Day 64 - Smell, remember, hope

What does this pile of cards have to do with my workout this morning? Another PCP-er (can't remember who!) said they turned over a card from a set. It saved them counting. I tried this today expecting it would be just helpful in the sense of counting. How wrong I was! It turned out to give me a huge dollop of motivation! In February I spent a wonderful long weekend in Hirosaki, Aomori with Tori and Kyle Sharpe (pictured in the middle). They were a truly inspiring couple in so many ways. They welcomed me and Trine (Teutonic beauty on right) into their home through the amazing social networking system for travellers, Couchsurfing. 

They could have just put us up, as per the terms of the agreement, but they went so much further, driving us to Mount Iwaki for snowboarding, arranging lessons, lending me their snow suit, cooking French toast, showing us round Hirosaki's snow festival, taking us to local haunts for yakisoba. They are hardcore snowboarders (Kyle is a teacher) as well as being into all manner of other sports like football, inline skating, wrestling (Tori was a trainer in the US). Both of them are in terrific shape, and they introduced me to eating eggs everyday (they could be PCP-ers). Looking at the cards of Amori reminded me of them and the great time I'd had and how I admired their gutsy grab-life-by-the-throat attitude. And hoped that one day, I'd have musculature like Tori's! The lady is a champ and one of my inspirations. 

Kyle impressed me by saying 'Lots of people say they're into something, but they just do it once every two weeks. When we say 'we're into boarding' we go like two or three times a week'. 

PCP-ing every day entitles me to say honestly 'I'm into caring for my body'. 

Finally, as you know yesterday was a bit of a blah day for me. I bought some lilies on the way home from work and put one of the flowers by my gas hobs. Like lots of people in Tokyo, cooking space is very limited. I don't have an oven or microwave, just two ring burners. And sometimes I use an electric cooker pot, but not that often. Recently, I've felt a bit oppressed by the lack of space, need to constantly wash and put away and the smell of eggs, their shells, the left over yolks - you know how it is. I did a big clean up on Sunday, and that with the flowers has made me feel excited about being in this space again. The container behind is where I keep the leftovers food as I go along...

Our sense of smell is vital to how well we feel. 

Would you judge me if I said I sometimes put on perfume before working out? Very French, huh?

Day 54 - (Over) Indulgence 2

So the mission to consume 700 - 800 calories was successful!

The Chosen One was a 'Queen of Marron Dessert' that was just heavenly. I'd planned to eat it with a matcha taiyaki, thinking that it would be about the right no. of calories. Of course, when I biked to the shop, they didn't have matcha, so I consumed a 'soycream' one. That was fairly indifferent and salty. The best thing about that was the bit of thick pancake around the tail and the first 3 bites.

I had my best buddy, Hayden, over to have lunch (home made sushi rolls!) and join me on the indulgence, so I lied to myself decided to share some matcha icecream. He had an apple caramel pie and I had to nag him to let me sit down and join him otherwise he'd have finished eating before me! The matcha icecream wasn't his thing, so I put it in the fridge for later  consumed all of it myself. OINK.

The marron and icecream was truly a wonderful combination - slightly bitter and green creaminess against the nutty and slightly lemony notes, and lighter cream of The Chosen One.

I'd say the cheesecake last time gave me a bigger hit. But then I'd already slashed up some taste buds with the salt from the taiyaki. When it comes to indulgences, simpler is best for me.

I got a bit of leg tingling and after eating Hayden asked 'You okay?' as I had my head in my hands. I was TIRED from that food.

The original plan was to go to the Sassy Girl dance class and then come back but there was champagne and cake for someone's birthday. Obviously, the smart move would be to ask for a small slice of cake and put my glass of fizz down in the general mingling. Obviously, I did not take that option. I'll be posting pictures later.

Came back to my home station, biked home, and jumped in the rain. Had a really good session - in the rain and wind, got into the groove I'd missed for a couple of weeks. See how much the sugar helped!
That took away some of the mild disgust I felt about having the cake and champagne. This wasn't really in the BF wedding type celebration and I could've handled it much better! And one more confession - last night I overate about 30 g. of protein in the form of small dried fish in sesame. It was just the same as eating a bag of potato crisps in terms of chasing the taste in my mouth.

I have questions about life post PCP - like 'Do we schedule treats in once in a while?' and the big one 'Can I be trusted?' Because I really don't want to go back to where I was two years ago. Food is good, life is short, but the pleasure of taste is shorter and more transient than the joy of a body that is in shape.

Back to the grind tomorrow. I can't wait.

Day 14 - Great exercise, less than great eating

Today I decided to bike as I had a party to go to (one that I'd organized some time ago) and the train service is decidedly inconsistent in Tokyo. I was really looking forward to the party as it was a chance to chill out a bit after the earthquake and it was to celebrate a really great person's birthday. Anyway, the upshot was that I didn't eat enough veggies, and my protein was entirely processed meat in the form of mini sausages and 1/2 bowl of shepherd's pie. Carbs were a taco shells, bread, veggies were salad. And I had a banana on the bike ride. Not proud of this! My weakness is I think that if I exercise a lot then this 'allows' me to eat more. Which might be true, but you have to do the numbers and even then, it probably doesn't work out as you think. I cycled about 35 k. today, and the rest of the days meals were okay, a couple of salty items appeared. Breakfast was genmai mochi and wholewheat crackers (no doubt salty), and the lunch time fish from Origin Zen Bento takeout had salt on the skin (picked off skin, but salt still there). Sigh! Hope I haven't screwed up. Still, tomorrow is a new week and I can say that until today I have kept to the grams pretty well. I'll need to be on it harder, more planning in advance. I think that if I had asked for some advice about the meal, I'd have done better. Live and learn eh?

On the positive side - I said 'no' when asked if I wanted free pizza at lunch time. And I sucked it up and told the restaurant staff that I really didn't want cheesecake. And drink was a mineral water. So I have the willpower muscles. I just need to flex them harder and plan smarter.