Day 41, A Must Read

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

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

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...

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

1. Exercises involving my own body weight, or
2. 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

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

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

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.