in fact, the results would be even more dramatic as it's not that hard to lose excess weight. The last 5 pounds take just as long as the first 2o would. Willpower isn't really the issue. The PCP is about breaking up old unhelpful habits and introducing new ones. If someone really decided they wanted to change their body they could do the Project with great success, no matter what their condition. But it won't work with a half-hearted effort. It wouldn't take very long either, even for someone 40 + pounds overweight. In fact, right now I'm looking for a substantially overweight person to sign up for Round 2. So apply! What've you got to lose! (besides your spare tire?)

Q. What's a Leg-up?
-It's when you lie on your back and instead on crunching your upper body, you lift your legs. This works the lower abdominals. When I started I did a lot of these buy now I hang from a bar and lift my legs over my head when I want work that area.

Q. When you switched from smoothies to regular food for dinner, did you continue to lose weight or did it stabilize?
-It stabilized. But we only switched to smoothies when the target weight was reached. I would've been on them longer but I lost my weight fast for some reason. The other PCPers were on them for longer but have just gotten off. The smoothies were actually one of my favorite parts and I still drink one when I don't feel like cooking or want a light meal.

Day 119, What is Kung Fu?

2008-07-17T20:46:00.006+09:00

When you hear the word Kung Fu, this is the image that probably springs to mind.

In America we mostly know Kung Fu as a guy with fancy moves kicking the crap out of another guy. The word Kung Fu is usually used as the name of a martial art, the same way we say "Karate" or "Taekwondo."

This is pretty far from the original meaning of the word Kung Fu.

First we have the character Gōn (功), which means achievement, or to have merit. And Fu, (夫) which means man. So to have gōngfu means to be a "man of merit" or "a person of achievement." Perhaps a rough colloquial English expression would be someone who is "worth his salt."

You can see that this has very little to do with beating anyone up. Wikipedia, which is great for info but often lacking in literary style, actually has a very readable passage on this which I'll reprint here.

"Originally, to practice kung fu did not just mean to practice Chinese martial arts. Instead, it referred to the process of one's training - the strengthening of the body and the mind, the learning and the perfection of one's skills - rather than to what was being trained. It refers to excellence achieved through long practice in any endeavor. You can say that a person's kung fu is good in cooking, or that someone has kung fu in calligraphy; saying that a person possesses kung fu in an area implies skill in that area, which they have worked hard to develop. Someone with "bad kung fu" simply has not put enough time and effort into training, or seems to lack the motivation to do so."

I really love this meaning of the word Kung Fu, even though it is all but dead. It is how I try to do everything that comes my way, be it business, yoga, graphic design, or even keeping up this blog. Consistent effort over extended periods of time is the only way to truly master something.

The cool thing is that to have good kung fu in training isn't nearly as hard as gaining other types of kung fu. Eating right, working out the smart way, and just keeping at it is all you need. It doesn't take many months either as this blog has proved. So, on the scale of arts to master, getting in shape is a no-brainer. And the best thing is that having a fit and healthy body gives you the energy and focus to pursue those other, harder to attain goals.

So whatever it is that you're doing in your life right now, find the Kung Fu in it and do your best. This isn't just so that you'll be successful (which you will be), but will insure that you actually enjoy doing it.

(For a few more days we'll be accepting applications for round 2 of the PCP, apply and surprise yourself Thepeakconditionproject (at) gmail.com)

Day 118, There Was a Star Inside Me the Whole Time!

2008-07-16T16:11:00.005+09:00

All of the PCPers and I have been going on for weeks and weeks about how different we feel eating right, getting stronger, and learning how our bodies work. This project is definitely one of discovery.

Some of the discoveries are just plain neato, and I've been meaning to share this one with you ever since I noticed it a few months ago after I lost all that weight.

As I wrote about at the time, when you lose weight you lose it from your arms, your butt, your face, everywhere. In fact, the place you lose it last is your belly and love-handles, which is frustrating because that's where you want to lose it first!

Well, one of the places you lose that fat layer is your chest, and I don't just mean your man-boobs (which I had) but your actual chest wall, as in the skin covering the solar plexus. Well, once that fat layer was gone, I found the coolest thing. For some lighting reason it's really easy to see as I get out of my shower, so that's where I took this picture, after my shower today.

Can you see it? Right there on my solar plexus there's this meeting point of cartilage which I can only describe as a starburst. Here's the pic from one step closer.

In my 28 years of life, I had never seen this part of my body before. It was there the whole time, just under the fat I guess. I think it's so funky. I feel like I've seen similar things on other people, but I couldn't find any pics on google images. What should I search for? Starburst cartilage on chest?

Anyway, I'm going to use this little star as a kind of yardstick. As I mentioned yesterday I'm quite happy for my weight to fluctuate throughout the year and season, but I'm making a little rule for myself. If that star starts to get faint and disappear, it means I'm slipping back into some bad habits and need to address whatever's going off track.

Does anyone else have this star? And what is it exactly? I have a ton of anatomy books, but I can't find what exactly this thing is. All my books skip right to the muscle, then the ribs!

(want to find out things about yourself you never suspected were there? Apply for the second round of the PCP at thepeakconditionproject (at) gmail.com)

Day 117, Remember Day 47?

2008-07-15T17:30:00.005+09:00

Day 47. That was a long time ago, 70 days to be exact. It was just after I had lost 11 pounds of fat. One of the unexpected side-effects was that I was freezing my ass off. I hadn't realized how much extra warmth that layer of fat provided. Here's a cross section showing the subcutaneous fat layer undeneath the dermis.

You see how it's all spongy and bubbly? Remind you of anything? How about this?

All those pockets between fat globules act as a protection against the cold. And when you lose them you really do feel like you've left your jacket at home.

Ah, but now it's summer, and you can guess what I'm going to say next... I've never felt so cool on hot days before! It's great. When I have to wear long pants for work or something I don't feel like I'm roasting from the inside out. And I haven't turned on the air-conditioning once and I intend not to all summer (for ecological and economical reasons).

Now I'm not saying I don't feel hot, I do, but it's just on the surface, and when I get out of the sun my body temperature returns to normal pretty quickly even though the ambient air temp is still high. And the most obvious proof is when I spend time with someone in Not-So-Peak-Condition who is sweating profusely and peeling off layers, cursing the heat the whole time, while I'm cool as a cucumber.

So, knowing this, I think when winter rolls around again I'll put on some pounds to get that layer of fat back a little. This seems like a very natural and obvious thing to do. Nature designed this excellent system for keeping warm, it'd be a shame not to use it.

And if you want to experience these fun side effects for yourself we're still accepting applications for round 2 of the PCP. Apply today and change your life! ThePeakConditionProject (at) gmail.com

Day 116, "Spirituality" and The Peak Condition Project

2008-07-14T15:16:00.007+09:00

Recently, our podcast, Zen is Stupid has received some criticism for not talking enough about Zen. We've been talking about pretty secular stuff lately, like movies and video games, but there's always an element of "how can we do this more mindfully" in every episode, so I'm not really worried about the comments. Sometimes not talking about Zen can be the most Zen thing you can do. However, it does highlight something I've found on the PCP as well.

I'm just thinking out loud now, but it seems that the modern world has drawn this sharp line between the base "physical" and the elevated "spiritual." I think it must be an offshoot of the idea that the body is unclean and undesirable and the mind/soul is pure.

Every passing year we find out more and more that the mind and body are so intertwined that it's quite misleading to even call them two things. So there's all this study into the mind-body connection and so on.

However, in India and Asia there isn't such a historical divide between the physical and spiritual. The whole practice of yogic asana is a way of using the body to reach a spiritual destination. And in Buddhism (well, Zen Buddhism) the body is always your home base, where you return if you get stuck in too much circular mental thinking. This can be seen in meditation, where we return to the breath, or to the pain in our legs, or to the straightness of our backs, when the mind is wandering. Or in koans where the student asks an esoteric question and is answered with a smack to the skull. The message is clear. Get your head out of the clouds and truly inhabit the moment, which is where your body is.

Your mind can take amazing voyages to the past or the future, but your body will never leave the present moment. And that's where real life is.

But, I've received a little blowback and a vast amount of silence from the Buddhist community during The Peak Condition Podcast. This doesn't surprise me but it makes me somewhat sad. Buddhists in general are a very cerebral bunch, and all too many do the majority of practice in their heads. In all the retreats and Buddhist events I've been on I've never seen someone in really good shape. Most people are a little thick around the middle, which isn't a shocker as Zen's main event is sitting on your ass.

I get the impression people feel that spending time working out, getting your portions right, and exercising are all a bit shallow. Certainly when compared to the deep wisdom of meditation. Again, one practice is considered base, and the other, pure. And many Buddhists would hint that spending time building muscle and getting strong is just a form of attachment and craving. Attaching to your good physique, craving the validation of others, etc...

Well I'm here to say all of that is misguided. In Zen we are working towards mental clarity. Trying to see the world as it really is, without delusion. And I have found that being in good (peak) physical shape has brought me a lot of clarity. Whereas before I would go around and around with a problem in my head, I'm finding making choices has become easier. I've become less mopey and more motivated, and I'm finding that I want to talk less and act more (except on the blog of course, where I can't seem to shut up!)

And I've written about in this blog before, but zazen has become much easier physically and more placid mentally since I got my core and back muscles toned up.

And finally, doing a difficult set, with your muscles screaming and on fire is a guaranteed ticket into the present moment. You sure as hell aren't thinking about how you'll pay for retirement in those times. The PCP has been the most life-affirming practice I've done in my life, and that includes countless complicated meditations on the body and long periods of meditation.

So, I'm thinking about a new kind of Zen retreat. Where you do your zazen, and instead of the classic "go sweep the leaves mindfully" BS worktime, all the students workout and learn how their bodies really function. If anyone out there has the ability to organize this, I have the whole thing laid out and just need to hear the word "go."

And I don't want to hear any more masters with a huge stomach tell me I need to control my mental states. They need to control their physical states! I leave you with a Bruce Lee quote.

"Too often one of those big-belly masters will tell you that his internal power has sunk to his stomach; he's not kidding, it is sunk and gone!"

By the way if you're interested in applying for the second round of the PCP leave a comment or email me at ThePeakConditionProject (at) gmail.com. We'll be starting three more people up soon.

Day 115, Baby-Hands

2008-07-13T21:57:00.004+09:00

One week when I lived in Morocco my community village decided to put in a concrete tarqua, which I guess in English is known as an irrigation ditch. (There is a whole range of agricultural words I only know in Berber and not in my own native tongue)

So anyway, the first step to make this thing is that you have to dig a big ditch through the village. So of course I'm trying to help out and show I'm part of the community or whatever. I get down there with a pickaxe. Within 30 minutes I got blisters on my hands and couldn't go on. Which leads all the guys of the village to laugh at my "baby hands." There isn't much going on in Berberland, so it became the running joke in the village for a few weeks. "Hey baby-hands, can you come rub my face with your so soft hands?" or "Which of these scarves is softer, baby hands? We can't tell because we don't have baby hands." Eventually my hands toughened up but my reputation never did.

Anyway, I've been doing all this bar work, with the chin-ups, leg ups, and the stuff I was talking about yesterday, and my hands are getting pretty raw, with raised callouses on the pads of my palm. Chen was like, "just get used to it" but I know he was thinking something along the lines of "baby hands"

I was down with getting toughened up hands again, that's no problem, but it occurred to me that this time around things are very different. I use my hands for my job, adjusting people in yoga poses, and for that you need as soft a touch as you can get. Would you like some rough scratchy hands on your shoulders as you're trying to move deeper into Up-Dog? I know I wouldn't.

So this time I decided to not try and be a hard-man about it, and just get some freakin' weight lifting gloves and protect my baby hands. So I went to Sports Authority today after classes and got these cool gloves.

Which is what I really wanted to talk about in this post before I got off on a Berber tangent. I was in Sports Authority, this huge mega sports store, and I swear, every person in there was either scrawny or overweight. It was almost funny. There was this guy with a huge beer belly checking out the protein powders. And a dude with little stick arms testing out the dumbbells.

This is ironic and funny of course but I also find it very uplifting. No matter what kind of shape people are in, there is something inside of them that inspires them to change. Companies take advantage of this self-improvement instinct by selling absolute beginners top-of-the-line stuff, but that's beside the point. What I've learned over and over in this project is that people want to be better. They want to take care of their bodies, they want to be the person on the outside that they know they have inside. And that's a beautiful thing.

But there is a risk that all that excitement that leads you to buy some weights or an exercise machine will fade away as soon as you find that buying stuff is the easy part, it's the actual work that feels like, well, work. And then you have a house full of exercise crap that you slowly grow to despise so much you end up throwing it out.

So, my advice to everyone is, if you want to take up a new sport or exercise routine, start off with the cheapest most beat up equipment you can find. This will tell you truly whether you enjoy the hobby for itself or if it was just a passing fling. And you get two bonuses.

One, your house isn't full of junk from failed fitness projects,

and Two, if you do decide to pursue the exercise, you'll know what you actually need because you've already been doing it. So today for example, I knew just what i wanted out of the gloves, where I needed the padding, how tight they should feel, etc... Who knows what I would've bought if I had rolled up in there on my first day of the PCP?

Time and time again I have seen beginner yoga students come to class with 80$ Lululemon mats and $150 yoga clothing ensembles. And you know what? They usually give it up after a few weeks. And you know another thing? Invariably, the people who most stick with it are the ones who come in an old beat up pair of shorts and a t-shirt, with a thin exercise mat they won in a contest a few years ago.

So don't buy any more stuff, until you can say exactly why you need it and for what purpose. Anything else is just throwing money at your idea of yourself as a better person, rather than actually doing it.

Day 114, Immense Satisfaction

2008-07-12T20:34:00.005+09:00

The thing about The Peak Condition Project is that when you're up you're up. I felt strong as an ox today, and just as endurant. Taught 4 yoga classes, did my box splits, and after all that went to the gym with Chen to do hanging sit-ups using that gym's parallel bars.

I call them hanging sit-ups, I don't know what else to call them. Basically you hang from a bar and lift your feet over your head. Or you turn your body to the side and lift the knees up to your face like a side crunch. Or you can do reverse hanging sit-ups with your feet locked in the bar and crunching up your entire upper body. (I showed this in my Day 65 post using Drunken Master... by the way the gym said we had to stop doing those because it looks like you're going to break your neck and I guess it freaked them out too much)

Today the challenge was not only to lift the legs, but then perform a full kick with the legs straight out. This is so freakin hard to explain, I wish I had had my camera.

Anyway, imagine this guy but not jumping, just hanging from two parallel bars, but doing the same motion. Using his core to execute the action rather than a leg assisted jump:

So me and Chen were trading back and forth doing these air kicks 5 feet off the ground. A few guys in the gym were looking at us, and after we finished our sets they were like, "what the hell is that?" And I told them they're kung fu sit-ups. So of course they want to try them out.

These guys were pretty fit, they looked in shape to me at least. So guy one gets up there and he gets one air-kick out, and.... he's totally spent. His friend is laughing at him so he tells his friend to show him how it's done. The friend can't even do one.

As you know this whole project I've been looking up to Bruce Lee, which is incredible motivation because he was such a great guy and in such peak condition, but it's also a bummer because I will never ever be anywhere near him truly.

But today for the first time I looked down the ladder at some people a few rungs below my condition, and realized how far I've come. The thing about the PCP is it's a pretty solitary pursuit, outside of the blogs. You wake up, stick to your diet, and do your exercises. There's nobody watching you, nobody egging you on. It's you and your resistance bands, working quietly away for all those weeks.

But all those crunches and V-sits were apparent tonight when we were busting out those hanging sit-ups. Perhaps it's because the air-kick is such an exuberant exercise, but I felt huge gratification from having that level of control over my body. And then when the other guys couldn't even do two I felt another jolt of immense satisfaction.

I want to make clear it wasn't like, "Man, you two guys are weak, and I'm a total badass" If they worked hard they'd be doing those moves in no time, and if I stopped working out I wouldn't be able to do them after just a few weeks.

It was just another happy and unexpected milestone on this path.

Day 113, Obesity

2008-07-11T21:33:00.008+09:00

I like the online magazine Slate and usually cruise over there once a day to see if they've got any interesting articles running. Well tonight this is what I saw. (Click the pic to go to the story)

With all the good things I've heard about WALL-E I was surprised by the headline, (which was of course the point) and as obesity and the environment are two things which really interest me, I dove right into the article even though I haven't seen the movie.

The logic of the article really baffles me. The author, Daniel Engber, who is usually pretty lucid, gets into his argument like this.

"Wall-E is an innovative and visually stunning film, but the "satire" it draws is simple-minded. It plays off the easy analogy between obesity and ecological catastrophe, pushing the notion that Western culture has sickened both our bodies and our planet with the same disease of affluence. According to this lazy logic, a fat body stands in for a distended culture: We gain weight and the Earth suffers. If only society could get off its big, fat ass and go on a diet!"

How is it lazy logic to see that overzealous consumerism is the cause of both the obesity rate and our current ecological situation? And his facetious sentence, "If only society could get off its big, fat ass and go on a diet!" makes perfect sense to me. A diet from fatty useless food, from fossil fuels, from overworking just to make more money to buy more crap, I'd say a diet is just what the West needs. Engber goes on:

"But the metaphor only works if you believe familiar myths about the overweight: They're weak-willed, indolent, and stupid. Sure enough, that's how Pixar depicts the future of humanity. The people in Wall-E drink "cupcakes-in-a-cup," they never exercise, and if they happen to fall off their hovering chairs, they thrash around like babies until a robot helps them up. They watch TV all day long and can barely read.

It ought to go without saying that this stereotype of the "obese lifestyle" is simply false. How fat you are has a lot more to do with your genes than with your behavior. As much as 80 percent of the variation in human body weight can be explained by differences in our DNA. (Your height is similarly heritable.) That is to say, it may not matter that much whether you eat salads or drink "cupcakes-in-a-cup," whether you bike everywhere or fly around in a Barcalounger. If you have a propensity to become obese, there's only so much that can be done about it."

This really confused me. DNA is part of the picture, but it's not the main part. There is a difference between eating salad (why is it always salad? The fittest people I know never eat salads, they eat vegetables) and eating a cupcake. There is a difference between biking everywhere and sitting in a chair all day. The difference is staring you in the face every time you go to an international airport concourse in the US. The Americans are fat, and the foreigners are not. Sorry to put it so baldly, but I've seen this with my own eyes for years now, and I've been on both sides of it.

I object to the idea that being obese is a disease that we can't prevent. Now this is where someone is thinking "easy for you to say, you're not one of those people with the fat gene." But I AM! I've always been a little heavy, and if I don't exercise and don't eat well I get fat within just a few days. I blimp out. It's in my family, it's in my genes. The author is seeming to say that if you are unlucky enough to naturally tend towards fat, you might as well have "cupcake in a cup" because you're screwed either way.

This is completely backasswards. If you have the DNA for obesity, you have more responsibility than anyone else to not eat the cupcake, to stick to a low fat diet, and to freakin' exercise. If someone has diabetes we tell them they have to be more careful than most people about the GI of their foods. If someone has heart problems we teach them how to eat vigilantly to keep their arteries clean. Why shouldn't the same be applied to people like me, who get fat faster than any of the people around us?

But the article did get me thinking. Since the PCP I have probably become less tolerant of obese people than before I started. This is because I now know exactly what it takes to lose fat and gain muscle. You just need to follow a few rules consistently, and the body takes care of itself. And I don't want to hear about your thyroid problem or obesity gene. There's no way to accrue that much mass without introducing that mass into your system through large servings of fatty food. There's just no way. (Well, technically, you could convert the energy around you into mass, but that would blow up the entire planet.) These people have eaten their way into their condition, and they can eat and exercise their way right out of it. And the truth is that it's not that hard.

It's not that hard. It's not that hard to take an hour a day to exercise your most precious possession, your body. It's not that hard to stop eating junk that only makes you feel sick and depressed when you finish it. So, yes, I do think an overweight person is weak-willed, indolent, and stupid, in a fashion. Weak-willed to not be fed up enough to finally change, indolent for, well, being indolent (indolent does mean habitually lazy, after all) and stupid to not realize that they're running their one and only body into the ground.

I can say this because I used to be one of those people, and I was all those things, and it drives me nuts when people like Engber hint that you have no choice but to be fat.

You do have a choice. And the choice is not that hard to follow through with. And you can do it.

Day 112, The BMI Is Whack

2008-07-10T20:09:00.008+09:00

A few weeks ago I played Wii Fit for the the first time. The first thing you do in the game is set up your character, by providing your height and letting the board weigh you. Then it will spit out your BMI.

(Note: This isn't my screen, it's just a screencap I got off the internet. You can tell because that rough polygon lego character looks nothing like me!)

Now, what is the BMI? You probably know it stands for Body Mass Index. Ooh that sounds so scientific, it must be good right? Your Body Mass Index is the following equation.

That equation gives you a number somewhere between 13 and 60. This number puts you in a field that's classified as "underweight," "healthy weight," "overweight" or "obese."

So where exactly did this BMI system come from? Surely some fitness and health experts got together and figured it all out right? Wrong-O! The BMI was invented by a Belgian mathematician named Adolphe Quetelet in the mid 1800's as part of his plan to take all kinds of social phenomena and quantify them into numbers so that he could break us pesky, unpredictable humans into easily processed equations. Actually he was just trying to measure Belgians. From the 19th century.

So, I found out my BMI... and guess what? I'm on the borderline of being "overweight." Yep. Me. The guy wearing shorts from the boy's department. So the damn game is like scolding me and telling me I need to watch it or I could slip into the red zone. It really pissed me off. The BMI also has no way of figuring out your cardiovascular health, so a marathon runner will get the same score as a couch potato if their weights and heights happen to be equal.

Why did this happen? Because the stupid BMI can't tell the difference between weight from muscle and weight from fat. So for someone like me, with minimal body fat and a lot of muscle, it thinks I must be on the heavy side. This glitch basically bars me from playing Wii Fit, because the exercise plan they give me is designed for the fat guy I'm impersonating.

So, don't pay any attention to the BMI. Or any numerical evaluation or your health. Instead, go back to the simple things that we don't need a calculator for. For example:

How do your trousers fit?

How do you look in the mirror?

Can you touch your toes?

Do you get winded going up stairs?

Can you do the things you want to do without feeling crappy?

These are much better questions that "what's your height divided by your weight?" Give me a break. It should stand for the Body Mass Inanity.

Day 111, The Goof Off Week

2008-07-09T21:19:00.004+09:00

I have these periods in my life when I really just want to goof off. I slack off on all my work and just do things I like. These times don't worry me because they are always followed by periods of extreme productivity and new ideas. So I've learned not to beat myself up about these phases and just roll with them.

I'm in one this week for sure. Last week a lot of events and projects came to a close, and I knew I'd be cruising through this week, taking time to enjoy the simple things, electric guitar, One Piece, nunchaku, sunshine, blended frozen mango smoothies, just to name a few.

What's not so great about these goof off times is that I tend to not pay close attention to my diet and a lot of things slip through. Like the other day I really wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so I just made one and scarfed it down right at the kitchen counter. Peanut butter isn't bad but it's loaded with relatively empty calories. The jelly has too much sugar and the bread is just a waste of my daily carbs on fluff. It's a pretty dumb snack, all things considered. If you are mentally objecting that "there's nothing wrong with a PB&J!" then you aren't thinking like someone trying to reach or maintain Peak Condition. And that's ok, you didn't sign up for this. But we did, and so I had to just shake my head at what I ate.

And today I ate an entire pack of udon. I wasn't even hungry, but I had some extra dashii and the noodles were just sitting there so I threw them in the bowl and ate them while reading The New Yorker online. Again, the problem was my lack of mindfulness and mental laziness. Tonight I had an intense low blood sugar crash after spiking my system with all that glucose from the udon. I felt terrible, worse than I ever had on this Project, and I was reminded again that enjoying something for 2 mins on your plate is never worth the 2 hours of feeling gross from it, either with an energy crash, when you look in the mirror, or the next day when it passes through your system.

So I'm working on a way to have the goof-off week, which I need mentally, without a subsequent lapse in my diet choices. It's tricky and the best way I've found to deal with it is to go back to weighing stuff just like I did in the early stages of the PCP. 100 grams is 100 grams, and having weighed it all out you're not so tempted to go back for seconds, because there's no way that you can rationalize that an extra serving is still somehow 100 grams.

So, send me positive energy, because I'm struggling with the PCP this week!

Day 110, Protein Surprise

2008-07-08T22:46:00.005+09:00

As I wrote about on Day 93 I've been drinking this whey protein powder stuff after my workouts and before sleep. These days my workout isn't as intense as it was in the early and middle periods of the PCP, so some days I go light on the protein and others, when I do a heavy workout, I drink a good two or three scoops more at night. So that's the background here.

In addition, as you know I'm working hard to achieve box splits before this project ends. If you've forgotten what they look like here's the master of them, Jeanne Claude Van Damme. They can be seen at 1:50, 2:30, and 3:25. I've heard VanDamme is a tool in real life but his high kicks and splits are unrivaled.

So, I'm doing a lot of stretches to get to those splits and some days I am really sore the next day. Not the kind of sore you get from over-exertion, just feeling a little beat-up around my groin area.

But I noticed something as I began drinking the protein powder. On those days I downed a lot of powder due to a tough workout, I noticed the next day I wasn't nearly as sore feeling from the box splits.

I have been thinking of the protein powder only in terms of muscle growth, but it seems to have an equally salutary effect on strains and soreness.

This makes perfect sense of course, since what you do when you lift weights is to tear the muscle fibers so that they can be reknit overnight bigger and stronger (with the help of amino acid building blocks, also known as protein). Why wouldn't the protein do the same thing for a stretched out, tired, beat up feeling hip abductor?

This is a pretty cool discovery for me, even though I'm sure it's been well documented in medical literature. Upping your protein consumption will help you get over injuries faster! So I think I'll always keep some protein powder around, and on a tough day when I know I'm going to be feeling a lot of soreness the next day, be it from yoga, hiking, martial arts or whatever, I'm going to drink 3 scoops of it before bed. I want everyone else to try this to and see if my observation is true for you too!

If so, it would be a pretty big boon to yoga students who feel sore for days after their yoga class.

Day 109, Shirtless and Storytime

2008-07-07T17:20:00.006+09:00

Well, it's officially summer in Japan. That means one word, humidity. Beads of sweat on your hairline, moisture in all your creases, T-shirt sticking to your chest.

But this year I'm feeling pretty good about it. And for one reason. I'm not embarrassed to sit around shirtless! It's hard for your t-shirt to stick to you when you don't have one on. I'm planning on spending the whole season topless, at least while I'm in my own apartment. Here's me as I type this post.

Before, it wasn't like I was so shy that I didn't want anyone to see me without a shirt. I would just get kind of disgusted by my gut after a few minutes and put something on so that I didn't have to think about it anymore. I'm sure pretty much all out of shape guys go through this.

I've always thought it was the most unfair thing in the world that guys can go shirtless but women can't. Take it off ladies!

But you want to know the worst thing about the humidity? I have a scar on my head that runs from my forehead to about halfway to the middle of my skull.

Normally it's no problem (except that it makes my hair messy) but when it gets humid, the scar swells up and becomes tender and painful to the touch. On the worst of days I can feel it throb with pain in time with my heartbeat. This is how I perform my famous slowing down and speeding up my heartbeat trick that you may have experienced if you know me personally.

How did I get the scar? When I was 12 I went to summer camp. One day we were hiking down to a swimming hole called Sliding Rock, for obvious reasons.

It had rained the night before, and the trail was a little slippery. I can't remember much, but I've been told that as I turned a corner on the path I slipped and fell right off the trail, down a ravine and cracked my noggin on a rock. I was sitting there by myself for a minute or two while the counselors tried to find a way down there. I had ended up propped up against a rock like I was lounging on a patio chair, with this hot fountain of blood shooting up into the air and down on me, and I kept saying to myself. "I've gotta get to Sliding Rock so I can rinse this red stuff off me."

A counselor finally got to me and he started carrying me back up, and I was like, "No, Sliding Rock is that way, you're going the wrong way! You're going the wrong way!" Ha ha. Good times, good times.

But there is a real message here. If you're dealing with someone who's had a head trauma, remember their brains are totally addled. Just ignore whatever they say and keep them awake.

Day 108, 108

2008-07-06T22:00:00.003+09:00

You may or may not know that the number 108 is a mystical number in Hinduism and Buddhism. There are a number of reasons for this, which I know you don't care about. But if you want to know more check the wiki page on 108)

I've always thought it was silly to get wrapped up in numbers because of special properties they have. Prime numbers, the Fibonnaci sequence, Pi, etc... it always seemed to me strange to give some of them meaning over others.

Today was special for me too because we had our annual "All you can stretch event" to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of Yoga Garden.

So I'm very tired tonight and this is about all I can manage as far as blog posts go.

Day 107, Don't Get Caught Up in Being "Ripped"

2008-07-05T22:17:00.005+09:00

Lots of heavy physical labor today and again, as I described in Day 32 I was able to get through it with tons of energy left over for the rest of my evening. At one point I was carrying a large plant in a heavy pot, and I noticed how easy it was after doing all those curls. It really made the job more pleasant.

All of this work was done out in the heat of the day and I was very thankful to not have that extra layer of body fat around me. While of course I still feel hot, there isn't that clautrophobic sweltering feeling anymore. I also don't sweat as much as I remember in summers past.

This is all great stuff as it is examples of the PCP working well in real-world situations. One of the things that I don't want to encourage too much is just looking good for the sake of looking good. Actual health and vitality have very little to do with how big your shoulders or or how defined your six pack is. There are a great deal of inner muscles which we never see that do the majority of the heavy lifting in life. If you want to a great example of being in superb health just look to yoga masters. They sure don't look like well defined models, but they live for years and years with perfect health and can do things like this at age 91:

Really, the only thing that looking super cut and defined is good for is your self-confidence. But that's a pretty big deal for most of us I guess.

Day 106, One More Band

2008-07-04T17:43:00.007+09:00

Getting stronger. As you may recall I broke two of my resistance bands on Day 44.

Following that I figured out that I needed to distribute the force over more bands. So for the past 2 months I've been using two bands. But recently I wasn't feeling so much resistance so I went ahead and added a third band, which is the last one I have.

So I'm getting stronger, but what I'm most pleased about is that I've kept my muscle lean through this whole thing. We managed this by keeping the overall amount of food low and the protein high, coupled with low weight exercises.

In my mind, the absolute worst outcome would have been to look like these guys:

These guys are actually very fit and incredibly strong. They can probably lift a car, but the question is who wants to lift cars? I'd much rather be strong enough for daily life and a little martial arts, flexible enough to be comfortable in my body, and toned and slim without any unnecessary mass. The few times I went to the gym with Chen as part of my studies I could feel a weird kind of pressure from all the dudes there that bigger is better. And you start comparing the size of your bicep to the guy next to you. This is all very silly.

If you look at Bruce Lee, he is actually a very small guy. You could probably wrap your arms all the way around him.

But what power! What speed! He could actually do something with his body, rather than just lift heavy things like a plodding ox. This is the same philosophy that informs my yoga practice. Find out how a pose fits into real action in your daily life and work from there. The kung-fu and yoga approach also has another important benefit. You can do them all the way until very old age, when all the muscle and flash has faded.

I've met several older kung-fu guys and even though they appeared to be small old men, when I got near them I could feel enormous confidence and power radiating off their bodies. I'm not trying to get new agey and talk about their chi force or anything. I'm just saying they held themselves and moved in such a way that told you they could still release a lot of power if called upon to.

That's what I want from my life. As I wind down my PCP I'm actually going to try and get smaller. I've gained a little too much shoulder and arm mass. It's the beginnings of another project Chen and I are cooking up. I don't have much more than the name of it, which I'll share with the public now for the first time... The Kung Fu Body!

Day 105, When Carbohydrates Are Scarce

2008-07-03T21:54:00.004+09:00

Felt very strong and limber today. Maybe because I had one of those perfect sleeps where you lay your head down, fall into a deep dreamless sleep, and wake up the next morning totally clear headed and ready to go with no jostling around in the night to pee or open the window or anything.

I've been really cruising with my evening meals, especially letting the extra carbs slip through. The truth is that it's very hard to have anything resembling a familiar meal when you only have 50g (I piece of toast's worth) of carbs to work with. Pretty much any kind of tortilla, bread, or pasta based dish is out as the required vegetables and protein will swamp the measly carbs.

So I'm working on figuring out entirely different meals that don't require a starch to hold them all together. One of the easiest ways is to stuff something. Stuff a zucchini or a bell pepper and you're doubling your vegetables with the same bite. It's funny though, because most of the stuffed recipes ask that you fill your outer vegetable with rice or bread crumbs, which gets us back into carboland. So I'm working on various vegetable mixtures that will hold together without being like baby food.

One thing that does work is rice paper. Because the stuff is so thin but strong you can put a ton of veg in them with very little carbohydrate. But the fine chopping and rolling take time.

So most nights I end up eating a big bowl of steamed vegetables over a little pasta or rice with some kind of fish. I alternate between 3 or 4 low calorie dressings (radish, basil, sesame soysauce, tomato vinegar) to put on top.

Did you ever see Castaway? Like in his first week on the island he's all cooking the fish and stuff, and then they fast forward 4 years later and he's spearing and eating live fish right on the beach, with a wordless 200 yard stare the whole time.

Wilsuuuun!

That's kind of where I am with these steamed vegetable meals. They are my nutrition source and beyond that I don't expect a lot from them, either in taste or presentation.

I know most people will feel this is kind of a sad state to be in, and in a way it is. But it's also incredibly liberating to be free of the idea that every meal will have some kind of big flavor sensation. Our overly spiced and complicated modern foods are very out-of-sync with how people ate for thousands of years (those agricultural based thousands of years themselves being out-of-sync with the millions of hunting and gathering before them)

As I have lived in the developing world I have noticed the local people getting very excited about this or that feast coming up, or that this or that fruit is finally in season, and I also got excited. But when we actually sat down to eat this special food, I found it unremarkable and not really worth all the fuss. I realize now that we were operating from a different palate. For them, used to blander and less varied diets, it really was a treat to have, say, a marinated sheeps gonad (real example). From my McDonalds and Pizza Hut upbringing however, it was just some more odd and slightly gross food.

I'll never forget the time I visited a family in Turkmenistan and with pride they offered to cut me a piece of meat from a rotting goats leg, sticking straight up in the air with flies buzzing around it. For them it was a real honor to serve meat to a foreign guest. I made some excuse about how I couldn't accept such hospitality and was already full from visiting so many people that day, but what really took away my appetite was the enormity of the economic gulf between our two countries.

Every single day in America is a feast, and if you think about it, that's a little messed up. Our bodies also don't know what to do with such culinary overload, and it's making us sick. So, maybe something is lost with my rather bland and predictable dinners these days, but something is also lost when every meal is an extravaganza.

Day 104, Alcohol

2008-07-02T20:53:00.002+09:00

I've been thinking over how to present this post for a great many days. I'm still not sure what exactly I want to say so I'll just muddle through as usual.

One of the things you stop doing on the PCP is drinking. Alcoholic drinks have a lot of calories considering you aren't getting any nutrition out of the beverage. People in the business refer to these as "empty calories" and they are the first thing to go when you want to cut fat and get lean.

It was also one of the harder things for me to let go of. One of the nicest parts of my day was getting home, kicking back and having a cold beer. It's probably the most prototypical male thing I did, actually. Always just one beer. About 5 times a week give or take.

I noticed that I was looking forward to that beer more and more, especially during stressful times. I would start thinking about it first on the way home from the station, then it would be on the train home, then it would be in my last class before getting on the train, earlier and earlier.

This puzzled me because I never drank more than one beer, and was never really tempted to. My craving didn't seem to be just the drug content of the alcohol, although surely that was part of it. I think it had just gotten to be my routine. And I didn't realize how attached to it I was until I had to break it up with this project.

But I just stopped. I had one beer on day 15 and that was it. So I was satisfied that it wasn't a physiological thing, like my body had to have beer or anything. Why then was it such a big deal for me to give it up?

I try to winnow down my attachments every day but beer still sticks around. I pass the cold beverage aisle now without even going down it, because if I do I really crave a beer. But just one. I don't get it.

If you take the novice vows of Thich Nhat Hanh's order, which Gwen and I have, you promise not to consume stimulants of any kind, all the way from cocaine to beer to mind-polluting TV shows. We grilled a young nun about what was so bad about having a glass of wine with a good meal. The nun explained that every time we spend our money on beer or wine we support a system that ruins untold lives through alcoholism, drunk driving, liquor fueled violence and domestic abuse. If we are truly mindful of all the pain that our choice to drink comes with and can still enjoy that glass of wine, then we are quite free to have it.

This argument gets me pretty good, because it is the same one I use to explain vegetarianism to people. "If you can truly understand all the stuff that happened to that animal for it to arrive on your plate, then you are welcome to have it. But if you're just eating it carelessly there's something wrong with that."

The nun's explanation is an extension of the Buddhist concept of interdependence. Every action results in numerous consequences, most of which we have no way of guessing. But some we can see if we just look a little deeper. The negative effects of alcohol and supporting the alcohol industry being one of them. So I feel really guilty whenever I dwell on that side of my beer routine. But I also really like beer. So I go around and around about it.

I know most people think this is far too much analysis over something as small as a can of beer after work. But that is what the PCP is all about. Not just accepting things being "pretty alright" but being the absolute best you can be. Setting high goals and not accepting mediocre results. Most people will think it's overthinking the issue but that has stopped bothering me. Many of those people are the same ones who don't understand why anyone would do the PCP to begin with.

High-reaching goals that require all of my resources and creativity are the only kind that interest me recently. Maybe I can make getting beer out of my life forever on of those as well. I'm still undecided and sitting with the issue. This is usually the only way I can resolve anything, so I'll let "just sitting" do its magic

Day 103, Evaluation

2008-07-01T21:57:00.004+09:00

Today is the first day of July. Three years ago today we opened Yoga Garden. It's also the month Gwen's and my birthday is. And it's also the month that my Peak Condition Project will end. It's very strange to be here. I remember starting in March and looking at the calendar and thinking I would never make it to July, that everything would be so different in July.

But change happens so gradually I can't exactly say what's different. Of course I've got some new muscle and less fat, but that stuff is only the beginning of the PCP's effects. When you succeed in something like this your mind changes in a subtle way. When you look at a challenge the first question isn't so much "can I do it?" as "how will accomplishing this help me?" or perhaps "what will I do after I accomplish this?"

Every other project seems much more plausible when you've gotten control of your own body. It's easy to focus your energy when the wetworks is all running smoothly and supporting you.

If you've ever ridden a bike or run with a tailwind, you'll know how much a little push can help you and make you feel like you're flying. Well, when you're in Peak Condition you feel that push all the time, and it makes everything more fun. (I suppose being in really bad shape and carrying around a bunch of extra weight would be like pedaling into a headwind)

So I find myself in the odd position of feeling like myself but also knowing I've been changed by this project. I'm still figuring it all out but I hope that by the end in 22 days I'll be able to make a more complete report on the big mental rewirings that happened through the process. I'm going to start with tomorrow's post which will be about my relationship with alcohol. See you then!

Day 102, The Video is Here!

2008-06-30T13:46:00.002+09:00

Alright everyone, I sat down with the editing software and made this little video to share my experience with the PCP. Watch it in high-res if you can! Send it to others and get people excited about the PCP!

Day 101, The Secret to Beating Temptation

2008-06-29T21:09:00.005+09:00

Phew, long weekend, I was totally beat tonight.

And tonight in the store I was sorely tempted to buy a bottle of wine, come home, drink that bottle and watch a movie while eating something not particularly helpful.

I've learned over the course of this project that the times when I am most drawn to unhealthy stuff is when I am physically and or mentally exhausted. It's interesting that we use that word, "exhausted." Literally we're saying we are out of resources, the tank is empty and we can do no more. But in these out of gas times we don't reach for the foods and drinks that would actually replenish us. Instead we go for the alcohol, the TV dinner, the mindless movie. And feel even worse the next morning, starting the cycle over again.

Tonight I didn't get the bottle of wine, and the second I resisted the temptation I felt better. There's something very valuable in not giving yourself the easy recourse of a drug (and what is wine and a movie if not two differently ingested drugs?) and just relying on your own body to find it's way, with the help of a healthy dinner, back to center.

So, the secret to beating temptation is to not be tired. Get plenty of rest and the siren's call from the beverage and snack aisle will be reduced to a mere hum. It's always there though, just waiting for your defenses to drop and exploit your weakness.

Day 100, My New T-shirt

2008-06-28T18:09:00.006+09:00

Damn, day 100. People are pretty silly. After all, there's a difference of exactly "1" between 99 and 100, the same exact difference between, say, "72" and "73". But when we see that extra digit pop on there we get a little excited don't we?

100 days. I can hardly remember starting this crazy project now. People ask me how I got the idea and I can't clearly remember anymore, I've been doing it so long that it's just something I do, like those soldiers who don't even know why they fight anymore, except not so grim and with eggs.

Anyway, day 100 is just an arbitrary number, but I'll take any excuse I can to celebrate. So this time we're marking the milestone with a new T-shirt. Check this out!

Cool huh? The front is just white. Anybody have any ideas for what could go on the front of it?

Here's a detail of it. Clicky the piccy to make it get biggy.

And a big thank you to everyone who reads and comments. You support me more than you could ever know. If I was just alone trying to do this I wouldn't have made it to day 10 much less day 100.

Ah, hell, one more!

Day 99, No, Sucka!

2008-06-27T19:28:00.002+09:00

Today I woke up at 4 am, edited video until 8, then did carpentry work for a friend until 11. Following that was side split training. After lunch was voice-over work and then housecleaning. Followed that up with my workout. Went out to meet someone, drank a smoothie, went to the supermarket, and then jogged home for no particular reason other than I had extra energy and my legs felt a little wonky from sitting too much. And now I type this!

It's not that I'm not tired, I am. But I don't have any inkling to complain about it, because it's not a dull heavy, "I can't believe I have to get up and do it all over again" tired. It's a kind of empowered tired, if that makes any sense. The boost in energy levels I've gotten from doing The Peak Condition Project would have made the whole thing worth it even if I didn't lose a single inch or gain a single gram of muscle. Looking as good as I feel is just icing on the cake. I guess I should say it's just honey in the smoothie.

There is a downside though. You would think that with a clear mind, early rising hours, and a lot of energy, I would have all my work done before noon and spend the rest of the day in a hammock. But as my energy levels have busted through the roof, I've taken on more and more projects, because I feel like with my new powers I can handle all of them. This is something to be careful of. Because there's not much point in getting super-charged energy if you only run yourself into the ground harder and faster than you were before, right?

So, I have a new exercise I'm going to start. Not with resistance bands, not using any muscle except my tongue. (Whoa, don't even go there people!)

It's the training of saying the word "No." It's a tough one for me. I want to help everyone I can and with all this energy part of me feels like it's possible, but of course that's not right. Sooner or later, if I take too much on, I'm going to let someone down, and that is far worse than the short and shallow pain of simply saying, "I'd like to take this on, but I'm afraid at the moment I've got a little too much on my plate. But here's the number of someone who......"

Usually we associate "No" with negativity and ineffectiveness. In fact, in my 5 years in Japan I've maybe only heard the actual word "No" (いいえ) maybe 3 or 4 times. But, when used to give yourself a break, clear your schedule, and make time for what is important but not practical, (picnics, ukulele playing, surfing, and otherwise smelling the roses) it's a great word that I'd like to see more of in my life.

So, let's practice now. Ask me to help you out with a project. Go ahead.

Hmm... sounds interesting. But I've got a lot going on now, so there's NO WAY IN HELL AM I GOING TO DO THAT!

That wasn't so hard. But actually it was, I felt weird even typing it out. I'm going to need more practice.

Day 98, More With Less

2008-06-26T21:39:00.004+09:00

My favorite thing about the PCP is that it's a big thumb in the eye to the commodification of health. With an investment of just under 4000 yen (40 dollars) I was able to obtain every piece of equipment I needed to get in the shape I'm in.

If you want to know, that 4000 yen included:

A jumprope

Resistance band set

Push-up bars

And that's it. And I only use this equipment for 10% of my exercises. The other 90 is my own bodyweight and some chairs.

You don't need a gym membership, you don't need any contraptions, you don't need specialized supplements, you don't need special workout clothes, you don't need anything that costs money. All of these companies are feeding off people's desire to be better by furnishing useless junk and not actually educating anyone about the real truths behind getting fit.

This shouldn't surprise anyone, if there is cash to be made someone will be there to take advantage of it. I just want you to remember, reader, that none of that stuff will ever help you get in good shape. The only thing that will do that is when you truly have had enough and decide to get fit. Then nothing will be able to stop you.

I leave you with some people who really inspire me with their creativity and ingenuity and get awesome results with even less money than I expended on the PCP.

Day 97, Pizza Time

2008-06-25T15:00:00.010+09:00

Today I took my first daily photo in a week. (and what a relief it's been to not have to always remember my camera) In my "week off" I put on some weight around my middle and lost some definition, but everything has stayed pretty much in place. It's not the kind of change you could notice with clothes on, except that my face has filled out a bit which people tell me is a good thing.

And, in other news, tonight was an indulgence night, and I finally got around to eating pizza. I considered going to a local pizza place but I know it would be too much for me, so we decided to make pizza at home, at least that way I could control what was going on the pizza and try to cram some vegetables on there to make it more PCPy.

Pizza number one, Margherita with three cheeses. The basil is from my own garden on my apartment veranda.

Classic taste, very cheesy, yummy!

Pizza two, Japanese style, potatoes and brocolli with mayonaise. Western readers may gasp at this combination but it's actually pretty good, and the Nihonjin love it.

Great taste and with the brocolli it has the merest wisp of being healthy. The mayonnaise was low fat.

Pizza three, pesto base with onion, zucchini and eggplant slices.

Overcooked this one a bit and the pesto didn't really come through. Plus the pesto separated from the oil and it was a little greasy. Not bad though.

Pizza four, fresh Mozzerella and eggplant.

Too much cheese on this one, oops! The eggplant was good.

Taste
After a while the cheese kind of shorted out my palate and it was just a dull cheesy sharpness to everything. Couldn't pick out many individual flavors although this may speak more to my pizza cooking that anything else.

Effects
A strange giddiness at first. And I was able to eat 8 small slices and not feel stuffed beyond the point of reason. I guess thin crust helped. For some reason I wanted to eat this standing up, so I did.

Aftereffects
Severe stomach pain, a heavy dopey sleepy feeling, and several trips to the bathroom. That old nasty itchy feeling in my love handles and man-breasts as layers of oily fat get laid down. Not pleasant in the least bit.

I'm happy to announce this will be the last time I suffer through an indulgence. I'm going to stay super clean and lean in my last month on the PCP. I might even switch back to apple and egg smoothies, which I really miss believe it or not.

Day 96, Gearing Up Again

2008-06-24T13:10:00.002+09:00

Well, I took a few days off from the strictest parts of the PCP and I feel well rested and ready to pick up where I left off at day 90.

In my rest time I gained about 1 kilo but it's no big deal. It seems to have all gone to my love handles so I know it'll come off easy. The biggest difference has been in my energy levels.

As always, this kind of stuff is totally counterintuitive. In the last few days I've eaten more, exercised a little less, and taken it easy with long naps in the park and on the sofa.

And my energy has been way down.

The weird and inconvenient truth is that you have to move it and shake it in order to get the most out your body's natural energy levels. There's no way around this, it's often a pain, but if you want to feel good about yourself you've got to get those cells, bones, and muscles in motion!

So I'm back, look for a new photo tomorrow.

Day 95, Stretching Technique Revealed!

2008-06-23T18:39:00.004+09:00

I've been talking about it for weeks. Here it is, the method I've found that gets me the results I'm looking for as I move towards side splits.

It works and it gets results fast. With my own power alone it would probably take another year.

***Well, that didn't go over well. I had to take this video down due to negative reaction and fears that people were going to hurt themselves trying it. There was a lot of misunderstanding about the pain involved in this stretch and I didn't want people to get the wrong idea that I'm actually damaging myself. It's a safe and effective method but that wasn't communicated in the video enough I guess***

Day 94, Yucky

2008-06-22T18:53:00.006+09:00

Today it rained heavily all day, it was hard to have much gusto for anything. But strangely, I kept seeing fire trucks racing around everywhere.

For a few weird reasons (getting too deep into a 4 a.m. project and 7 a.m. yoga in the park) I didn't get to eat any breakfast this morning, the first time that's happened in over three months. So it was getting to be 9 a.m. and I knew if I didn't eat something I wouldn't make it through the day.

So, for the first time since the PCP began, I bought something at a convenience store. (I might have bought a bottle of water on my way to the print shop two months ago, I can't remember too well). I chose an egg and potato sandwich...

...and a tuna onigiri.

They were really gross. I've been eating so much Food that I forgot how nasty pre-packaged stuff tastes. I used to eat one of those sandwiches a few times a week, with a "nutrition" bar for desert. Today I could barely get through it. It wasn't that it tasted bad, it just tasted of nothing. Filler. Preservatives. Salt. Designed to be kind of halfway tasty to anyone.

It reminds me of that online experiment a few years ago, where a researcher put thousands of jokes online and asked people to rate the funniest. After months of rating, he supposedly had "The World's Funniest Joke." Here it is in its entirety:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

Yep, that's it. The World's Funniest Joke. If you're saying to yourself, that wasn't funny at all, you're right. Because it's not the world's funniest joke. It's just the one joke that everyone in the world could agree that they didn't hate. Its utter mediocrity is what made it the winner.

Well, pre-packaged food is the same thing. People spend months testing these things, trying to find a flavor that nobody really loves but isn't so bad people will spit it out. After you've been cooking all your food yourself, it surprises you that anyone buys the stuff at all. But of course, they do, just like I used to, simply because it's cheap and right there in front of us.

I'll never go back to eating convenience store lunches.

Day 93, Giving the Eggs a Rest

2008-06-21T20:45:00.004+09:00

I've had just about enough hard-boiled eggs, man. They're a pain to prepare, a pain to peel, and they taste like nothing, but like a bad, eggy nothing.

Plus, the worst part is that they make you gassy. I hate that feeling, especially as I usually find myself in teaching situations where I have to hold the gas in. (which leads me to a question. If you have to fart but you don't, and then a few minutes later you don't have to fart anymore, where did that gas go? Did it go back into your stomach? If anyone has the answer I'd be grateful to hear it)

Still it was important to me to do the entire PCP with nothing that you couldn't find in a regular grocery store. I was so sick of seeing sports clubs and gadget manufacturers taking advantage of people's desire to improve their health, filling their pockets, and offering no real help in return. So I stuck with the eggs, and they worked.

But now that I have reached Peak Condition, I don't need to gain any more muscle and I'm happy to say goodbye to 5 egg whites a day. But I need to keep my protein levels high in order to maintain and refine the muscle that's here now.

So, with Chen's blessing, yesterday I bought my first protein powder. I didn't know what to get so I just picked the mid-price one that said it would maintain muscle. I chose cocoa flavor.

It's pretty nasty and chalky. I'm drinking it mixed in with decaf coffee tonight which helps. But let me tell you, it beats 5 egg whites. I have two scoops after my workout and two before bed.

Day 92, Nacho Disaster

2008-06-20T21:32:00.003+09:00

Tonight as part of my 5 day relaxed diet plan I ate some nachos. The idea behind this week is to get away from using the scale and try to eyeball the correct amounts of carbs, protein, and fiber to get me close to what my training meals called for.

Tonight I totally failed! It was almost funny. If I was to eat only 50 grams of carbs it would have been like 10 chips for two bowls of homemade salsa. I also made the error of eating them while watching Shrek 3, so I wasn't keeping very good track of how much went in my mouth.

So, I totally blew my daily salt and carbs figures, and didn't get near enough protein. But I learned a lot about what not to do, and tomorrow's another day. The cool thing is that now that I'm down to minimum body fat I can burn off mishaps like this within 12-15 hours.

Plus, the whole incident reminded me of this commercial!

Day 91. Satisfaction

2008-06-19T22:00:00.002+09:00

For the next few days I'm dialing back training and the strict diet. As I've mentioned here a few times there are points when you can feel your body is getting strained, and if you don't take it easy in those periods you end up sick or injured, which sets you back more than easing off for a few days ever would.

I seem to hit these patches about every 3 - 4 weeks. This one comes at a good time as I am finished with the heavy training and have a lot of other stuff on my plate.

So, tonight I didn't worry about my diet and ate a normal sized, healthy dinner or Korean barbeque (with vegetables and tofu of course) in Pita pockets.

I'm not going to lie to you, I sit here a very satisfied kid. I haven't had a truly full stomach past 9 o clock in months. It feels warm and comfortable, and I feel happily drowsy.

It's a wonderful thing to have a good dinner. But we have to realize that it is seeking this feeling night after night that leads to vast overconsumption of carbs and fats right at the time our bodies do the least amount of physical activity, meaning all that food mass goes directly into fat storage. (In fact as I type this I can feel that weird prickly feeling in my love handles that means a new layer of fat is getting laid down right now)

One of the biggest gifts of the PCP is learning that this feeling is nice but absolutely non-essential for wellness. There is more to life than being fat and happy at 10 pm. The other 16 hours of your awake life improve dramatically as a result of tamping down the night eating. Unfortunately the evening is when our fatigue is highest and our willpower is weakest, so no one ever gets to feel the effects of not eating so much after sunset.

Well, you can take it from me, Corry, David, and Sean, it's worth the trade off to wake up bursting with enough energy, motivation and ideas to get you through the whole day.

Day 90, Finished! Kind of...

2008-06-18T21:25:00.006+09:00

Well, I never thought I'd see day 90. But here it is. And I can honestly say that I've reached Peak Condition.

Cardio is awesome. I can run as much as I want without getting winded, take the stairs three at a time at the station, and do multiple sets of pretty much any exercise you put in front of me, and double jump the rope until the cows come home.

Physique is right there for you to see. If you haven't looked at Day one or two for a while check out what a difference 90 days can make.

Coordination is fantastic. I can do all kinds of jumprope tricks, block punches and kicks more quickly, execute asana better than ever, and spin the 'chuks with precision.

Balance is great. My center of gravity changed a little bit when I lost all that weight, which threw off my balance for a few weeks, but I've got it recalibrated now. With my body in this condition I can keep my skeletal structure in any position I choose, including this one.

Flexibility is superior, my back and hamstrings are open like never before. My tendons are also working more independently from their attaching muscles (don't worry if that didn't make sense to you, it's only stretch otaku like me who care about that kind of stuff) I'm still spending a lot of time on the groin but I should be at that hanging side split before the PCP ends July 23. More info on my secret technique coming later this week) I achieved front splits only a month into the project but am not totally satisfied with them.

I talked to Chen a lot this week, and we've both decided that this is kind of a stopping point. It's almost sad to say it, but I'm pretty much finished with the training aspect of the PCP. By the way, here's what a usual meeting of the minds looks like:

Of course I'll maintain this condition until the full term of the project, but I don't want to get any stronger and I can't lose any more fat safely.

So, this is pretty much it. Not much next to Bruce Lee but pretty good for Patrick Reynolds!

And it was all done without a single dumbell, gym machine, protein powder, or any other gimmick people try so hard to sell us. Just a jumprope, a resistance band, two chairs, my own bodyweight, and a bunch of eggs.

So, where do we go from here? I'm going to spend the last month of my Project learning and teaching everyone how to make the principles of the PCP work in a regular life, without measuring your grams or keeping a rigid workout routine. In short, I'm going to figure out how to make The Peak Condition Project sustainable.

I'll still do the daily blog until July 23, but I think I'll switch to weekly pictures, since not much will be changing on me from here on out.

Thanks to everyone for your love and support. If this project has taught me anything it's that we are not stuck in our ruts, routines, and roles. I can only hope that one day I will be able to help you change your own life for the better.

So, see you in tomorrow's blog! Phase 3 begins!

Day 89, More Shorts

2008-06-17T17:14:00.010+09:00

Yesterday I wanted to buy some new shorts, because I was tired of my old ones falling off me. But I was having a lot of trouble. Somewhere along the way we've lost the "short" in shorts. Everything I was finding looked like this:

I think these baggy shorts styles look pretty stupid, especially if like me you don't have long legs. You can end up looking like Frodo Baggins in his hobbity half-pants:

But finally I found some pairs that actually fit me, didn't flare out like parachutes, and left enough room for high kicks. It was a relief to feel them sit snugly on my hips without a hint of sliding down. Here they are!

And where did I find these great shorts? Well, I happen to have the tag here in my pocket...

Here's my secret...

Ha ha, the kids section strikes again. What can I say? They're the only ones that fit. Plus kids stuff is cheap, and they actually have a straight cut for kids' little stick legs. If you're thinking I'm barely squeezing into these or that I too have become a stick figure, here's a look at the waistband.

The Peak Condition Project works.

Tomorrow big news coming! Thanks to everyone for reading and sorry for posting so many pictures of myself lately. I'm really not a narcissist, I just can't believe how much my body could change and I just want to show everyone that it actually happened!

Day 88, Strength = Flexibility

2008-06-16T21:19:00.003+09:00

There is this huge myth out there that as you get stronger you have to trade in flexibility. I think in the back of our minds we have the image of the strongmen whose bulging muscles make them move like automatons at Epcot Center.

Well, I'm here to tell you that belief is false and doesn't make any sense anyway. Here's the proof that it's false:

As I've gotten stronger with the PCP I've been amazed that my yoga practice has improved as much as my physical strength. They've gotten better in lockstep. Here's why this makes sense.

A stretch doesn't ever happen with just one muscle. If a solitary muscle were just floating through empty space (there's a weird image for you) it would of course be impossible for it to stretch. Every stretch requires two muscles working across a joint. So, in the case of the above picture, I say something like, "I'm stretching out my hamstrings" but what's really happening is "I'm stretching my hamstrings by rotating my pelvis to pull up on them while my stationary legs act as a grounding force, with the arms adding additional stability." I wouldn't get through many yoga classes talking like that though (although it's not a bad idea).

So, we have one muscle pulling on another one across a connective joint. Now let's say through some training you make that muscle stronger. Guess what? The next time you do that stretch it will feel deeper, simply because you have more raw pulling power. It's like having an extra person give you a hand as you deepen your pose.

Then why do those bodybuilders move like that? Simply because they don't stretch enough. As you gain muscle, you are actually shortening the muscle fibers. Over time you'll get nice and pumped, but if you don't spend some time each day stretching deeply, you'll also get rigid and tight.

So strength training needs to be matched with flexibility training. But most people just don't know how to stretch properly and end up doing some half assed standing leg stretches for 5 mins before hitting the iron. This is one reason I make my videos, to educate people on the principles of stretching, not just the form.

Why is it important to be flexible? You can think of flexibility as the lubrication in an engine. Without it, no matter how powerful, the engine just won't work well and will break down quickly. Having open, flexible joints and connective tissue allows you to avoid injuries and heal them faster if you happen to get one. Circulation improves, and your body can deliver antibodies and endorphins where they need to go more efficiently.

Not to mention the fact that a flexible body does what you want it to do. You are able to place your skeletal system just where you want it, without having to fight internal forces and frictions. This is an invaluable asset if you are playing a sport or studying a martial art, and makes daily life much more pleasant.

There is so much information online about stretches and yoga, there's no excuse not to give it a try. You'll be amazed at the ability of your body to rebound even after years of inactivity.

As for my stretching, I am deep into my secret technique to accomplish hanging side splits. It's pretty crazy stuff, and I can't wait to share it with you all once I've managed a version that satisfies me.

Until then, have you done a backbend today? You gotta do those, everybody. How many hours a day do you spend with your spine curving towards a screen, a meal, a steering wheel, or a newspaper? All that forward bending deserves at least a few minutes in the opposite direction everyday. This isn't rocket science people!

Day 87, Daily Photo FAQs

2008-06-15T19:16:00.008+09:00

If you've been reading my blog I'm sure you've also browsed through the Flickr stream on the right side up there. I thought I'd address some questions that have come up about the photos.

1. Why do you do the same pose every day?
I thought it would be the easiest way to see what's really changing. Plus, when it's all over I'm going to make a time-lapse movie and we can all see the transformation happen in just a few seconds.

2. Some days you look bigger and stronger than other days that come after them. What's up with that?
A few things. Sometimes it's just a matter of lighting. When I take the photo at night (due to a one-off scheduling conflict) I turn on the overhead lights. Those cast a lot of shadows which make the muscles look more defined.

Other times I take the picture after a tough workout and my muscles are pumped up a little bit. Some days I'm forced to take the photo "cold".

And lastly, I'm still not very good at flexing. Before the PCP I thought bodybuilding competitions were kind of a joke, but now I know how hard it is to make certain muscles flex at the right amount for best effect. Some days I get a good one, others, I totally mess it up and look weaker as a result.

oops, screwed another one up...

I try to throw in some photos from other angles in the blog so people can get a better idea of my progress.

3. How do you feel when you look back at the earlier daily photos?
It's weird, I look at those pictures and I totally remember thinking, "damn, you're looking pretty good there Patrick." I didn't really give much thought to improving my physique.

I was watching a Bruce Lee clip one day and it just occurred to me. "You don't look anything like that. You act like you're in good shape but you still suck your gut in when you go surfing. If you keep fooling yourself like this you're going to wake up a 45 year old man with a beer belly and jowls and it'll be too late." And I just decided to change. It was like, a 5 second process.

So I hope this sheds some light on the photo taking process. It's actually quite a deep topic. Everyday we see pictures of fit, beautiful people selling us stuff. The Daily Photo has made me realize that what we're actually viewing is the following:

Winners of the genetic jackpot

who are paid to spend hours a day on their appearance and physique

in a picture taken by a professional, with the best cameras, make-up, and lighting available

and the picture we see is the very best out of hundreds taken at that one shoot.

We all know this intellectually but we still see the image and compare ourselves to it, and find ourselves wanting. It's a pretty insane situation but something in human nature just can't help it I guess.

But try to remember it the next time you see something like this.

Day 86, Late Night

2008-06-15T05:09:00.002+09:00

Long day and a late night. Didn't get home until 1:00am, which technically makes this a day 87 post I guess. I'm quite tired.

There's one thing for sure, parties are the enemy of the PCP. It's very tough to control your eating when snack food and alcohol are laid out everywhere. Plus, a late bedtime sabotages you in two ways. One is that you don't get enough sleep that night. Muscle growth happens during the fiber repair stage that happens when you snooze. The second way is that the next day your workout will suffer as you work on little sleep. You'll probably have to cut some sets.

I'm not much of a partier anyway. But especially not now.

Day 85, 12 Weeks

2008-06-13T17:14:00.005+09:00

Yesterday was the 84th day, and it wasn't until today that I realized that 84 divided by 7 is 12, i.e. 12 weeks. (I suck at math)

And you know what that means. Bruce Lee photo time! Did you know that Bruce Lee could do two finger push-ups? If you've never seen them check this out. You can see the push-ups at about 1:20 but the whole video is great.

I can't do two finger push-ups, although I've been working up to them for a few years. I started on fists, then 5 fingers, and now I'm down to three (well, 6, I have to use both hands) I can crank out about 25 pushups from this base. So without further ado, here's the 12 week photo.

Thanks everyone for your support. Almost there!

Day 84, Circle Crunch

2008-06-12T22:35:00.005+09:00

Damn, I love this crunch. I don't know how it escaped my attention until now. Usually we just isolate the rectus abdominus muscle with regular crunches, or the obliques with side crunches. This one hits both in a fun way.

Lie on your back, hands lightly touching the ears. Lift the shoulders slightly and instead of crunching up, rotate the torso to the left and up in a circular shape. Go all the way around until you're down on the opposite side. From here you can keep going in the same direction for a few more reps, or, stop and go in the opposite direction, which is pretty hard.

One of the hardest things about abs work is keeping it fresh. Not just to alleviate boredom, but to find new ways to stimulate those muscles that get too good at the usual exercises.

Day 83, I Give Up...

2008-06-11T15:51:00.008+09:00

Yes, I give up... on trying to fashion some kind of chin-up bar. I spent days combing the net, talking to carpenters, metalworkers, and even a car designer for BMW. All of the solutions were too bulky and/or expensive.

The best thing I saw came from reader Jake Sibley, who was so kind as to offer to help me with international shipping (thanks dude!). The Perfect Pullup. But they don't ship to Japan and by the time we got all the buying and intermediary shipping figured out the project would almost be over.

So, I've resigned myself to the only other choice for someone who doesn't enjoy the gym atmosphere. The playground. Yesterday I racked my brain for all the playgrounds I had seen on my adventures around Yokohama, and took a kind of Pull-up bar tour to find the best one for my purposes.

First up, the playground at Yokohama Stadium.

A little on the short side, plus, this park is always busy with one of the following, depending on time of day, a) housewives and their little kids b) elementary schoolgirls or c)drunken homeless men. Next...

Near Odori Park

Here's a jungle gym that might work... the height is right...

let's give it a try...

Agh, the parallel bars stop my shoulders from finishing the movement. No good. Onwards...

Near Minami Police Station

Here's a set next to some swings...

Uh... I don't think this is going to hack it.

I feel as ridiculous as I look. Not going to work.

Next up, a kind of neglected playground near Yokohamabashi.

Yes! It's high enough. And I'll be able to get shoulders through those gaps in the ladder rungs.

Perfect! And it's not too crowded. Plus, the kids here (you can just see them in the top right of the next photo) were pretty nice. For some reason they all started calling me Michael. Probably their elementary ALT English instructor is named Michael, and they figure if it works for one male Gai-jin it'll work for them all. Fair enough.

So, this where I'll be every third day for the next few weeks. Come by and join me for a few sets of chin-ups and the ridicule of small children.

Can't beat the price!

Day 82, Lemon Bars

2008-06-10T21:59:00.005+09:00

Today you may remember was my indulgence day.

So far the indulgences, which come every 15 days have been;

Beer

A Chocolate Chip Cookie

Wine and Cheese

Ice Cream

and today's was...

Homemade Lemon Bars!

I love desserts that aren't overly sweet and have more than one flavor going on at once. Cheesecake, bitter chocolate, etc... so Lemon Bars have always been one of my favorites.

But in Japan you're never going to find lemon bars so we've learned to make them.

Here's how the sheet looks before cutting.

and here's how they look going into my mouth.

Taste
Tangy and delicious. Great texture. Homemade things just have that extra something to them. I ate 4 5cm by 5cm bars.

Effects
After 10 minutes, an intense bout of the shakes as the sugar hit my bloodstream. I just can't take that much concentrated sucrose at once anymore. My stomach was also a little confused as to what to do with all the flour hitting it at so late a time (9pm) I haven't eaten more than a piece of toast's worth of carbs past 6pm in 82 days.

Aftereffects
Upset stomach, occasional twitches in the back of my neck. A heavy sleepy feeling (sugar crash). Churning intestines. A desire to put the leftover lemon bars out of sight. Tired in body but mind racing.

Phew! Next indulgence, day 97. These things are a real trial for me. It blows my mind that I used to eat this stuff that now turns my world upside down like it was nothing. My question is, is it necessarily good to be this sensitive to rich food? Isn't there something to be said for having an iron stomach? My body has gotten much stronger but my stomach is a real wimp these days.

Day 81, Weariness

2008-06-09T19:23:00.006+09:00

Today for the first time in a while I was simply tired and fed up with trying to stay on the plan. Tired of measuring out my lunch, tired of eating egg whites (I only made it through 3 today), tired of the second day deep soreness I described in day 80.

The funny thing is that when you do something for this long you reach a point where it's easier to just follow the momentum that you've built up and keep doing it than veer wildly off course. For example, I could throw up my hands and say "forget this!" and go have three pizzas at Sisiliya, but the flavors would be overpowering for me and my stomach would hurt like hell within 10 minutes. You have these visions of finishing the project and having a big piece of chocolate cake with all your friends, but the truth is that at that point the cake is too rich for you and you've lost all your friends because they're intimidated by your killer physique. (well, maybe not)

Truthfully, today was just a busy day and the PCP felt more like a chore than a joy. It's my fault for overscheduling myself and spending too much time on one project I just wanted to finish. One of the most important mental changes that you have to make doing something like this is to realize that you do have to schedule in your health. The times I've strayed furthest from my plan is when I just leave myself 30 mins to magically get through 1000 jumpropes and 30 sets of exercises. It never happens but I still imagine it can be done when I see my appointment book filling up.
If you asked someone, would they rather be wealthy and successful or healthy, they'll always say "healthy." It's the most obvious thing that without health there's not much point to all that money and success. But crack open that same person's appointment book and you'll probably see that on the ground the pursuit of success gets a lot more scheduled time than exercise.

At least that's how my day was today, and my frustration flowed not towards the excess work but towards the PCP, which is just backasswards. The PCP only helps me and makes life more interesting. I'll try hard not to let it get bumped off the schedule for lesser pursuits.

Day 80, Sore

2008-06-08T20:42:00.004+09:00

Today I was sore from every damn direction. Yesterday I did a ton of pullups at the community gym (still no luck finding a pull-up bar) so my whole back felt somehow leaden. When your back is sore it's not like regular muscles being sore. It's just a sheet of weariness draped over your whole body, like the iron vests you have to wear when you get a dental x-ray.

The other soreness was from the bottom, from my top secret leg stretching technique. Hip abductors were not happy campers.

When I'm sore like this, it gives me a great deal of compassion for my weaker or older yoga students. Today during class I was having a hard time demonstrating correct form. It wasn't that I didn't understand what to do, I just didn't have the fine control over my musculature that I needed. It was a good reminder to be patient with people who struggle in class, and of course, to Help the Aged.

Being sore also has another positive side effect. There's no better way to learn anatomy than to have a sore muscle. All day you get to feel exactly when and how that muscle is used. For example, tonight I was chopping bell peppers and I noticed from the soreness that the cutting action used just the slightest bit of my trapezius, right where it tapers off at the deltoid. How interesting!

Okay, you don't have to say it. I'm a geek.

Day 79, Must Have Been Something I Ate...

2008-06-07T22:10:00.004+09:00

I worked hard today and trained hard as well. So I had a nice "big" dinner when I got home. 2 tortillas with steamed vegetables and shrimp, with some fresh salsa I made a few days ago and wanted to use up. For dessert I ate half and apple and half a banana and some dates with a crumbled gingerbread cookie in milk.

I think the salsa had gone off, and when that milk hit my stomach I felt pretty bad. And it's been regular trips to the toilet ever since.

Sorry to be gross. But there's a great lesson here. After a long day of work and or training, there's a tendency to eat a meal that is as unhelpful as your day was tough. Hard day at the office? Finish it off with a few beers and some fried food! All that stress and weariness will really be helped by taxing your liver and arteries. Those organs just love when you make them work double shifts!

The truth is, after a tough day, we need to come home, eat a piece of bread, some thin soup, and a bowl of vegetables. Our bodies don't need anymore work to do, they're still recovering from the stuff that happened 9am to 5pm, why give them a whole new load of stuff to deal with from 9pm to 5 am?

I'm not preaching at you here. I'm having some serious stomach issues now because when I came home I thought I deserved a few extra ladles of that tasty salsa slathered over my entire meal.

Day 78, What's In the Box?

2008-06-06T15:47:00.007+09:00

Today Kazue gave me a mysterious box with a "Peak Condition Project" tag. Inside, it read, "Do not open until July 23rd." (The day the project ends)

I've always been terrible at waiting to open presents (if it is indeed a present) especially if I have to look at the thing for a month and a half. So I thought I'd open this up to the general public to make the waiting more interesting.

So, here's the idea. Everyone, submit your idea about what's in the box in the comment section. After a week I'll aggregate all the answers into a poll, which people can vote on until the end of the project, when we'll crack open the box. I've been wanting to do a poll thingy, and this sounds like fun. If anyone gets it right I'll do something nice for you!

But this will only work if you send a lot of ideas. This includes you, silent readers, comment with your best guesses! I'll get things started with my own comment below.

And many thanks to Kazue. I couldn't have succeeded in this project without her patience and support!

Day 77, How to Eat 5 Egg Whites a Day...

2008-06-05T11:24:00.005+09:00

... and not go crazy.

Egg whites are not the most appetizing thing in the world. Especially considering you are eating the cytoplasm of an unfertilized chicken ovary. But you gotta have them if you want to build muscle. Why? The things are pure protein. Nothing but amino acids, which your body uses overnight to make new muscle. But, all hope isn't lost, there are some tricks you can do to make the things more palatable. I eat 5 a day now, so I'll put up 5 different techniques, although there are many more.

1. Pepper

Pepper adds a spicy and 0 calorie way to liven up egg whites. Use freshly ground pepper for extra bite.

2. Mustard

I love mustard. Plain old yellow mustard is great, and the fancy stuff with the peppercorns still intact is great too. At 5 calories a tablespoon it's no problem if you're sticking to a close training diet

3. Red Wine Vinegar

This is one of my favorites, and has the added benefit of improving circulation. You can also use Chinese black vinegar if you are truly hardcore. Use the hollow of the egg as a kind of cup.

4. Ginger

This is something you can find in any Japanese food store, a tube of emulsified ginger. Very spicy and fresh taste! Also keeps your breath fresh and not eggy.

5. Pesto

This is the least diet friendly of the bunch, with Pesto's oil and salt content. But it tastes so good and works when you can't stand the thought of eating one more egg white.

So there are some ideas for anyone crazy enough to eat a lot of these things. Chen was telling about one of his bodybuilder friends who eats 20 a day. I can't imagine. Does anyone have any more ideas for dressing up the blandest food on earth?

Day 76, Still On the Hunt...

2008-06-04T15:49:00.004+09:00

... for a Chin-Up bar. I've looked all over the web and called a few sports stores, and I'm seriously thinking about trying to make this thing:

I found the plans for this on this awesome DIY exercise site.

I have a long history trying to make crackpot gadgets and it usually ends up in failure and costing triple the price of a professionally made one.

I've never fallen into many of the cliche male stereotypes. For example, I have absolutely no problem asking for directions, as I am constantly lost, I have no problem admitting I'm wrong, because I usually am. But I do have that tendency to get knee deep into a building project only to find out that it won't work. Among my many failures include:

A 50 gallon barrel used for holding clean drinking water, accessed by a spigot. (It leaked)

An in-store beach display including moving waves on a rotary engine. (It shook itself to pieces)

A turtle home including an active waterfall (turtles can't stand being near moving water... oops!)

A greenhouse for growing herbs in winter (it tipped over in the mildest of breezes, killing the plants a little each time)

A meditation bench (worked for me but I let a *cough* heavyset friend try it and the screws were ripped right out)

... and many, many (many) more.

So, am I really going to try and make this thing out of plumbing pipe and electrical tape? You bet! What could go wrong?

Day 75, Sliding Scales

2008-06-03T16:57:00.004+09:00

Human psychology is an endlessly baffling thing, especially the fact that no matter what happens, our egos never seem to be satisfied or at peace.

Case in point. Today, I caught myself mentally berating myself for overeating. I was doing some housework and everytime I passed the kitchen I would take a dried prune from the jar I have on my counter and eat one. Then, 5 minutes of cleaning, and another dried prune, and so on. I wasn't eating because I was hungry, just because the prunes tasted good and were there for the taking.

After an hour or so of this I felt full and starting giving myself a hard time. Was I so weak minded that I would just eat something because it was there? What kind of Peak Condition am I going to be in with that kind of mentality. A few minutes of this passed and I realized that I was sitting there giving myself a guilt trip over eating a dozen dried prunes.

Rewind the tape to three months ago and the same self-berating head conversation would have been happening, only that time about a tray of donuts or an entire tube of Pringles. Intellectually I know that the prunes are good for me and that I'm eating better than 99% of people in the world, but the ego doesn't pay any attention to facts like that, and just keeps up the mental hammering no matter what the situation.

I've found the same thing with my physique. Although almost near Peak Condition (my back needs a lot of work, more on that in future posts) I still get frustrated that I don't look more like my vision of what the final product should be, or that this muscle group isn't as toned as it looked last week. And this dissatisfaction has been in the back of my head the whole time, right from day 1. And it will continue into the future.

Be it fitness, wealth, or career, nobody ever seems to say to themselves, "Ok, I think I've done enough. This is good enough for me. I'm going to finally relax and enjoy my life now." The ego works on a sliding scale. When we get close to what we imagine will satisfy us the mind moves the bar a little further away. And why? Buddhist thinkers will tell you that the ego needs dissatisfaction to perpetuate itself. A truly happy person doesn't have anything for the ego to cling to and obsess about. This state is pretty much what I think of as enlightenment.

It's interesting to see the same ego mischief applies to fitness. Getting into awesome shape will not soothe the little voice inside your head, although it will quiet it down. Only a lot of meditation and awareness will really deal with the underlying issues.

And that's harder than any diet or exercise plan could ever be.

Day 74, Fashion Show

2008-06-02T16:45:00.008+09:00

You might not believe this but I am actually not an exhibitionist. I am very shy about being seen with my shirt off, probably a result of being a chubby grade schooler humiliated at dozens of pool parties

.
(Note: This picture isn't me but it's damn close!)

So it took a lot of courage for me to start the daily pictures, but I knew it was the only way to motivate myself and keep the transparency a project like this needs.

So, much to my embarrassment, you've seen 73 topless pictures of me, and I thought it might be good to show how the PCP effects how you look in clothes. You know when you go to the clothes store and they have the mannequins showing off the fashions? Well, if you look at the male mannequins, you'll notice that they are totally ripped.

And the clothes look good on them, the chest fits, the shoulders are filled. But when most guys put on the same stuff, it looks like this...

The good news is that after 74 days my torso resembles the mannequin's much more than the weaklings. And as a result clothes look the way they're supposed to.

Also I promised I'd show the funky shorts I got that are actually boys size 14. Here they are. Cool huh?

So yet another happy side effect of the PCP. Clothes look better!

Day 73, Non-Permanence

2008-06-01T21:03:00.003+09:00

Sometimes after teaching a lot of yoga (5 hours today) I actually end up feeling tighter. In my last class today I could hardly touch my toes in a forward bend. In the morning I had my head on my knees in the same pose.

One of the most important Buddhist concepts is that of impermanence (anicca). Nothing in the entire universe stays the same. Therefore, getting hung up on something staying a certain way is a recipe for frustration. This applies to little things, like getting upset when it starts to rain on your picnic, or big things, like when someone close to you dies. Of course we all intellectually know that nothing is forever, but we don't really believe it in our bones. I think, in all of us, there is a little voice that whispers, "Sure, everyone else will have to deal with change, but somehow we're going to beat the system."

Impermanence is especially true of the human body. I heard a report about how within 7 years every single atom in our body is replaced save for a few brain cells which we have for life. So, if you look at your hand right now, there isn't a single atom in there which was with you in 2001.

But of course sometimes we feel that our bodies have changed just over the course of 7 hours, as I did today in the afternoon forward bend. These rapid changes in my flexibility levels used to take me by surprise, but now I just roll with them, without trying to force the pose back to where it was last week or where I think it should be in my image of it.

And it's interesting to apply these ideas to the PCP. Every ounce of muscle I have put on will soon fade away, either in the near future if I stop training or in the not so near future as I get older and just can't maintain it anymore. It's all destined to weaken and die. This is a good thought to have. It quickly deflates any pride I might develop in my progress, and keeps everything light.

Many people ask, "how can you think like that and still be motivated?" For me, impermanence is a great motivator, because I only have today to make something of the opportunities presented, as tomorrow everything will be different. And I'm strong right now, today, which is made all the more pleasant with the knowledge that it will all fade away before I know it.

Day 72, Costco

2008-05-31T22:20:00.004+09:00

Tonight I went to Costco. I hadn't been there for a few months, and certainly not since I started the PCP or was even thinking much about my diet.

As I've mentioned before, roundabouts day 40 pretty much all cravings for the foods from my old life had faded away. Chips, muffins, cheesy stuff, sweets, these had all been replaced by fresh vegetables, dried fruit, and whole grains. And it wasn't like I was forcing myself to eat steamed vegetables when I really wanted donuts, I actually wanted to eat the vegetables.

So I went to Costco on a mission for dried dates. Before they had California Dates which were pretty tasty, and most importantly, cheap. When you eat as much fruit as I do, the supermarket bills add up. As it stands now dates are a luxury I can have once every two weeks or so.

As it turns out, Costco doesn't have dates anymore, so that sucked. But what I found was that all of my old cravings came rushing back as I was in the megastore. All the packages in such big sizes, promising week after week of tasty goodness, and for such a low price! Of special craving intensity were the over-sized Costco pizzas, which have a diameter about equal to the length of a basset hound, the Costco dozen muffin pack, which is actually 12 rather large pieces of cake in muffin shape, and the everything bagels, which would go nicely with a 3 pack of Rondelle herb cheese spread.

I had to stop and tell myself, "Dude, what's wrong with you? You don't really want that pizza. You've had it before, and it wasn't that good and it will totally kill your diet plan for 5 days." And it was true, I really didn't want the pizza. But the craving was still there.

This puzzled me as I walked around, picking up frozen berries, tortillas, and a pack of 16 apples. Gradually the realization came that what people crave when they go to Costco isn't actually the food, it's the idea of having a lot of good food in their house at once. Costco is selling a feeling of security. Do you really want a 40 oz. jar of artichoke hearts? No. But what is appealing is the idea that you could have an artichoke heart anytime you wanted, that you would be prepared to eat an artichoke heart salad even in the event of a nuclear attack. Shopping at Costco makes people feel like they will be ready for an uncertain future.

And also I found a funky swimsuit in the boys section. I now wear a boys size 14. All of the mens stuff, even the smalls, swallowed me. I'll post a picture of it if I'm not feeling too shy.

Day 71, Cottage Cheese

2008-05-30T18:30:00.003+09:00

I like cottage cheese. I eat about 2 tubs of it a week. Low in fat, high in protein, and very versatile. In fact, I was going to write this blog about all the ways you can use cottage cheese, and in the process I found this site...

The Cottage Cheese Page

... which has all the recipes I've figured out for myself plus many more. Why I didn't look for cottage cheese recipes, uh, 71 days ago, is beyond me. So there's no need to reinvent the wheel. All the recipes I was going to give are on that page in one way or another.

I remember when I was a kid just the sight of cottage cheese made me feel queasy. Now I can't get enough of the stuff. I love the tacky texture in the mouth and how you can take it sweet or savory.

Day 70, Tell This to Your Boss...

2008-05-29T22:09:00.005+09:00

Damn! Today I didn't have time for any kind of workout. And by the time I got home in the evening I was too tired to even think about it. It's one thing to feel crappy and choose to skip your training for the day, at least then it's on you and you can accept responsibility and move on. But today I didn't even have 5 minutes for jumping rope. Working 9 to 8 without 5 minutes free is whack.

And the weird thing is, I was so hungry tonight. I stayed on diet but just barely. I know if I had gotten some training in that hunger wouldn't have been an issue. Once again, I don't understand how this stuff works, but doing more exercise leaves you feeling less hungry than just sitting around "resting."

The other day one of my yoga students was bewailing his tight hamstrings. I told him it just took a few minutes a day of forward bends to open them up, and if he was really serious, a 30 minute upavistha konasana in the evening.

He protested, saying that he didn't have any free time in the day and got home only in time to shower and sleep before waking up and getting on a train to Tokyo at 6 a.m.

I told him if that was really the case, he needed to think about getting another job, because that's no way to live.

He said half jokingly, "I wish you would tell that to my boss."

I don't know why but this pissed me off. And those who know me know that I get pissed off maybe once every two years.

I told him I truly felt sorry for his situation, but that, at the end of the day, it wasn't his boss's fault that he's working himself into the ground.

It was his fault. He chooses everyday to keep a job that is literally crippling him. Good on him for at least coming to a yoga class, that's more than 99% of people do, but I find it highly ignoble to blame a lack of self-improvement on your environmental situation.

No one else is in charge of getting "you" right.

Which brings me full circle to my overscheduled day in which I can't even find the time to jumprope. I can gnash and wail about how busy I am, about how many places I have to be at one time, but ultimately, it's my fault that I got in this mess. And I should either shut up about it or change it.

**PS. A few days after I wrote this post I talked to this person again , and he told me that the week after our conversation he had put in his resignation, taking effect at the end of next month! That's how it's done.

Day 69, Randomness

2008-05-28T16:23:00.002+09:00

Strength levels seem to be getting back to normal. I don't know what that was about last week. Also not craving extra food so much. The body is so complicated, it's hard to say that any one thing causes another. But it might have had to do with summer finally coming on. My body seems to hiccup a little bit when the seasons change.

I've heard a few people remarking that they'd like to get in shape so they look good in sleeveless shirts and in swimsuits. You need to think about that stuff in March people! But if you start today you could tighten up somewhat before July.

As for me, I'm trying to loosen up, my right hip specifically. I am seriously thinking of hiring someone to push me into the wall with my legs open. It would take about 10 minutes a day. How much would you pay someone to do that? I wish there was a Craig's List in Japan.

Day 68, Does this Product Exist?

2008-05-27T20:30:00.005+09:00

Man, what a difference 68 days makes. Tonight I spent a good 30 minutes browsing Power Towers. What the hell is a Power Tower? I didn't know either until I started searching for "pull up bar set" and was educated as to the proper gym rat name for these things. (Isn't it amazing how the internet educates you without there being any one person who teaches you? Extelligence) A Power Tower is a rig like this:

I'm thinking of putting one in the studio, but none of the ones I've seen is acceptable. They're ugly and scream sweaty gross gym. And, I'm trying to find something that will allow me to do pull ups and have several levels of bars for leg stretches. So, basically, I need a ballet barre for legs that goes all the way up to the ceiling for upper body training and those evil kung fu situps I wrote about in Day 65.

I need this!!!

There seem to be two worlds, the guys who want to look like Schwarzenegger and the lightweight yoga types who want to put their feet behind their heads. And never the twain shall meet, at least in terms of manufacturing gym equipment it seems.

So, I'm going to have to make the damn thing myself. I haven't welded since university but if I can find a good arc welder with an automatic feed it would be an easy project. There's no way I'm going to stick weld the thing.

Any ideas readers?

(crickets chirping)

Day 67, Wave Patterns

2008-05-26T21:52:00.004+09:00

Today I really dogged it man. I ate too much, and I did my training halfheartedly. I still stuck to the PCP but only in the letter of the law, not the spirit. Sometimes that's all you can do to get by.

I get these low energy days after about 4 weeks of consecutive training. I think the body just knows when it's getting pushed too much and powers down some systems.

Everything in the universe works in wave patterns, from the atoms in your hand, to the light coming from your screen now, to the cycle of your breathing and heart. We seem to think that we are somehow exempt from this cosmic law, that we can keep going up and up without ever experiencing the downs. Of course a wave that only has a peak and no trough is impossible.

The wisest people I know have an innate sense of these patterns and work to attune themselves to them. I am trying to be more like them, and so won't beat myself up over being lazy and inattentive today.

Day 66, PCP supplies

2008-05-25T21:41:00.003+09:00

Man, another long day. But I got my nutrition right at least. It takes a good half hour of planning to get your diet right if you're going to be out of the house all day. You have to consider two meals and two snacks, all with the right amounts of food, and all as you're trying to get out of the door on time in the morning. I couldn't do it without my scale and lunch box, or rather, lunch boxes.

First, my scale. I love my scale. It's pretty. It's something I have to use everyday, and it's just nice to see good design on a daily basis.

Next, my lunch box (es).

Check it out. Here are three large, square containers with airtight seals. They're large enough to accommodate the sometimes big amounts of protein and vegetables we PCPers have to eat sometimes. So, fill them up with nutritious goodness...

And, thanks to the magical doohickey, they all snap together to make a tasty tower of nutrition. Easy to carry and fits in a gym bag.

Getting the right tools makes everything easier.

Day 65, The Difference

2008-05-24T22:06:00.003+09:00

Today I taught 5 hours of yoga, and instead having lunch spent that time taking photos of yoga for upcoming projects. Around 3 pm it started to rain. I didn't have a raincoat or umbrella, when I left the house early this morning it was sunny.

This was all fine except that I had told Chen I would meet him after my last class at the local gym to learn more, ever more, conditioning techniques.

So there I was, tired, hungry, and with nothing to look forward to except biking across town in the rain to meet Chen and do painful, difficult exercises.

I took a long look at my cell phone. It would be so easy to call up and cancel. It's what anyone would do considering the day I was having.

But then, the thought came from somewhere, that "yes, anyone would call up and cancel, go home to a nice dinner and quiet evening. But that's not what someone who is aiming for Peak Condition would do."

Suddenly it didn't seem so hard to get to the gym. I had a good time and learned kung fu sit-ups, which you might have seen in the classic Drunken Master.

The sit-ups can be seen from 0:50 on. They take great strength as well as superior flexibility. I want to get better at them but I don't have access to a steady bar... I'm thinking about how to get one rigged up without taking a flimsy Japanese wall down with me as I break my neck.

Anyway, those moments, where you look the easy choice dead in the eyes and say "no thanks," are the only difference between being in good shape and peak condition. And far beyond physical fitness, they're the difference between just getting by or doing something wonderful with your life.

Day 64, Early Indulgence

2008-05-23T22:55:00.006+09:00

As you know every 15 days I go off diet both to reward myself and see how I react to "regular" food. My next indulgence day was supposed to be Day 67, but I went ahead and took it today because we were having a staff meeting that ended up at....

I was never a huge ice-cream fan but today it was hot and sunny, and we were sitting outside, so it was really nice.

I ordered the Cheesecake Fantasy which looks like this.

If you've never been to Stone Cold Creamery you should know that all the ingredients are mixed in right in front of you as the employees sing, yes sing, like they just spent a summer backpacking through Smurf village. I would pay an extra 30 cents if it meant they served me my ice cream without singing. But I haven't seen that choice on the menu.

Taste

Very, very rich. It felt a little unreal to eat something so rich after weeks and weeks of getting used to the somewhat muted sweetness of fruit. It was good, but good in the way that being given 10,000 dollars that you can only spend at store that sells feather boas is good.

Effects

After about 10 minutes, a sugar high that gave me the shakes and made me a little dizzy. I was riding in a car at that time and I just kind of lolled my head out the window and watched the pretty colors. I could feel my heart racing in my chest throughout all of this. A bit unsettling.

Aftereffects

A mild sugar crash, but not as bad as I thought it would be. A lingering sense that I didn't want to look at food for the rest of the week. And, as I write this a few hours later, I can literally feel the extra fat on my midsection. Really, I can pinch something that wasn't there before. When you're down below 10% BMI you can feel new fat as soon as it forms. It doesn't bother me as I know from past indulgences that it burns off in a day or two, but it's a real eye-opener to actually feel the cause and effect of eating a 710 calorie dessert. It certainly makes me want to stay away from that stuff. And I got the smallest size of one of the healthier choices.

Here's a list of all of Stone Cold Creameries offerings and their caloric content. Some of the choices come out at over 1500 calories, which is pretty much my allowance for a whole day. Don't eat that much ice cream, dear reader. That's the equivalent of a whole supermarket basket of fresh veggies.

So, the next indulgence day will be day 82. As always I would like to hear your suggestions for what to eat that day!

Day 63, Long One...

2008-05-22T22:19:00.003+09:00

Today was a very long an unsatisfying day, I managed to squeeze in a little PCP during my lunch break, but had to wolf down lunch because I was late, which made my stomach hurt. Then working until 8 pm, and eating dinner at the way too late hour of 9pm, which has brought on a new round of stomach pain. I didn't even have a coffee break in which to eat egg whites or fruit, so my protein is way off today, and my energy is shot.

Fortunately, it's only the odd Thursdays which are like this, most other days I have plenty of time to eat and exercise well. What blows my mind is that I used to have 6 days out of 7 like today. I don't know how I did it, it makes me tired just thinking about it.

Going to sleep now. Another long day tomorrow, but at least it's my own stuff tomorrow and not working for the man.

Day 62, What If...

2008-05-21T21:05:00.006+09:00

... 10% of the world did The Peak Condition Project? This thought bubbled up in my mind today as I was jumping rope. Of my friends and acquaintances who know I'm doing this, (and it's getting more and more obvious that my physique is changing, thus, more people keep asking) the reactions fall in this range. Let's take a sample of 10 people:

4 will say something like : "Why? You weren't out of shape or anything..."

3 will be in the ballpark of: "Wow, sounds tough, I could never do that..."

2 will say something along the lines of : "That's cool. Good luck! I'll check your blog!"

And 1 out of 10 will say: "How did you do it? I want to do it. I want to start tomorrow. Tell me how you did it. I'm serious."

When I was an aid worker, a 10% compliance rate for a given health initiative was considered a huge success. So I've been surprised to have so many people not only express interest in the PCP, but practically beg me to let them do it too. (This is why I decided to open it up to three others) All I can say is that the Project brings out the best in people, especially in that 10%

So anyway, I was just trying to do a thought experiment. What if 1 out of every 10 people in the world started eating right, controlling their diet, and exercising consistently? How would that change the planet?

First, a lot of industries would see an immediate 10% drop in profits. Fast food, restaurants, bars and the like would have 1 out of 10 tables empty.

Other sectors of the economy would see big upticks, especially agriculture and sporting goods. Fruit prices would go up as demand soared. There would be a lot more eggs sold too, which wouldn't be a great thing considering how most egg farms are run.

But there would be other effects. If 1 out of 10 people started looking and feeling really good, the people around them would naturally start to become a little healthier too. As I wrote about way back on Day 19, when you're on the PCP diet you don't take your friends to restaurants, everyone in your house eats the low sodium soy sauce, etc...

As a result, healthcare costs would go down. The 10% wouldn't want to opt into insurance plans that supported the other 90% who had unhealthy habits.

Maybe even a divide would open up, as indeed it already is, between people who think about their health and those who don't. There would be those who took their smoke breaks, and those who took their jumprope breaks.

Readers, what am I missing? Do you have any ideas for how the world would change for the better or worse if 10% of the population did the PCP?

Day 61, Easing Off the Throttle

2008-05-20T15:16:00.005+09:00

This week I could feel my body getting to a breaking point, so I've eased off a little bit. Not doing as many sets, not pulling as much weight. I'm getting a lot better at listening to what my physiology is telling me.

For instance, towards the end of last week I noticed that the burn from my training was taking on a different character. It's hard to explain, but it was moving from a kind of "meaty" pain to a more "stringy" pain. This is the same way I felt a month and a half ago when I caught a cold. But that time I kept on pushing and probably made my cold worse. So I'm going to keep it light for a few days. The jumprope stays of course.

I'm starting to understand that the path to peak condition doesn't look like this...

It's more like this.

And isn't that how everything in life is?

Day 60, The Style of No Style

2008-05-19T19:53:00.007+09:00

What made Bruce Lee a remarkable martial artist was his openness to new techniques and ability to blend styles. He grew up doing Kung Fu, but was not bound by the rules of that discipline. When he found something that worked better, be it from the world of jujitsu, boxing, or street fighting, he incorporated it without complaint or clinging to his old ways.

This went for training too. He mixed Western bodybuilding and sports science freely with ancient Chinese strengthening techniques. He tried everything, even gimmicky gadgets from the back of martial arts magazines. He built his own weight lifting machines, designed his own protein drinks, and constantly asked if what he was doing was really the best way.

Eventually this all evolved into his martial and life philosophy, Jeet Kun Do, or "the style of no style." The emblem he designed for his school looked like this.

The Chinese characters read, "Using no way as way" and "Having no limitation as limitation." The arrows and yin/yang indicate the constant flux and malleability of reality, and by extension, of Lee's martial style.

This kind of open mind requires an enormous intellect. We use tradition and formality to bring a feeling of security into our daily lives. Clinging to a single tradition is, from this perspective, a kind of mental laziness. Someone is giving us all the answers and we follow them without question, usually out of sheer lethargy.

I am not a serious martial artist, but I run up against the same thing in the world of yoga. Yoga is just as splintered as the fighting world. Hatha, Ashtanga, Vinyasa, Sivananda, Bikram, Anusara, Vini, Kundalini, these are all styles who, to an outsider look almost identical. But within the Yoga world there exists a certain distrust if not outright hostility to styles other than one's own.

So, it was with Bruce Lee's example in mind that I set out a few months ago to find a new stretching technique, outside of the world of yoga, to get me to the hanging splits I mentioned in Day 50. I've tried a lot of different things. I've queried kung fu teachers, ballet dancers, physicians, a reiki master, and tried all their techniques. I've dived down deep into the yoga sutras looking for clues regarding hip flexibility.

And after all that I've found a technique that I think is the best. I won't share it until I can definitively prove that it works, but, like Bruce, I will joyfully keep searching for better ways of doing things. That's where the fun of personal growth lies!

Day 59, Field Trip

2008-05-18T20:58:00.006+09:00

Yesterday Chen and I went to a small, local community gym to do some research and development. It was a happy, dog-eared little place, and if you saw the movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog's Story, it was a lot like Average Joe's Gym from that movie, which you can see a bit of in the background of this clip.

By the way, I only watched Dodgeball because it was being shown on a plane trip I took. What excuse do you have?

The main reason we went is that Chen wanted me to learn exactly which muscles I need to target by doing the actions on machines, then trying to replicate the movement with the resistance bands or my own body weight. I'm reaching a point now where I have to be more and more targeted with my exercises, or I'll plateau in terms of muscle growth.

The gym was busy, it was a Saturday afternoon. There were some guys in there who had obviously spent a lot of time in the place, they knew all the machines well and were talking with the staff. But I couldn't help noticing that they just didn't look that strong. I checked how much they were pumping on the machines, and it was a lot of weight, certainly more than I could do, but it wasn't translating into a good physique.

I figured out after a few minutes that those guys must have no diet control whatsoever. All their big muscles that they've trained so hard to get are buried under a half inch of subcutaneous fat tissue. It's the difference between this.

and this....

After pounding out their sets they must feel pretty good about themselves and go out for ramen and beers. I used to be like this too, back when I had a gym membership. What I didn't realize is that to really get strong and fit, you have to change your whole lifestyle, starting and ending with diet. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that my version of The Peak Condition Project is 70% diet, 10% strength training, 10% cardio, and 10% flexibility work.

So that was pretty eye-opening, and re-energized me to stick close to my plan, even though I can get away with cheating now.

And if you're pumping iron at the gym, good for you, but wouldn't it make sense to have all that time, sweat, and effort actually show up on your body with a little diet control? I'm amazed at these guys who can spend hours lifting at the gym but can't say no to a heavy, unhelpful dinner that same evening.

Day 58, An Old Photo

2008-05-17T06:33:00.004+09:00

About three years ago I went through the 10 Rolfing sessions. If you have no idea what I'm talking about go to the Rolfing Homepage. Rolfing is great and I highly recommend it.

Part of the Rolfing process is taking a before and after picture, to check how your posture has changed. I kind of forgot all about the pictures. But then last week I ran into my "Rolfer" and the photos popped into my mind. I asked him if he could send my old photos to me via email, and they arrived yesterday.

I couldn't believe them. Are you ready for this?

When this photo was taken I was coming off of two years at a desk job, and it really shows in the curved shoulders, turtle neck, and of course, extra flab. I'll never go back there!

And, I know someone's going to ask, so here's a shot I took this morning in my bathroom.

This is the skinniest I've been in my life. And I'm still two months away from Peak Condition.

Day 57, All You Can Eat (not very much!)

2008-05-16T22:33:00.004+09:00

Tonight I went off diet at an all you can eat macrobiotic buffet. I say I went off diet but really I can't go off diet anymore. To put it simply, my stomach (the organ itself) has shrunk to about the size of my fist. I quickly reach a point where my stomach is physically full. No more food will go in there, and it's uncomfortable even attempting to eat more than I usually do on the diet.

Tonight, I was uncomfortably full after eating a bowl of miso, some salad, a piece of smoked fish, and a small serving of pasta. I had some eggplant and burdock tempura on top of that because it looked so good, but it was too much and I soon regretted it.

A few weeks ago I would have considered my meal just the starter trip in a long all-you-can-eat bonanza. I made sure I got my money's worth at those things.

What still baffles me is how now, I am doing perhaps double the daily exercise I used to on half the calories, without ever feeling hungry or low on energy. If anything I have more energy than ever. And I'm using the few calories I get to build new muscle. Where was all that food going before? I guess it was just passing through my system, because a lot of it was processed junk without a lot of nutritional value. Still, it doesn't seem to add up.

All I can think is that my body has learned that the free ride is over. Calories aren't just going to rain down in abundance like before. So when a meal comes, my body is like "Ok, I gotta get a bang for my buck with this energy, cause the rivers of milk and honey have stopped flowing."

Oh, and my PCP is 8 weeks old now! Every four weeks I've promised to post a photo in a Bruce Lee pose, you can see the last one on day 28. Here's today's, I was practicing nunchaku and just put the camera on timer shot.

Day 56, You Are OK

2008-05-15T22:11:00.002+09:00

A weird thing has been happening to me recently. Now that I am getting noticeably in shape and doing so in this very public manner, people who aren't in such great shape are approaching me almost abashedly, and either asking for advice or kind of apologizing for their current physical state.

This feels very much like the times I go to a restaurant with a non-vegetarian, and they're like, "Dude, do you mind if I have a hamburger?"

Or when I run into a yoga student around town who hasn't come to the studio in a while. Before I can say "how are you?" they're explaining what has kept them away and promising to return soon.

In all three of these situations, I want to clap the person on the back and say, "Dude, I don't care." But that's not exactly true. I do want you to get in better shape, I do want you to eat less or no meat, and I do want you to do more yoga, especially at my studio where you'll be well taken care of. I do care.

But I know how complicated life is, and how I can never imagine what a day in your life is like. I know you're doing your best, that you've made the choices you have because that's all it seemed you could do at that moment. And I know you'll be ok.

So if you want to make changes in your life, just make them, and I'll be behind you 100% But if you don't feel up to a big change at the moment, don't try to explain why to me. I understand, and I think you're fine just the way you are. Really!

Day 55, The Envelope Please...

2008-05-14T21:15:00.009+09:00

As I said on day 53, thank you everyone who applied to do the PCP. We were overwhelmed with applicants, and it was hard to choose. We're thinking of opening another cycle in a few weeks so stay tuned if you weren't selected this time.

So, here are our first three Peak Conditioners (besides me)

First up, Sean!

Sean has a background in karate and fits the definition of what the PCP is all about... taking someone in good shape and getting them to top fitness levels. Plus, to keep Chen on his toes, Sean is a vegan! So we'll see how mighty Mighty Soy really is. For his target physique, Sean has chosen Stephew Chow of Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle fame. Why is he doing the PCP? In his own words :

"Beyond the goal of just looking good without a shirt on (which is definitely a nice side effect to the project) my ultimate goal and the reason I've been so interested in taking part in the PCP ever since Patrick posted his very first entry is very much the same as his goal. The idea of being at my very peak condition and the strength and overall great health and confidence that it will surely bring is reason enough to be a part of this. I think my ultimate goal with all of this will be to Be Better Than I Was Before, something that I plan on going into in more depth when the project officially starts."

You can follow Sean's progress on his PCP blog, here.

http://thepeakconditionproject-sean.blogspot.com/

Next, David!

David is kind of our control group. He's about the same age as me, and we are both pescetarians, meaning he can follow my diet closely. With David, we'll see if I'm just a freak or if the PCP really works. His target physique is Brad Pitt as seen in Fight Club. Why did he sign up for The Peak Condition Project? His explanation:

"The Peak Condition Project is more than an achievement in fitness. Focus, energy, perseverance, confidence - these are all elements that I desire for a better "me". This project is not an escape from an old life, it is a catalyst for a new one."

You can follow David's project on his PCP blog, here.

http://thepeakconditionproject-david.blogspot.com/

Finally, Corry!

We were so glad to have several women apply for the PCP. We chose Corry because she is in good shape, runs and does yoga often, and just needs some structure and assistance to get into peak shape with her busy family life. Plus, she is local to Chen and I so we can check her progress on the ground. Her target physique is that of Gabrielle Reese, the beach volleyball player and model. Corry joined the PCP because:

"I am really after being strong without bulking up. I want to be lean and strong and flexible too, so that I can be the genki vibrant mom, wife, woman, and friend that I long to be!"

You can follow Corry's journey on her PCP blog, here.

http://thepeakconditionproject-corry.blogspot.com/

It's going to be a wild ride, please support our little band with your love, support, and comments! And don't worry if you weren't chosen this time. Chen and I will make all of our mistakes on this unlucky lot, and the PCP will only be better next time we open it to the public.

Thanks everyone, and good luck! (not that luck has anything to do with it)

-Patrick, Peak Conditioner number "0"

Day 54, Newton's First Law of Motion

2008-05-13T20:40:00.005+09:00

For those of you who missed or slept through physics class, that would be the law that states:

An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.
Where did Newton get his hair done? It's so Fab!

This law applies to all matter, from the orbit of planets to the atoms in our bodies. It is also very true for something like The Peak Condition Project. I do some sort of training every day, seven days a week, and I wouldn't have it any other way. For me, days off are not helpful to being in peak shape. The reason is that after taking a day off it's even harder for me to get back out there and resume my training.

Today I was sorely tempted to not do any exercise. I felt terrible. My body was aching from a physically taxing video shoot the day before. It was cold and rainy outside, and I had work to do inside. I sat in my chair and debated for a good 15 minutes whether to just pack it in for the day and do some extra stuff tomorrow. But I told myself, "This is what you do now, Tarek (when talking to myself I still use my Berber name) you get out of the apartment and train. You jump the damn jumprope and pull on the rubber bands and lift your body weight repetitively. This is not an option. This is what you do now."

So I made it out to the studio, and started jumping rope. The first few hundred were painful, my calves were tight and I got a side-stitch immediately. But after that, something wonderful happened. I could feel the heat of the exercise slowly going down into my legs, and up into my shoulders. I started feeling good. I put in 1500 jumps and was psyched to work the bands. I was really good about my form and did some extra sets.

Now, here's where the magic of Newton's first law kicks in. After my workout, I was feeling much better and still wanted to keep moving. So I went to the bank and did a transfer I had been putting off, paid an electric bill, did the grocery shopping for the week, got home and cleaned out my bookcase. All of this energy was completely absent as I sat in the chair wondering whether to even workout earlier that morning... where did it come from? Newton baby!

Sometimes we rationalize laziness, thinking "well, if I get good and rested now I'll have a lot of energy later and get more done." This doesn't work. I think about how I feel after one hour of yoga, vs. after one hour of watching TV. Technically, I should have more energy after sitting passively, "resting" in front of the TV, but we all know that's not the case. How many times have you said "Well, that was a fine hour of programming, now I'm really ready to get on with my day!" Usually it's, "I guess I have time for one more episode..." Am I right or am I right.

So, when feeling lethargic and unmotivated, remember Newton. The hardest thing is getting the ball rolling. After that you will happily tend to stay in motion.

No days off.

Day 53, Decisions, Decisions

2008-05-12T21:23:00.002+09:00

Chen and I are making our final choices for who will start the PCP in just 3 days. It's a really tough choice, and we both hate saying "no" to people. If we had the resources we would PCP everyone on the planet!

We're trying to find 3 or 4 very different kinds of people, to see how the system works for different lifestyles. In the next few days I'll announce and introduce the selected participants.

We were surprised and honored by how many people signed up, so thank you for everyone who did. Also thanks for all the nice comments and support everyone is sending to me personally. They really give me a lot of motivation, so any progress you see is in part thanks to you!

Check back tomorrow or the next day for the announcement.

Day 52, Wine and Cheese

2008-05-11T21:57:00.004+09:00

Well, if you've been reading you'll know that every 15 days I choose something to indulge myself with, something not on the diet plan. On day 32 it was a chocolate chip cookie and on day 22 it was a beer. Aside from a nice reward the off-diet foods often give me weird sensations. The beer made my stomach hurt and the chocolate chip cookie aroused my libido.

15 days have rolled around again and this time I chose wine and cheese as my indulgence.

A few years ago there was a study that found eating cheese kind of short circuits the taste buds and doesn't allow the palate to make out the subtle distinctions of fine wine. A lot of people were wringing their hands about how this was the end of a wine tradition, but I immidiately had the thought that I could buy any old cheap Carlo Rossi, pair it with a strong cheese, and it would be just as good as the high end stuff. Whether this speaks to my ingenuity or cheapskateness I don't know.

So tonight I bought the smallest possible blocks of smoked cheese, parmesian, and a funky gouda that was cultured with basil, and a bottle of red table wine.

To make the evening even more sumptious, I ate said cheese and drank said wine while watching season 3 of Top Chef.

Taste
After 52 days with nothing beyond a little cottage cheese in the morning, the cheeses were too rich for me. I enjoyed them but it wasn't how I used to enjoy cheese. It felt like work to get through the plate. The wine was nice.

Effects
No weird effects from the cheese. I was pretty tipsy after two glasses of wine.

Aftereffects
A stomachache, which has been the case after every 15 day indulgence. Which is fine with me, because it makes the indulging have an overall negative connotation in my mind, which makes it all the easier not to indulge. In fact, I found that this time I wasn't really craving anything, and just went with the wine and cheese because I knew it was something I used to like. Truth be told, the PCP Pig Out which I described in Day 48 would have suited me just as well.

So, the next indulgence will be day 67. Any suggestions readers?

Day 51, Deskwork

2008-05-10T20:55:00.004+09:00

Yesterday I was at my desk for most of the afternoon and evening, and I could really feel it today. Tight legs, a stiff back, tense shoulders. I got the kinks worked out but it took a good hour of asana to get there. I am astounded that millions of people sit at desks all day every day and don't feel in their bones that it's messing them up. I have so many yoga students come through my doors who are almost ruined by their deskjobs. And most of them don't even realize that their skeletal-muscular structures are so out of whack until they see how different their poses look from other students of regular or good flexibility.

And more and more companies aren't providing healthcare, which is funny because it is the job that makes people sick in the first place.

I'm so concerned about this that I'm going to make a video this week or next. Not one of those "Do yoga at your desk" type of things. (Although those are better than nothing) But a straight-up, no holds barred presentation of exactly what happens to your body as you spend 7 to 8 hours in a chair looking at a screen.

Look for it this month on the YouTube Channel.

Day 50, Progress Report

2008-05-09T17:45:00.004+09:00

Well, 50 days have passed since I started this project, and in a week's time 4 new participants will start on their own Peak Condition journey.

Here's a picture from this afternoon.

Getting better! But not quite Peak Condition. I'm still not getting the flexibility levels I want. Before my birthday I am determined to get a hanging side split. If you want to see what that is, watch this clip from Shaolin Soccer, starting around 7:20. What he's doing between the two blocks of trash is a hanging side split. And then he goes on to talk about his idol, Bruce Lee! I really like that movie.

Day 49, Coffee

2008-05-08T17:10:00.004+09:00

I love coffee and like to think that I can tell the difference between good and bad brews. But I also have a guilty pleasure for mochas, hazelnut lattes, frappacinos, and the like.

One of the important rules of The Peak Condition Project is to not drink your calories. There are few enough calories as it is, especially in the fat loss stage, and you don't want to waste any of those on a beverage, even something healthy like vegetable juice, or not so good, like beer, wine, and chocolatey espresso drinks.

Recently I was at a Starbucks for a meeting, and, out of curiosity I asked the clerk how many calories were in a tall sized mocha. She had to go to the back to consult a manager or a book or something, and came back with the answer.

384 calories. But she reassured me the whip cream accounted for 90 calories. Would I like to hold the whip cream?

I had a coffee.

But, recently, I've found some relief from the tasty coffee beverage injunction. A part of the coffee market that coffee snobs turn their noses up at. Flavored coffee.

I like this brand called Royal Kona. The plain versions aren't so great, but the flavored varieties are awesome.

Brew up a cup of Chocolate Macademia Nut, add a splash of lowfat milk, and your pretty damn close to a 384 calorie mocha, at a cost of about 2 calories.

I also like Honey Macademia Nut. The Vanilla is a little too sweet for me.

Day 48, Pigging Out

2008-05-07T21:24:00.004+09:00

Today after lunch I still felt really hungry. This is a kind of hunger I get sometimes, where I just have to have something sweet. I'm sure it's tied in with some sort of glucose/low blood sugar thing. I tried to ignore it but after an hour I had to eat something. Before, when I felt like this, I might polish off three or four manju, (sweet Japanese cakes), or a bagfull of cookies, or a tray of mini donuts. Today I went overboard too, but it was a very different menu. Here's how I pigged out on the PCP.

In a bowl, combine (chopped)
1 orange
1 apple
8 dried dates
4 dried figs
8 dried prunes
4 dried apricots
3 tablespoons of honey
enough lowfat milk to cover the bottom layer of fruit.

It was a ton of food, and so sweet and delicious, especially drizzled with honey. It was almost sinful. I ate too much and my stomach hurt a little bit afterwards (as it always did with the cookies and donuts of before), but what a difference a few weeks can make. I wouldn't even dream of eating that junky stuff now, not because I'm trying to get fit, but because my fruit bowl tasted better than all the sugar and processed crap in my old sweet cravings.

Which is what I've found out time and time again. The actual diet and exercise isn't that hard, it's the changing of old habits that takes time. After you've done that, the Project takes care of itself.

Day 47, An Apology

2008-05-06T22:40:00.004+09:00

This post goes out to every thin person I've ever hung out with, dated, or been related to.

When you complained of the air-conditioner being too strong...
when you wanted to change tables at a restaurant because there was a draft...
when you wanted to get out of the freezer section at the supermarket a little more quickly...
when you cranked up the heat during the winter, so that I had to wear shorts inside...

I secretly thought that you were weak.

Yes, I assumed that some part of your physiology was inferior to mine. I was warm all year round, my hands and feet stayed toasty even on the coldest days. I could wear a T-shirt to check the mail in the snow. Surely I was some kind of superior specimen, blessed with above average circulation, bursting with vitality that warmed even my extremeties. And you were the at the weak end of the gene pool. Yes, you would be the thin, limping wildabeast that the cheetahs encircled. I pitied you, when I wasn't annoyed by your constant demands to turn down the AC.

I apologize, because, now I know that I wasn't stronger, I just had a layer of blubber under my epidermis that constantly trapped heat.

How do I know this? Because now that layer is gone, and I'm freezing my ass off.

It's early May as I write this, and the evenings are still cool, with a nippy breeze coming off the ocean. And I'm still wearing my winter coat, because if that wind hits my skin, I can feel the chill all the way into my bones. And once the chill is in there, I have trouble warming up again.

I make my choices quickly in the freezer section because I get goosebumps.

I've lost about 7% of my body fat, and sometimes I forget that and still dress like I used to. And then I become one of those people who can't stop talking about the temperature.

ME: "It's so cold today isn't it!?"
FRIEND: "Uh, I guess. Warming up in the daytime though..."
ME: "Man, I should've worn a sweater, I just didn't know it would be so windy today."
FRIEND: "Right... so where do you want to go?"
ME: "Let's just get in out of this cold!"
FRIEND: "How about that cafe?"
ME: "Sure, let's just sit far away from the window, ok? It looks drafty."
FRIEND: "Um, ok, Whatever you want, dude."
ME: "I'm going to get something hot to drink, because it's so cold today. Isn't it cold?!"
and so on...

So, thin person, I'm sorry for thinking you were weak. You aren't. I was just fat.

Day 46, Restaurant

2008-05-05T20:10:00.006+09:00

Today I met someone for lunch at.... eek! a restaurant! For the first time since the PCP began I didn't have a hand in what was put on my plate. Trying to follow this diet, there's really only one kind of food that will work if you're going out to eat. Japanese.

So I chose to meet my associate at Ootoya, a traditional Japanese food chain.

Remember, here are my lunch requirements:

100 grams carbs
180 grams vegetables
130 grams protein

So, this is what I ordered.

To get the carbs, a bowl of plain rice.

For the protein, Sumibiyaki Saba, (wood roasted Mackerel)

And for the vegetables, Yasai no Seiro-mushi, (steamed vegetables)

Pretty tasty! But my portions were definitely off. Way too many carbs and a little too much protein, and since two of the steamed vegetables were potato and sweet potato (more carbs) I didn't get nearly enough vegetables. But not too bad.

Also, after eating my own weighed out meals for so long, the portions seemed incredibly large to me, and I was really full. And this is a Japanese restaurant with Japanese sizes. If I went to an American chain I think my stomach would rupture.

So, I managed to "eat out" and stay on the PCP diet. Albeit barely and by ordering the smallest dishes at a healthy restaurant with tiny portions. Still, it was nice to be a normal person. (for lunch at least!)

Day 45, No More Machines

2008-05-04T18:49:00.010+09:00

I've joined two gyms in my life. One was my college student gym, and the other was a three month deal while I was between jobs one summer. I don't like gyms. The clanking noises, the whirring of treadmills, the mirrors, the flourescent lights, the smell, the way people size up each other, none of it makes me want to exercise. And I have the kind of shiftless, lax personality that it only takes one good excuse for me to not do something.

The only good thing about the gym, I thought, was that I had access to all those marvellous machines that I could never afford on my own. These things look like they're designed by rocket scientists, and they must be ten times better than anything I could get at a store, right!?
But here's the thing about machines. They constrict your actions to a set motion, which really hits the targeted muscle group. Your muscles get big, but, at least in my experience, there's no accompianing feeling of actual strength. That's because all the little muscles around the targeted muscle get ignored, so you kind of have this one spot of strength sitting on top of a bunch of underdeveloped mass. In addition, I found that when you have to take a week or two off due to schedule or sickness, those machine muscles wither away super fast.

I can't remember who it is now, but an author I read often describes this or that character as having "Machine molded muscles." I think that's almost sick. It's fake, dumb muscles, not useful for daily life, just for decoration.

So, enough about machines. I'm going to show you how to take your resistance band and do everything a machine can do, except that with the band, as I described a few days ago, the resistance is strongest at the end of the action, and in addition, you have to use your own power to guide the movements. This results in tremendous strength gains all over. Toned durable muscle that works in the real world.

You need one extra thing besides the band. This thing.

I don't know what to call it, so I'll just call it the dongle. It couldn't be simpler. You put the dongle on the band...

and find a sturdy door. Shut the door so that the thick part of the dongle is on the outside.

So from the outside someone would see this.

From the inside, this is what you have.

You can see where this is going right? Let's say you take the handles from behind you. Boom! Instant chest fly machine.

Compare.

If you take the handles from the front, Pow! It becomes a shoulder fly.

I promise I'm having more fun than this guy.

Slide the dongle down the door, sit on your butt, and, kazow! Where'd that rowing machine come from?

This is just a small sample of what the resistance band can do when it becomes attached to something stable. At about .01 percent of the price of a year long gym membership!

You're never going to put on a ton of muscle mass with just a band, but, if you're aiming for a trim, strong physique it's just perfect.

Day 44, Thoom!

2008-05-03T21:43:00.002+09:00

Today I was going to take some photos about how to do "flys" with the resistance band, mimicking the movements of half a dozen expensive gym machines. But about 15 minutes into my workout, my band broke! I was doing some shoulder training and "snap!" the rubber came apart near the left handle.

I've been wailing on that band for, well, 44 days, so I'm not too upset. The set came with two other bands and the whole thing cost about 10 dollars, so, I can't complain. And I remember at the beginning of the project when just doing 6 reps on the band was so awkward and hard. I'd be lying if I didn't say it was a proud moment, being so badass that my equipment can't keep up with me. Very Incredible Hulk.

(Except instead of bursting through my clothes they're falling off me.)

I'll try to get those photos tomorrow, if the bands can handle my brute strength.

Day 43, Final Diet Plan (?)

2008-05-03T07:28:00.005+09:00

I know these diet plan posts can be boring, but the truth of the matter is that the PCP is diet. The training and everything is just icing on the cake.
If you've been following the diet stuff, you'll know that I was on the evening smoothies for over a month, and when I had lost enough body fat I tried to switch back to a solid dinner and more protein. My stomach was not happy with that, so we switched up to a lighter version, spacing out the meals so that a bunch of matter didn't hit it all at once.

I did that for a week and my stomach has gotten a lot stronger, so we're going to move onto what I hope will be the final diet plan of this project. Later I might add more carbs. The idea is to give my muscles a lot of protein and energy to work with. Chen thinks I will gain a kilo with this plan.

It's funny, a few weeks ago, I would have jumped for joy at the chance to eat more. Now, it almost seems like a chore. But it is good to have some carbs for dinner again.

So, here it is, The Peak Condition Project Diet Plan, Final Version (?)

Breakfast
50 grams carbs
1 whole egg
1 egg white
250 ml lowfat milk
as much fruit as I like

Morning snack
1 egg white
50 grams vegetables
fruit if hungry

Lunch
100 grams carbs
180 grams vegetables
130 grams protein
fruit if hungry

Afternoon snack
1 egg white
1 serving of fruit

Dinner
50 grams carbs
170 grams vegetables
70 grams protein

Evening snack
1 egg white
fruit if hungry

By the way, all these numbers are calculated for my height, weight, and conditioning goals. Don't try these for yourself, unless you're my long lost twin. If you're interested in trying the PCP, we're accepting two more participants. Email thepeakconditionproject (at) gmail.com before May 15th to apply!

Day 42, Progress and an Announcement

2008-05-02T17:27:00.004+09:00

Today I did 500 jumpropes in a row, without being winded and without a miss (i.e. the rope getting caught on my feet). When I started this project I could barely get through 50 without messing up. And after a hundred my breathing was beginning to get heavy. It used to take me 20 minutes to do my thousand jumps, now I can do it in 5.

Chen has told me to not jumprope so much, I don't need to lose anymore weight, but I really like jumping rope now and am almost sad when I have to stop before I'm ready. I'm currently only supposed to do 500 but I usually cheat up to 700.

In other news, there are a few people out there who have expressed interest in doing The Peak Condition Project for themselves. I talked to Chen today and we decided we can take on three participants and give them the right amount of attention and feedback so that the program will work. So, if you want to do it get in touch with me at ThePeakConditionProject( - at - )gmail.com. We're going to try and choose three very different types of people, (an older person, a woman, a slob, etc...) so don't think you can't do it.

But don't apply if you're only half-interested either! The PCP isn't that hard, but it does require consistent commitment, and about an hour a day.

So take the chance to have your own personal trainer and dietician for free! Apply before May 15th!

Day 41, A Must Read

2008-05-01T22:41:00.005+09:00

As you know if you've been following this project, I've had a lot of revelations regarding food during the past month and a half. I now enjoy fruit as much as I used to enjoy sweets, I'm learning how to bring out the flavors in vegetables, and I have finally gotten it through my head that I can control the size of my portions and be very satisfied with my meals.

Which had all kind of primed my mind to be ready to notice this book in the bookstore last week. I would have bought it right there but I didn't have enough money (English books are pricey in Japan, this one was 35 dollars. I'd heard of The Omnivores Dilemma of course, but, not being an omnivore, I was never that interested in reading it.

I got home and was surfing around trying to find more information about the work, and I stumbled upon the NY Times piece that I guess served as the jumping off point for the book. It's one of the most refreshing and well thought out pieces on food I've ever read. And everything I've done on this project convinces me that this is how we need to think about what we eat.

Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.

Please read it if you have a few spare minutes!

Day 40, No More Dumbells

2008-04-30T20:58:00.018+09:00

This week I'm going to show you how to use a simple resistance band to do any "gym" type exercise. They sometimes sell just the rubbery bands, but you need to get one that has handles that clip on both ends for the best effect.

So, today, we'll see how the band can work for any type of freeweight movement that you might usually use a dumbell for.

Let's start with the curl. First, step on the band with both feet.

and, keeping your elbows steady, "curl" the band.

It's as easy as that. But you'll get a very different effect from the resistance band, because, unlike a dumbell, which becomes easier at the top of the movement because gravity isn't pushing so hard on the fulcrum of your arm, the resistance band gets more difficult at the end. The result is small, highly toned, Bruce Lee muscles.

The same idea goes for something like a triceps extension.

Stand on the band, making sure both sides are equal.

And do your reps just like you would with a freeweight.

These exercises are harder than they look!

If you really want a lot of resistance, you can always put both ends of the band on one handle like this.

Step on the band and do your exercise one arm at a time. Grrr... Mighty Soy!

Day 39, Too Much Work

2008-04-29T21:54:00.004+09:00

Today I had nothing but work from morning till night. I didn't have time for anything but a few situps. It really pissed me off. I kept on looking for windows where I could get some exercises in, but they kept getting filled all the way until 10 pm.

I think if you don't have enough time in a day to spend an hour on your heath, something is seriously wrong. Today was a good example of how I don't want to spend my life. Today I made choices based on "how much per hour." The PCP makes me "0 dollars per hour" so it kept getting pushed back in favor of other things. But this project is much more valuable to me than the few bucks I disregarded it for.

It won't happen again.

Day 38, This may surprise you but...

2008-04-28T20:18:00.004+09:00

Every ounce of muscle I've put on has been the result of...

Exercises involving my own body weight, or
Exercises using this 1 meter piece of rubber.

Part of my goal with this project is to make getting in shape as straightforward as possible. I don't like numbers much, which is why I've tried to avoid some of the woolly details regarding Body Mass Index, the different GI numbers of foods, and, of course, how many kilos of whatever I'm lifting.

The resistance band is great for that. It doesn't look like much, and I have no idea how much I'm lifting or pulling at any given time. That keeps me from competing with myself too much, and allows me to just enjoy the workout without worrying about increasing the load more and more. It's really good for tone. If I used regular, heavy ass weights I would become too muscular bulky to realize my goal of a Bruce Lee build.

So, over the course of this week I'll be showing how the resistance band works, and how it can be used to duplicate any of the actions that an expensive gym or dumbbell set brings. Plus, it's portable!

Day 37, A Chocolate Chip Cookie

2008-04-27T20:05:00.007+09:00

On Day 22 I blogged about my experience having a beer after three weeks on a strict diet. Today I thought I'd see how eating something sugary would go over.

I was meeting someone at Starbucks, and decided to have a chocolate chunk cookie along with my coffee. The cookie was 175 calories, which isn't enough to break the bank, but enough to be an indulgence. I was mainly interested in how my body would react to that much sugar at one time. For the past 37 days I haven't had any refined sugar, just whatever comes from fruit and vegetables. And I've had absolutely no chocolate during that time period.

So, here's how it went.

Taste
Delicious! I thought that maybe after my sugar sabbatical the cookie would seem abnormally sweet, perhaps too sweet to be enjoyable. Wrong-O. That sucker was tasty. I savored every bite. I've always liked Starbucks cookies because they aren't sugary sweet (maybe because they use brown sugar?) and the chocolate is pretty dark. Yummy. I loved it.

Effects
I immediately felt a sugar rush, and became more chipper. Ideas started flowing freely. This must have been how the Europeans felt when they first encountered chocolate. Some people even sought to ban it because it was considered a drug along the lines of hashish. There's a book I enjoyed about this period called The Coffee Trader, by David Liss.

In addition, in just a few minutes I could feel my sex drive gearing up, and for lack of a better word, felt more "manly." Perhaps from the chocolate?

Aftereffects
Within two hours I could literally feel the fat from the cookie, especially along my love handles. You might not believe me but I'm just telling it like it is. I can feel a layer of something there that wasn't there before, and it ain't muscle. This doesn't bother me, it'll come off with tomorrow's workout. But it's an interesting and somewhat gross feeling.

So, all in all, another very informative eating experience. Especially considering just a month and half ago I ate one of those cookies about once a week without a second thought.

The glass of beer was 15 days ago, so I'm thinking, why not make this a routine? Every 15 days I will eat something definitely not part of the PCP diet, and report on the effects. So, the next "out of bounds food" experiment will be day 52. And suggestions readers? What should I eat that day?

Day 36, Diet Plan 2.1

2008-04-26T19:23:00.003+09:00

So, if you read day 34 you know my stomach was having trouble with the "large" dinners of phase 2 of this project. Some stomach cramps and bad gas were with me for about a day. So Chen and I worked out this new transition diet that will get me back on regular food a little more gently. It's complicated, but the idea is that at no one time does a lot hit my stomach at once. The amounts are the same as Diet Plan 2 but just spaced out throughout the day.

This is pretty close to what bodybuilders do, more like 5 or 6 small meals over the course of the day.

Breakfast
50 grams carbs
150 ml milk
1 banana
1 whole egg (yolk included)

Morning Tea
50 grams vegetable or fruit
1 egg white
(This is in the middle of the morning and can be vegetable or fruit juice)

Lunch
100 grams carbs
100 grams protein
150 grams vegetable
fruit if still hungry

Afternoon Tea
1 Serving of fruit and 1 egg white

Dinner
no carbs
70 grams protein
150 grams vegetable

1 hour before sleep
100 grams fruit
1 egg white

This plan is tough for me because I don't often get that morning break and it's just more to keep track of, but it's only for a week until my stomach gets back on track.

Day 35, Waistline

2008-04-25T09:26:00.006+09:00

As I've stated all along, this project isn't about taking an overweight, out-of-shape chump and making him into a superman. Before the PCP I was in pretty good shape, strong, supple, and slim. I was healthier than most people I knew. But even I'm surprised by this phenomenon.

Yep, that's my waistline and a pair of my old (2 months ago) trousers. And lest you think I just grabbed a pair of my biggest pants to make a point, here's a montage from my bottom drawer...

And I wasn't even "fat" before! It just goes to show how much fat we carry internally, either in rarely used muscle fiber or in thick sheets around the torso. We also tend to think of fat as something in the belly, but when you lose fat it comes off everywhere, from the back, the butt, under the arms, etc... When you're losing fat in 360 degrees the pants get loose pretty quickly.

My belts are also out of notches. I'm just glad it's warming up so I can wear elastic banded shorts, because I don't have enough money to replace all these clothes.

Day 34, Stomach Pain

2008-04-24T21:29:00.005+09:00

Tonight I ate my first solid dinner in 34 days. Vegetables wrapped in seaweed with a little soy sauce, and two egg whites. It was pretty good.

But after about 10 minutes, my stomach started cramping. And then came the gas. Horrible, wretched, "have to leave the room" gas. Hoowee it was bad. Just be glad your computer doesn't have a smell option. (Maybe on the next MacBook "Air"?)

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss my apple protein smoothie. I called Chen and we're meeting soon to figure out how to get back to a normal diet without these side effects. Meanwhile, I feel totally stuffed, on what a month ago would have been an appetizer for me. I'm continually amazed by how quickly and completely the body's chemistry can change.

Day 33, Diet Plan 2

2008-04-23T21:28:00.004+09:00

Alright! Today I met with my trainer and dietician Chen. Here he is arm-barring me into submission.He had told me a few days ago that he had the next phase in my diet plan ready. I had been mentally preparing myself for even more strict guidelines, but to my surprise he said I have lost enough weight and it's time to get stronger, not leaner. That means more food, especially protein. The carbs are still low as hell, the equivalent of three slices of bread a day, but that doesn't bother me anymore.

So, here's the diet, phase two, for getting more muscle and continuing to cut the fat percentage.

Breakfast
50 grams carbs
2 whole eggs (not just egg whites!)
200 grams of fruit

Lunch
100 grams carbs
100 grams protein
200 grams vegetables

Dinner
2 egg whites
100 grams protein
200 grams vegetables

Dinner is the big change. Tonight I drank my 33rd and last egg white smoothie. From now on it's some actual solid food for dinner! I feel like part of the human race again.

I'm also totally over my cold so starting tomorrow I'll be back on my full training schedule. Look for big changes in the right hand picture over the next two weeks!

Day 32, Vitality

2008-04-22T20:57:00.003+09:00

The outside of the building where my yoga studio is located has been under renovation for the past 6 weeks. This means that 6 weeks ago I had to totally deconstruct our extensive veranda garden so that the workers could get to the underlying concrete. It took about 5 hours to pack everything up. I remember that I was exhausted after moving all the plant, rocks and tiles, and just came home and zoned out with a DVD.

Well, they finally finished the repainting and everything, and today was the day I had to move everything back out there, this time, cleaning each tile as I went in warm soapy water. If anything the work was more strenuous, as I had not only to move all the tiles and rocks, but, scrub each of them pretty hard to get them looking as good as new.

I spent 8 hours out there today, and it felt great to do some hard physical work, despite being in the last stages of a cold. I've always liked work like that, in university I had a part time carpentry job that I also loved, and the sun was out most of the day.

I got everything set up except for a few details which I'll do tomorrow, and decided to go back home for the night. Today I didn't have my bicycle, so I was walking the 1.5 miles home. I was also carrying a big bag filled with stuff I didn't need at the studio anymore.

After a few hundred paces, for no apparent reason, I felt like running the rest of the way home. And I did. With that big bag tucked under my arm. It wasn't hard, I didn't have to force myself to do it, in fact, it was a lot of fun.

And all of this after the day of heavy manual labor, a cold, and on top of that my tight PCP diet rules.

It really amazed me, that there was this deep well of vitality inside me. 6 weeks ago, before the Project, 5 hours of garden work with a full diet totally killed me. Today, harder work for a longer period, on only 1200 daily calories, left me with enough energy to run home, and write this blog about it. Only one thing has changed between those two events. And that is starting the Peak Condition Project.

Which is all to say, this bad boy is working. And it's working in the best possible way. Not just looking good, but actually having more energy for the stuff I want to do.

Day 31, Layin Low

2008-04-21T22:15:00.003+09:00

Today I didn't do much of anything physically, (unless Guitar Hero counts). But the cold is just about finished. Tomorrow I'll start with some light training and hope to be up to full speed by the weekend.

I was working around the apartment all day, and kept wanting to snack on stuff. I can't indulge in potato chips or anything like that, so I usually just drink tea to keep my mouth busy. But if I really want something to chew on, I've been eating a package of these dried fruit snacks.They are fat free with no additives. Just dried fruit. They have 3 flavors here in Japan but more in the States. If you want to learn more, here's the Sensible Foods website. PCP recommended!

Day 30, A Day Off

2008-04-20T18:43:00.002+09:00

Well, damn, I have a cold now. Nothing major, but I was feeling really weak and tired today.

I called Chen and asked what I should do. He said, "don't do anything, just rest."
I protested. "Not even jumprope? Nothing?"
He said "The inside of your body is very weak now, just rest."
I finally got him to allow me to at least do some ab work and some pushups.

This was when it hit me. I was actually fighting my trainer so that I could do more exercise. I just don't feel the same now if I don't get out the jumprope during my lunch hour. I guess I might be a little hooked on the endorphins?

So, anyway, I tried to do some abs, and fell out about halfway through my routine. So I moved to pushups, but couldn't get more than ten out before my arms failed me. I didn't jumprope at all. Chen is right, what I need is rest, so that I can get healthy faster and back on track sooner.

So today for the first time in 30 days I didn't train. But I realized that knowing when to take it easy is also part of being in Peak Condition. When I got home I looked around the web for what bodybuilders do when they get colds, and I found that they all take it easy too. A few mentioned that the real pros take such set-backs with ease, and know that they can't be at 100% all the time. And in fact small breaks can be helpful to overall muscle growth.

The good news is I could concentrate on my stretches today, and have attained a nice front split in the past 4 weeks!

Day 29, The PCP Tries To Fight Colds

2008-04-19T19:35:00.006+09:00

I usually get one of those 3 day colds when the seasons change from warm to cool or cool to warm. They're very mild, usually just a runny nose and sneezing. A few days ago I felt the familiar tickling in the back of my throat, and had kind of resigned myself to the annual head-cold ritual. But this time, after a few hours, the throat feeling went away.

Today I started getting a runny nose, but it too seems to be subsiding. I might be just making stuff up but I feel like the PCP is beating back the cold, and the cold is trying different routes but getting stopped at every turn.

How much of this is my imagination? Certainly, with all the healthy food and exercise I've been getting my white blood cell count must be up. Plus, have you ever had the experience of being under stress, and not getting sick at all, but once the stressor is gone, (the report completed or whatever) you suddenly get a serious cold? I've read that the body, under stress, perceives that getting sick would hamper its survival chances, so it kicks into overdrive and doesn't allow illness to invade. But once the stressful period is over, the immune system is so exhausted it kind of shuts down and you get really sick.

The PCP keeps me under light but consistent physical stress. I wonder if that helps keep the cold at bay or makes it worse.

It would be great not to get that season-change cold for once though.

Day 28, 28 Days Later

2008-04-18T15:52:00.003+09:00

Today marks 4 weeks of the Peak Condition Project. The daily photo that goes up in the right column is head on and usually in softening sunlight, which is fine, because it gives a very balanced picture of my progress. But I thought I'd show how things look from a 3/4 view. (in a classic Bruce Lee pose)

At the beginning of the project I weighed 65 kilos (143 pounds) and as of this morning I weigh 60 kilos (132 pounds). Considering that muscle is heavier than fat, that's pretty startling progress. I hope to get down to 57 kilos (125 pounds) but that it's going to be tough to lose those last 3.

Thanks everyone for your continued support.

Day 27, Back, Satan!

2008-04-17T20:42:00.004+09:00

Thursdays are the busiest day of the week for me, and now, instead of a lunch hour, I have a workout hour, which only piles on strain. It's Thursday night that makes me really want to come home, have a beer, eat something heavy and cheesy (pasta, pizza, veggie burgers) and watch a movie.

I won't do that tonight, but it sounded pretty good as I typed that. Doing something like this, you will find that the little tempter in the back of your head is strongest in times of stress and strain. What's messed up is that it is those times you need exercise and a healthy diet more than any others. I know that if I ate some gross stuff and drank a beer, I'd feel pretty good tonight, but doubly as bad tomorrow.

So it's an egg-white smoothie for me, and a cup of tea.

All human suffering is caused not by what is, but what we would like it to be. Finding that space where you're not projecting your own desires onto every situation is hard to do, but it's also where happiness lies. Hopefully, repeating the craving/attachment, cutting craving/attachment exercise every Thursday night will be good training for the rest of my life. It better be good for something!

Day 26, The PCP Makes Zazen Better

2008-04-16T21:20:00.002+09:00

I've been noticing that recently that I am experiencing less fidgitiness in my meditation sessions. I think mostly I've just gotten stronger, that the extra muscle is better able to support my spine, allowing me to keep my seat for longer periods of time without discomfort.

I've also been doing these insane leg stretches every morning which is definitely helping my legs. I haven't talked about them yet but I'll get around to it soon.

And with all the exercise healthy food my mind is certainly clearer.

I thought my zazen was pretty "good" before but now it's coming easier than it has for a long time, since I was in the Peace Corps (another time I was on a low calorie diet (not by choice) and pretty fit (also not by choice!).