Day 87 - Bananas, report, my mother

I feel like I'm going bananas! This post is in three part, moan, report, and my inspiration who is my mum. If you're in a hurry, just go to the end!

1. The moany bit

The following things have drained me and led to tears in the last three days, but I'm all over that now. Thank you for your encouragement!

1. Three consecutive late nights but my body was waking up naturally and getting up at 5 am.
2. Different WO (Patrick swapped round a superset so we could do one together.) and feeling out of the loop.
3. Guesswork with meals, eating too much salt, hurry, some packaged food. 

The elusive balance between nutrition, sleep, stimulus is lousy when it's out!


2. Report

Sleep

As I said, a pitiful - under 6 hours on top of a debt from the previous day. Missing only a bit of sleep at this stage is BAAAD. I'm now in a late night exercise rhythm and snippy about it.

Work out

I honestly cannot remember much about the morning WO, other than I did it quickly and hard and still ran out of time to go to the park for bar work. I wasn't prepared to break my perfect attendance on exercise on Day 86!

At home station at 10.50, pullups and KF sit ups at park near my station (wearing a long skirt)
Through door at 11.15 ish, failure ab sets. Felt sick and stupid.

Couldn't tell if I was in failure as my form was so poor from the start.

I certainly gave my all. Sometimes 'giving your all' doesn't feel really RAH!
It feels like nothing except the task at hand.

Nutrition

Some guess work - protein at dinner was sashimi, then a 53 cal. packet of dried fish with all kinds of nasties in it, and a bit of leftover fish at home. Everything else was on the mark.

3. Inspiration

This is my mum, Pauline, with William. She's shy of having her photo taken, but this gives you a sense of her personality.

It's her birthday today and I miss her. I've sent her present and am going to talk on Skype, but sometimes, living abroad is tough.


Doing the PCP has sometimes reminded me of things she said as I was growing up.

1. Don't overschedule. Living healthily means giving yourself enough time to do things.

2. Enjoy the physical world around you - gardens, flowers, and as you see in the photo, cats.

3. Sit at the table to eat. During my childhood, she spent about 3 months with a naso-gastric tube with liquid food, but she always sat at the dining table to be with everyone. And did this without bumming us out. 

And one obvious one, that no PCP-ers need reminding of

4. Don't smoke.

Did I mention I miss her today?

I dedicate my workout tonight to my mother, Pauline Lewis. 

Day 65 - I know I'm turning Japanese

The first time I ate fermented soy beans, AKA natto, and liked it, I thought I was turning
Japanese.

When I called a guy at 6.30 am each morning just to help him get up, I thought I was turning into Japanese. When I first craved things from the sea with eyes, not chocolate, as comfort food, I thought I was turning Japanese.

But yesterday, I knew for sure that I had really turned Japanese. I heeded my body's call to rest, biked to the hot spring onsen, Niwa no yu at Toshimaen, and chilled for a few hours. Finally felt good in a bikini! Yay! Got a PCP-ish meal of grilled squid, vegetable curry, and rice and then slept in front of a big window looking out onto Spring greenery. Listened in smug contentment to the rain outside. Felt less smug when I realized I didn't have rain gear for the ride home. None to be had in the shops round Toshimaen, so I bought a cheapo brolly and rode home clasping it in one hand.

Riding bikes one handed, as well as balancing side-saddle on the back of a bike, is something I often see here, but rarely saw in the UK. I don't think I could have done it pre-PCP. The body-resistance exercises we do are about integrating the different muscles, getting them talking to each other. This means we'll be able to move around gracefully and smoothly. I wonder what muscles I needed to ride home on slippery roads with only one hand...I felt proud anyway.

The low is that even though we are on a three-day national holiday, I am struggling with my body's classic sign to slow down - a bad throat. Obviously, the bike ride in the rain wasn't a good idea! Slept for close to 12 hours yesterday in preparation for reading the lunchtime news at NHK. I'll blog more about the relationship between my radio work and PCPing another time!

Good to see those on Day 65 going strong! Let's keep our eyes on the peak!

Day 60 - Be tough on yourself before temptation

Congratulations everyone at Day 60! Woohoo! I hope that you all celebrated! 

I made a new drink for post workout. I'm supposed to have low fat milk/yogurt and an egg white. I made it more fun by adding powdered cloves, cinammon, and nutmeg on top. The egg white is raw and then it's zapped together. I call it Ripped Little Girl because I got my workout done in 54 minutes. 

Anyone else got some cool ways with our milk allowance?

One satisfying thing today was planning much earlier than I thought I needed to. Had to buy some proper dance shoes for tomorrow's shoot and knew that if I left finding a place to eat in Shibuya until after I'd done it - it wouldn't happen. Ideally, I'd have packed a lunch, but sometimes there's only so much cooking/prepping you can do before you need to get out, so I went into a place where you can assemble your own lunch from big trays of veggies/fish/rice balls. They do ready made bento there too, but with the self service you get to make better choices. I got two pieces of shio (salt) saba fish and then 4 kinds of veg, and then weighed the rice ball. It was way over my allowance, as was the fish - so carved it up in Yoyogi park, put the remainder in small tupperware to take home and enjoyed an imperfect but fairly compliant meal watching everyone exercise. I even saw some teenage boys jump roping and felt a little smidge of pride. 

The cool thing about being picky with the grams came later. When I got home around 5 pm a couple of friends asked me to their apartment "Want to join two queens for strawberries, cheese, and champagne to celebrate the wedding of the next queen?" I've housesat for this couple and know their tv is truly huge, so of course I accepted. There was very little time to prepare. Prepare my stomach that is. I knew that I couldn't go into that situation without some lining. I threw a tin of tuna with the remaining fish from the morning, and pre-prepped potatoes and avocado. And some beansprouts plus other leftover veg on the side. It wasn't pretty and it wasn't even warm, but it was satisfying and delicious. 

Cycled to their place, announced that I'd be toasting with diet coke, then ate 5 strawberries while they ate french bread and squidgy Brie  and strawberries and champagne. One of them who hadn't heard about the PCP and was suprised I was declining posh champagne asked 'Why? Are you ill?' I said 'You don't want to see what's under my shirt'. He didn't either. 

---- 

I take two things from Day 60

1. Be tough on yourself before you are tempted by others. It's easier to have it out with the devil and angel on your own. 

2. One good meal usually leads to the next one being good - virtuous circle. 

Day 42 - Another one down

That was the week that was...Week 6. I don't feel that I really pushed myself with the exercises as they were pushing me. I've had some real highs with feeling strong and powerful. And tired too, especially at the weekend. I'm determined to jump early tomorrow.

I think the main places I can get stronger with all this is being more on top of the diet in terms of prepping even more at home so I don't eat the salty fish that is delicious, but not strictly PCP. I also want to have a stronger week with my form, posture, and really making every exercise count. Compared to a couple of weeks back when I felt searing tiredness and soreness in my shoulders and legs, this week has been easier.

Today when I got home and got changed I saw a real change around my middle. Like I am starting to have a middle!

Gambatte minnasan!

Day 24 - What some call health, if purchased by continual anxiety about diet, is nothing more than tedious disease

Nice quote from George Denning Prentice there. It sums up a great attitude to food; be relaxed about it. I'm finding PCP food really liberating because I know my limits. That said, I'm still struggling to get LF milk and settling on LF yogurt, and when I can't get that I've tried Yakult, which was a mistake because of the sugar and probable lack of milk! Steamed some oysters this evening with spuds and fried onion/cabbage. It was nice, but next time I'll try to get things really piping hot, which was what I was craving.

Managed to get up earlier today and do all my workout except pullups which were done in the kids playground. I didn't bother 'changing', just got off my bike. Anyone else out there done workout stuff in office clothes? I like mixing things up, and was inspired by Patrick's blog to listen to BBC Radio 7 where you can listen again to radio dramas. Alan Bennett was describing getting beaten up in Italy with his boyfriend and the Italian police dismissing it as a reasonable thing for any red-blooded Italian man. I was doing my pushups. Incongrous? Yes, and I like it. 

Confession - I am a once-a-week announcer at NHK radio and had some training today. It's amazing how much you need to control your breath and emotions with voice work. I hope the PCP exercises will make me better at this. 

After my training I did what I promised Patrick and got a stronger band. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow. 

Oyasumi everyone.