Day 72 - Wedding registration!

Hi Gang,

Just a few quick photos from yesterday's registration. Greenie and I are in Penang now doing another banquet-esque type activity before heading back to Hong Kong to prepare for our Hong Kong banquet next Monday.

A lot of banqueting coming up! Hope it doesn't impact on our bodies too much!

This is us doing a "couple piston squat".

Will post our photos which we took this morning shortly. Still doing the exercises, and we'll make decent choices where we can, but diet will have to take back seat for the next few days, and probably on our Hong Kong banquet day on July 4th.

Hope everyone else is doing well!

Signing out from Penang, Malaysia - Mr & Mrs Wei and Greenie Sim!
:)

Day 70 - Just a quick update

Wow, I don't believe I haven't blogged in almost a week. On the way to work now - this is just a quick update blog to say all is fine and on track. GT's been travelling furioualy for work so hasn't been able to blog, and I've been wedding preparing and spending some quality time with my family. My parents have been around for almost a week, and my brother and his wife just flew in last night. We played a game of scrabble which was fun!

Dad's cooking has been... not very strict to say the least, but last night by golly gosh he got it right! Each day preivously he'd come up with a "oh I can't use ANY oil at all?" or "oh it' sjust a bit of salt - it won't taste good without it: etc etc.... Anyways, still appreciate him cooking dinner for me, and especially putting in the effort to cater for my eating habits. I know it hasn't been easy - THANKS DAD.

I had a glass of wine with dinner last night, because it was pretty special have Liang and Liza here. This morning I decided to do Day 71 workouts instead of day 70 because I thought I might want to take it easy tomorrow.

Tomorrow Greenie and I get (legally) wed. How exciting!!!

Keeping the flame alive... over and out.

Wei

Day 64 - Watching my back...

A new week in pcp land dawns & tho its Friday in the real world the "rest day" hasb passed and in Wei's PCP world it's a Monday...

Monday means a sligght twinge of Monday-itis at least, exacerbated by the fact that Monday also means floorump day which i am finding increasihngly draining,

Anyways, exercises for today are done & dusted - whats more, my parents arrive this afternoon!
=)

So, I went climbing with Yeeman last night & she kindly took my day 64 photos for me (see right). Took some in rested position as well as flexing...which looks kinda gross because my whole body looks stringy & veiny when i flex - but still skinny! oh well...

I thought photos of my back looked interesting. Ties back in to the email the other day from Patrick about "what does our back look like?" So I've seen what the rest of my body looked like when all flexed etc, but this was in fact the first time I'd seen my back, and I thought it looked pretty interesting:

Even when rested Yeeman pointed out there were two lumps under my arms... What were those? - I have no idea... I still have no idea (Patrick?). Secondly when I'm flexed, there actually seems to be a lot going on on my back - except I don't really know what. If you asked me to draw it, I don't think I'd be able to.... oh well, nice to learn the back is so complicated.

Oh, and Yeeman also took a photo of me doing some pull ups so I can what my back looks like when I'm moving/climbing. Here it is to share with everyone...

Happy Friday everyone!

Day 62 - The strangest thing...; The story of the sore biceps and Some further eggs-planation!

So a few topics today...

The strangest thing...
GT & I came home together yesterday. She was catching a midnight flight out to London, but had already done her exercises in the morning... anyway, whilst sitting in the taxi chatting on the way home she mentioned that she didn't feel her skips were that good this morning. No matter - you have good and bad days. End of story, or so I thought.
After getting home, I was preparing dinner and asked her to pack her bags whilst I prepared. After a few minutes she popped her head into the kitchen and said something I NEVER expected from her... "I'm just going to pop down stairs and do a bit of skipping...". Prior to PCP Greenie wasn't much of an exerciser, and even after doing the program for so many weeks, she'd been diligently following the program, but really following it to the T - no more no less... commenting on having a bad day, I'd seen before, but doing extra exercise!? This is something I'd never seen before... slowly but surely I guess it's all cumulated in having some impact on all of our mindsets - how we eat; how we exercise; and how we live. Slow transformations are everywhere, but this one I have marked as a little land mark - a turning point, which I hope we will never go back from. Good on you Greenie T!


The story of the sore biceps...
So, back to yesterday's blog where I mentioned that "I'd go into more details on why my biceps were SUPER drained..". Here is the reason:

The black resistance band is mine - the grey one is GTs... As you can see from the picture mine is about a foot shorter than hers. The reason for this is because my band has snapped a few times, and I haven't been bothered to go buy a new one (yet). PLUS I feel kinda robbed that these things have no warranty, and have only managed to last a matter of weeks (my silent protest). This is not sustainable, because as the band continues to snap, it continues to get shorter and shorter, thus increasing the intensity of my workouts, to the degree where they are really tough! To add to this, the more intense the workouts means the more pressure I'm putting on the bands, and the faster it snaps again! I'll be out to buy a new one tonight I think, but anyways that's the explanation. I'll keep these ones for some of the exercises, but I really need a new one for some of the ones which need less resistance.


Some further eggs-planation
So I blogged about eggs yesterday and the deliciousness of the cold soft-boiled egg. On the topic, one thing which was on my mind, but I forgot to blog about was my colour coding system. So I'll go into that briefly now... I'm sure that others out there may have a similar problem - right now I'm eating 4 eggs a day. One full egg, and three egg whites. When I pack my lunchbox every evening, I need to take two eggs with me to work. One full egg (which I liked soft-boiled) and one egg-white (which I do hard boiled). How do I tell the difference between the two when I get to work though? Simple... (the answer lies below)

We colour code our eggs! Brown one for soft boiled and white one for hard boiled! Sounds silly, looks a bit silly but works like a charm!


Wednesday = hump day. Down hill from here onwards. Enjoy the rest of your weeks everyone!

Day 61 - mmm... eggs...

OK, so a bit of a random post, but one thing that I really look forward to every day now, is my egg. Not the egg whites - they're OK; I get plenty of them now that I'm eating 4 eggs, but I mean the full egg. So what's so good about the egg? Well, since starting work, I've been mass boiling eggs such that I don't have to spend time doing it everyday. I started off just doing the hard boiled ones, but I soon discovered that you can actually soft boil eggs and just leave them in the fridge too!

Cold soft boiled eggs are the best! Not only do they retain the gooeyness of the soft boiled egg, but because it's not piping hot, you can also taste the egg more. It's like eating one of those caramello creme eggs EVERY DAY except
1.) It's much bigger.
2.) It's not sickly sweet.
and damn does that yolk taste good. Just like flowing caramel/custard all gooey and stuff... for those of you who haven't tried it yet, you HAVE TO give it a go!

OK, on to one serious topic: I have noticed that I'm finding the exercises a bit harder now. What I mean is that I'm able to complete less than previous weeks or days. I think this may have to do with the fact that when we're working one muscle group, we're actually working a few. So for example we might do biceps one day, and then the next day we do pull ups. I struggled with my pull ups earlier this week, moreso than I did last week - perhaps I was having a bad day, but I think it was because even though we categorise pull-ups as a "back exercise" you need to use a whole lot of bicep to get yourself up there too, and these were still SUPER drained from the workout the day before (I'll go into why this is in a more detailed blog later...). Eitherways, not necessarily a bad thing - just one of my observations.

GT's off to London tonight, and will be back on the weekend. My parents will be arriving in Hong Kong this Friday evening. Really looking forward to seeing them again. I can't believe we're getting married next Friday!

DAY 58 - Lonely park workout; new photos and bye bye Bowflex...

So it was a pretty lonely workout in the park this morning... perhaps 6am was too early. Eitherways it was pretty nice. The weather was overcast - not too warm. One one side, I had the view of the trams, and the other the racecourse. It was great just being able to skip whilst watching life happen around me. A lot of 老人家 (elderly people) doing their exercise in the park with me. It was kinda surreal, skipping whilst blasting The Prodigy - 'Breathe' down the ipod whilst watching the 老人家 facing the racecourse fence slowly doing their taichi... felt like I was in an MTV clip.

Anyway, once again since GT is still away I've had to self-take photos - new photos are up on the left. My stats haven't really improved - in fact I've gotten "fatter" again today (boohoo...) but at least the pics don't really show it.

Oh and finally, a disposal I made yesterday:

This is a quick picture I decided to take for the last time I'd ever see them... These are were my set of Bowflex Dumbells... I've had them for a couple of years, but they've been taking up considerable room at home , and had relatively little use recently. After beginning PCP I've realised that I don't really need them to achieve what I want, and so sold them for a nice little sum.
:)

Day 57 - Floor Jump Fear & return of the dinner carbs!

On the way home on the tram now. Looking forward to workout tomorrow morning... leg days are the scariest to me - especially ones that contain floor jumps! Today's 5x 20 jumps already had me from the first set.... perhaps it was from 4 days of not doing leg exercises, but man was it tough!

To be a true PCP-master I really gotta learn to nail these freakin' floor jumps. Apart from that not much else to add. Got 50g of carbs back for dinner. w00t! I can have... a mouthful or rice. haha...

Strange, I think with such a little amount I'd prefer just to not have carbs - what's the point in tempting yourself only having to stop at one bite... anyways I'll take it. Perhaps I should have some rice. I've been so into bread baking that I haven't had rice in weeks....

OH! big compliment today. Someone in the office said I was healthy bringing my own lunch (apparently lots of people have noticed, but haven't decided to say so to me till Friday afternoon drinks - but that's a different story), whilst I was toasting my bread at lunch he asked me where I got it from because it looked delicious!
YAY!


GT's back from India tomorrow...
DOUBLE YAY!
^^

Happy Friday everyone.

Saturday workout [Hong Kong] - 6am Happy Valley

Hi Gang,

If anyone's up for it, I was thinking of workout tomorrow 6am at the Wong Nai Chung Crescent Garden in Happy Valley. Not sure if it's open that early - I'll check tonight and confirm on this post by 9pm but just a heads up first. I'll be there if it is, doing Day 58.

Greenie T won't be back from Mumbai till later in the day, so those of you looking to workout with her, need to wait till Sunday at least, and see if she's up for it.

Update: - It's Open. See you there whoever cares to join...

Day 55 - Back on track!

After a good night's rest I woke this morning to find that my fat % had dropped a whole percent from 16.5% back 15.5%. My 5-day increase in fat % had finally abated! Let's see if I can see it fall past the previous lows of 13-14% this time around.

Workout this morning was decent. 50 chin-ups were still a struggle, but at least I can see some improvement coming through - I can eek out the 4th set complete now, whereas previously I could only get up to ardoun 6-7 before them becoming "half-chin ups" - the 5th set is still a case of 5-6 only... Legs have stopped feeling tingly from exercises 2 days ago, but funnily enough now my back is a bit sore from this morning's exercises... ahhha.. I can see this being a never ending cycle for the next few weeks. haha... how fun. ;)

Something I've noticed (apart from my face looking gaunt and everyone telling me to eat more), is that I'm veiny all over now. Not sure if anyone is in the same boat as me? But pretty much my arms are ALWAYS veiny now, my legs are sometimes veiny, and when I wake up and look in the mirror, even my abs are veiny. It's kinda weird....

Looking forward to rest day tomorrow. Haven't had a proper rest day for two weeks now, since we "cashed in" our last one, coming home from Boston and losing a day for Liang's wedding last week. Will be  nice to have a bit of a rest tomorrow...
:)

Get our new diets and workouts tomorrow night too - how exciting! Go on Patrick take me up to 5 eggs a day - I dare you! Time for my 8 min date with Mike... ttfn...

Day 54 - What a day...

Today's been painful. I suppose it was more so catching up from yesterday, but still... So yesterday was a public holiday in Monday. For me it consisted of doing the workout (which primarily concentrated on legs and shoulders), followed by a morning's worth of rock climbing, and an afternoon's worth of cycling.

This morning I woke up, and my legs were definitely not 100%... they weren't blown, but enough so such that I had to concentrate on my skips a bit more than I normally do (in my groggy state having just woken up) in order to ensure I didn't trip up... On top of that the tricep/bicep workout also started to work it's magic on me within an hour of doing them. By the time I got to work this morning, both my arms and legs were feeling fatigued... it's been a whole day, and still got the same feeling. The little positive takeaway from this is that my fast % has finally reverted from its 5 day rise by 0.5% this morning... woohoo~

I think it'll be a relatively early night for me tonight... Zzzz....

P.S. I see a lot of day 7 blogs, which is awesome, but would be nice to see some more "ahead group" blogs too, to see what's happening with everyone! Perhaps everyone's still on holidays..

Day 53 - I don't like it...

Something funny's happening here, I don't know why, and I don't like it... Anyways, thought I'd blog it out and see if anyone was experiencing the same thing. Ever since Day 50 when we started new exercise routine with new groupings, my weight has continued to decrease over the past few days whilst my fat % has gone up. This isn't what I want. Now, I wish I could say that the scales are lying, but if that were the case, then I'd have to negate all the good stuff which has happened since PCP started, which I don't want to do either.

The only explanation which I can come up with (which I like) is that due to the new level of intensity required by our muscles in the exercise, they're shredding up but yet to have regained yet... I suppose it's only been 5 days, but it's pretty disheartening to see such a consistent trend over that long a time. Let's hope we at least see one improving set of stats by the end of this week...
:(

On a different note, had a totally awesome workout session in the Caine Road Garden with Yeeman, Nick and Andrew yesterday. The logistics weren't entirely perfect, given we all had to share the jungle gym to do the exercise and workout where to chinup/hang our resistance bands, but overall found it a worthwhile experience 1.) meeting other people doing PCP 2.) finding some motivation with the exercises. A question from our group session - when doing the lawnmower, are we supposed to be front facing, or side facing during the pull?

Anyways, it was a good session guys, and thanks for taking the time/effort to trek out. Perhaps we can organise other group sessions every 1-2 weeks. After all it IS only a few weeks left! Next weekend in Happy Valley perhaps? Let me know if anyone is interested, and we'll setup a time.

Day 51 - Come workout with us [Hong Kong]!

Anyone in Hong Kong interested in meeting up for working out Day 52 tomorrow morning?

When: Sunday 5th June 08.00am 
Where: Caine Road Garden
Equipment needed: skipping rope, resistance band, ATTITUDE!
=)


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This is an open invite to everyone (current day 51s, day 4s, recently completed etc.) If you're finding day 4 too easy so far, perhaps you'd like to come join to see what you're in store for! ;) If you've just finished PCP recently and are feeling post PCP withdrawal, come join in a workout which will be challenging, but not overly demanding!

I'll be doing the exercises there with Yeeman at least, but of course the more the merrier!  GT's in New Dehli for work atm, so will be spending long weekend alone in Hong Kong. Come work out with us tomorrow morning! We bumped into Gilles the other day at G-bar, but It'd be cool to meet more PCP people in the flesh!

On a different note, just uploaded my day 51 photos... sorry about being so dark and wonky - I find it hard to take photos for myself, and I think my place in general just has bad lighting. Fat % has continued to steadily decrease, and can see it in my photos, but am I getting a bit too skinny?

I'm glad food proportions have increased, but I hope that I start to fill out a little in the coming weeks. Comments from ex-colleagues and people who haven't seen me in a few weeks is that I'm way to thin now. I guess I had a thin face to begin with, but the whole PCP hollowing out thing has just exacerbated that.

On a more exciting note, have invited a few friends over for a PCP dinner tonight. :) It's fun to have dinners with other people. I always used to be afraid that people would think PCP food tastes crap, but I've learnt that people actually appreciate a decent HEALTHY meal! If your social life has been going down the drain from lack of eating out with others, turn the table around and get them to come over to yours!
:)

Have a good weekend everyone.

Day 51 - Ménage à trois..?

haha...  I just noticed that next PCP starts in 27 days... so I guess we're moving from a group every 1.5 months to every month. Guess it makes sense given how large the groups are getting. It means for us, we'll be the first group to have two groups following our lead. Cool!
^^

Day 50 - You know that feeling...

Where you know that you'll be hurting the next day? I had that feeling at 6am this morning before I'd even finished the workout. Really upping the ante this week, with targeted muscle groups each day - today was the legs and shoulders. Legs are a funny one. You can typically push them more because they're bigger muscles, but at the same time they are also prone to cramping more (I don't think I've ever had my arm cramp or anything like that...). Anyway, after today's sets of 3x25 squats, 4x6 pistol squats and 5x18 (that's 90) floor jumps, my legs were well and truly spent. It was weird... if I put my fingers on my pelvis I could literally feel all the blood pumping to my legs!

By the time GT & I got to the ab exercises, I could already feel micro-twitches within my thighs. It's usually the feeling you get later in the day, or perhaps early the next day which signifies that I won't be able to walk properly for the coming day or two. I can't believe the feeling already came within an hour of the workout!

Well, hopefully the solid foundation that PCP has given us so far leading up to this will mean a faster recovery time over the coming days. - I'll need it... I'm sure we all will!
:)

Happy Friday everyone!

Freedom within boundaries...

Another one of my super quick posts. Ahh... another perfect breakfast - TOTALLY PCP COMPLIANT. For those of you in week 1 who had concerns about there not being enough food - fret not! I had similar concerns when I began especially since I'm a big eater! Hopefully this visual example will help put your concerns at ease.

Apart from the above, I'm still also missing my 250mL of milk - part of my breakfast, which I will perhaps have in coffee later or something.

So this is  my ciabatta bread - one white with garlic and one wholemeal which I both baked this morning. Both turned out awesome with great open crumb (see below). On top of that some steamed egg plant, sweet potatoes, baby corn and brussel sprouts, as well as some grilled salmon steak. I love grilling the salmon such that it's crunchy on the outside (keep the skin too!), whilst still pink on the inside - like sashimi!

Anyways, reason which prompted me to blog is that this breakfast (apart from being sizeable) reminded me of one of the more memorable mottos at my ex-company. They had many mottos, but one which stuck in mind more was "freedom within boundaries". I.e. they let us do whatever we want (within limits... and as long as we  made money for them. :p). PCP diet reminds me of this motto, as we are allowed to eat pretty much anything we want! (within boundaries of preparation and balanced proportions).

Whenever I tell people about PCP, and there being a diet component, the first reaction is usually a negative one. When people think diets and scales, they think of restricted eating as well as mandatory cutting of random foods from the diet. I don't blame them. There seems to be so many fad diets out there these days. One friend of mine was doing another one the other day which only allowed her to have some type of maple syrup water - and NO FOOD - for a number of days... doesn't sound very healthy does it? Neither sustainable. Weighing food is often associated with negative connotations of food restriction rather than of control - whether that be from eating too much OR too little.

Anyways, I'm starting to ramble a bit but for people just starting out, take comfort that you may feel hungry sometime over the first 1-2 weeks, but as your body adjusts, and more importantly as food intake ramps up over the coming weeks, you'll get fed plenty, of food, and be open to plenty of variety.

Bon appetit!

Day 49 - The sweetest thing...

Just a super quick blog. Just got home from a friend's surprise birthday party. Prepared some dough to bake the ciabatta tomorrow. I'm again doing two loaves, but have modified the recipes - one to include garlic chunks (white) and one where I'm trying to use wholemeal instead of white (the poolish still using white though.

Just finished preparing the doughs and letting them sit. Just past 1am now. Opened the fridge door to find the loveliest surprise!

My evening snack of milk fruits and egg, all measured, prepared with the egg all peeled and even de-yolked for me. It's so wonderful to have that last thing of the day all nicely prepared for you when you're ready to crash.

Thanks Greenie - you're the best!
:)

Day 48 - Wee less, poo more...

haha... OK, the title is a bit gross, but in general it's what's happening. I guess we've kinda talked about this before, but a few things I've noticed is that I am pooping more now, which is totally normal because of all the vegetables we're eating, but also as a result of perhaps less sodium, I'm also drinking less water during the day. I don't know if it's unhealthy or not - after all isn't the RDI something like 2L of water a day? But perhaps if we're eating less salt than the average person, then we can maintain a healthy balance with less...? Even drinking less water I still notice that my sweat is a lot less salty than it used to be... almost can't taste the salt anymore.

Eitherways, I have noticed that I feel less thirsty these days, drink less water and as a result don't need to go to the bathroom to pee as much. Poop a different story.

Oh, and also welcome to all the new PCP-ers!!!
:)