The T+7 Final Post

First of all, thanks to Patrick and Chen. PCP's been a great experience and I certainly feel I met my goal of getting into good shape. Some observations after 1 week off the diet:

Most restaurant food is more of a sauce than a food. What I mean is it's generally full of fat and has no fiber whatsoever. I actually doggie-bagged the main course from a local restaurant and spread it on bread at home.

Holy crap people eat a lot of salt. I had a meal at "Boston Chicken" figuring it'd be half-way healthy if one got the right sides. Incredible mountains of salt.

Lunch at a restaurant in a business district is not only unhealthy, but way more expensive than treating oneself to a fancy but PCP friendly bag lunch. Why eat a greasy bacon cheeseburger when for less money (and even less time, when you consider the lines!) you can pack a thick steak sandwich.

Jump-rope is fun and a pretty easy habit to keep.

Not so for the rest of the exercises. I'll need to work on that.

I still have no interest in sweets.

That being said, one can gain several kilos of water weight by eating a small amount of sugar and salt. Scales don't tell the story. Anyway, congrats again to my team--you all look fantastic. And to anyone reading this wondering whether they should give it a go, I say go for it. It's not easy, but I promise you won't regret it.

Done!

Will post more thoughts later, after the final morning weigh-in.

But first, a quick horribly-low light before and after:

Off to bed! Congrats to my group (you all look amazing!), and best of luck to the new team. Stick with it!

Nearing the end

Wow this is getting tough, isn't it?

Anyway, some comments on the final week:

Having the family here makes it nearly impossible to be strict with this thing like I had been. No worries, comes with the territory.

On the other hand, I love the influence this is having on my daughters. Maya, my 4 year old who has terrible gastointestinal troubles and generally refuses to eat veggies, LOVES baby carrots. Amy can't get enough rutabaga and begs me to get more at the supermarket. We ate at Costco (of all places), and she even ordered the salad (of which I could only eat the lettuce and cherry tomatoes). Still, their salad is miles better than the pizza or other junk and I was hugely proud of Amy.

Even my wife Narumi enjoys my broiled super-lean eye-round steak more than the fat-marbled health disasters generally available at the super.

Ab Challenge

Found The Yodo Advanced Ab Challenge on youtube.

"you give me 6 minutes and 48 seconds, and I'll give you your abs!"

Back in San Francisco, stats update

Thank goodness.

After a week moving, guessing weights, substituting exercises & food, and a massive indulgence, I was afraid I'd done quite a lot of damage to my PCP. Fortunately, the scale shows that I maintained my weight, lost fat, gained muscle. Thank goodness!

Now let's finish this thing properly!

more reverse-reverse culture-shock

For the last few weeks in San Francisco, I've often bought a $5 bag of sugar snap or English peas from the ferry market to eat with lunch. So yesterday I found a small package of snap peas at Tokyuu and bought three of them for the same purpose. To my surprise, my wife refused to try them. "You're going to eat that RAW!?. Apparently raw shrimp with head attached still quivering is ok, but peas would be an abomination. Go figure!

Third and final indulgence

Went with the family for dinner at our favorite ramen place (ippudo by Komazawa park). Heaps of oily bean sprout salad, gigantic Aka-maru ramen with a hard-boiled egg topping, extra noodles, gyoza dumplings on the side.

The first bites were utter heaven; an explosion of flavors setting off massive chemical releases in my brain.

And then I started to taste, to REALLY taste, the salt, the oil OH SCREW THIS IT WAS FANTASTIC.

My body is damn lucky I'm moving far away from this joint.