Day 76, Still On the Hunt...

... 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

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

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

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(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

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

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

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...

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.