The last straight line

Oups, it has been (too long) since my last blog and a lot of thing happened, good one and less good one...! Still struggling to complete my workout during weekend and especially on Sunday but the rest of the week I stick to the workout and diet.

I used our second indulgence by eating the food I could find in China that was the healthiest choice among what was available... even had regular coke to wash-up the taste of the water from this random lake in China we went wakeboarding all day (was beer a better choice?)...

And I already used my third indulgence yesterday having brunch in charming company... ;-) Didn't eat that much... was leaving some room for cheese but the cheese quality wasn't matching my expectation so I just had a small piece and stopped. Honestly, I don't think I reached the 1,000 calories but it was a nice moment and I enjoyed it!

Now, we have 2 weeks left in front of us! We know these 2 weeks will be hard but we already achieved so much! So it's time to give all for it and finish this project!!!

Here are front and side pictures: Day 0 vs 75... work in progress!!! :-)

Lost 16kg so far!

I'm looking forward for the end of the project but I want to give everything to complete it and feeling satisfy by what I will have accomplished! I know I won't reach what I could dream for, but I'm in the right path to get closer to it!

So fellow PCPers, move your @$$!!! ;-)

Starting to see significant results...

I haven't posted anything for a while but did quite a lot of things:

Did the body analyzer at the gym on day 45 and discovered that I had a lot of muscles but... a lot of fat too! :-( Muscles wise, I'm almost at the maximum of the "normal range" and fat wise, I was at 26.8%... so I'm classified in the solidly built type of body (obese with muscle...). Did a second analyzer yesterday on Day 55 and the fat %age dropped to 25%, losing 2.5kg of fat in 10 days! I'm pretty happy with that but I also lost 0.4kg of muscle but I guess this is negligible... As of this morning (day 56), I weight 101.8kg, looking forward to pass the 100 mark very soon!!!

I'm happy of the progress so far and I'm looking forward for the next 34 days but I'm still struggling during the weekend to get my exercises done and sometimes to eat PCP compliance food! I'm trying to maintain some social activities during the weekends but that screw up mostly my workout! On July 17th, I had a boat trip with my best friend in HK... so I woke up at 6.30am, ate PCP breakfast and rushed to meet my friend and help him to carry the food and the drinks for 70+ people! 2 boats, a big party, most of the people drunk (you know how good boat trips ends) but I didn't drink anything else than water and coke zero... food was BBQ and some veggies were available so the food was ok but when I was finally home at 11pm, I didn't have the energy to go through the workout...!

Same kind of situation during last weekend: woke up at 6.30am on Saturday morning, eat PCP breakfast, grabbed as much as PCP compliant food as I could, packed my kiteboarding gears and direction to Shenzhen to meet some members of the Kiteboarding HK Association (KHKA). We spent the entire weekend on a beach lost in the middle of nowhere at 2 hours drive from Shenzhen on the east coast. The weather was great, I ate less than the PCP food portion as I didn't feel hungry and the need to eat and kiteboarded in the afternoon when the thermal wind finally showed up (3-7pm) but again, wasn't able to find the motivation to do my workout with 33-35 degrees on the beach.... arrived home on Sunday at 11.30pm, no motivation to workout that late! :-(

Is any of you struggling with the same kind of issues? How do you manage your workout on weekends? Weekdays is fine as I'm well organized but I'm unable to get it properly managed during weekends!

I'm trying to upload some pictures as of this morning but flickr is taking so much time... good progress and getting better and better!!! ;-)

OK, it's getting late, time to aim for 7h+ of sleep

Almost half way done...

Day 42 today, getting closer to the half of the program... :-)

Congrats to my colleagues and friend that are ending the PCP tomorrow: great work guys, keep motivating us!

I'm happy of the progress even if sometimes I think it's not going fast enough! Working out on weekend is very difficult for me as I don't have the same structure and schedule I do during weekdays. Not mentioning working out on my own changes from the daily weekdays workout session with Khoi! It really helps to workout in team, the mutual motivation is much higher and you push yourself further that you'll have on your own!

Weekend workout was... not that great! I woke up on Saturday after receiving a sms from a friend to go kiteboarding in China. Kiteboarding is a sport that I really love and we haven't had decent wind in HK for a while during weekends... so the idea to spend some hours on the water and finally try some new tricks was really appealing. So I made the effort to wake up, prepared the breakfast, pack the gears, the fruit snacks and the lunch and left for Shenzhen. Met the 2 other guys and we left for a beach that we call MB2 (for Magic Beach 2 as it always have some good wind... so far). It takes almost 2 hours to get there from Shenzhen by car. When we arrived, the wind died as the clouds were too thick and the sun didn't pass through it to generate the thermal winds we were hopping for...!!! Nothing to do other than wait and hope... after 2 hours, still nothing came so I grab my rope and skipped on the beach... Skipping by 33+ degrees and high humidity was hard... stopped after that, no more workout on that day, no kitting either!

Sunday wasn't really better, I went through the skipping and the leg exercises for Saturday and Sunday as I wanted to compensate for my laziness of the previous day and did most of the elastic band exercises... was so tired that I didn't do the abs, took a shower and went to watch the last Transformer movie (not great but not bad... just... one more)!

Today's workout/rest day went fine and as it was a light day, Khoi and I decided to give a try to the 8min abs video. Good video, I like it! I'll try to do it more often on top of the daily abs exercises...! Felt also a pain in my neck similar to the one described by some of my fellow PCPers... will just have to do it more often!

I'm happy that we start the timed skipping session tomorrow, I'll not have to count anymore as I found that so boring (thanks Tracey for your suggestion but I really love my rope for Thai boxing: it's so heavy that it almost turn on its own and make you workout your arms at the same time)! I really would like to give a try to do the rope session in the morning just after waking up but that will require me to wake up earlier and I love to maximize my sleep before going to work... ;-)

Junk trip #2 this coming Sunday... again a new challenge on avoiding good food/beer... Wish me luck!

Just updated some new pictures... work in progress...!!!

Day 13 to... 34!!!

It has been a while since I wrote something on this blog... was too busy or too lazy... not sure! ;-)

PCP is going well so far! I'm trying to keep the diet as close as possible to the prescribed quantities! Indulged myself with a bit of Swiss chocolate, was a bit too old and didn't taste as great and amazing as I expected... just as Patrick described!

Workout is going ok so far, just missed one day of workout as I went kiteboarding and didn't have enough energy to go through the workout after the day on the water... As my knees were hurting badly from the skipping, I stayed away from the rope during one week and replaced it by some 30min on the elliptical session; running between 5.5 to 6km per session and now... back to the rope!

I don't know about you but counting these jumps are really annoying to me so I'm looking forward when we'll switch to timed session. I find it easier to workout on weekdays as I'm going to the gym with Khoi and we motivate each other, that really helps! Weekends have too much freedom and if you don't do your workout in the morning it becomes really hard to get it done! I also tried to workout outside but with 30+ degrees it just take forever and make me feel dizzy.

Mark, Andrew and Nick are a week away from their peak condition projects to be completed. I haven't seen Mark for a while but Andrew and Nick improved a lot: congrats guys! In our batch among my colleagues, Marlon made huge progress and significantly reduced his belly. Khoi and Victor also lost part of their bellies... and that keeps our motivation high! Victor, if you read these lines: don't get crazy on Malaysian food during your holidays Bro! ;-)

On my side I'm pretty happy of the progress: I was 113.9kg the day before the PCP start and I'm know 7kg down so far! I (finally) uploaded the pictures and I'm looking forward to continue progressing into the PCP!

Following Mark's advise, I bought a blender to prepare my dinner: apple, banana, milk and egg whites with a bit of cinnamon in the blender and my dinner is ready in 30sec and it taste good! Patrick, what kind of other fruits could we use instead of these 2 to change a bit of the flavor?

OK, enough writing for tonight... will try to write something more often! ;-)

Junk trip test passed!

Evening everyone!

The diet is going well so far! I needed to find the rhythm and the organization to shop and prepare all these dishes (and keep the kitchen not too messy) but I managed to do it! Workout was hard on the first transition day (day 8): I wasn't able to respect the 1min rest between the exercises before the sit-up... It took me 10min to get enough energy back to finish it properly...! The following days was much better as my body adapted (I guess) to the new diet! There is a lot to eat in this diet, sometimes too much!

A good test of my PCP motivation was today's junk trip. I'm sure all my fellow PCPers living in HK have been to a junk trip and know how nice it is to hang out all day on a boat with your friends, swiming, drinking, wakeboarding, drinking, eating BBQ and... drinking (hey, you need to get rid of the salty water taste in your mouth with a nice beer!)... so it wasn't easy to wake early because you need to do your workout and prepare the breakfast, lunch and the 2 food snacks for the day before joining your friends but once all was done, the rest of the day wasn't that hard! I wasn't really tempted by the beers or the BBQ as I was fine with my food and my soda water (best compromise) but the traditional whiskey and cigar on the way back to the pier were missed! Another thing: wakeboarding in choppy water kills your legs!!! I couldn't stand on the board more than 5-10min... I felt the squats from the morning session (a good sign?)!

Ok, time for bed now!

PS: I'm curious to know what comes next... ;-)

Days 4-5-6

Hi Fellow Brothers&Sister-in-arms,

Day 6 is ending; workout on Day 7 is light and easy, so the first week is almost considered as done! I'm curious to see what our diet will be made of and if I'll manage to shop and prepare all of them according to the schedule.

Saturday didn't start well for me as I woke up sick with a sore throat and fever... At the end of afternoon and after the panadol started to kick in, it was now or never to find the motivation to start the workout... was happy to finish it within 20min! I didn't open the a/c and sweating helped getting rid of the fever for the rest of the weekend! Eating half is going well so far, even ate half of the sushi on Saturday evening. It wasn't that difficult as the sushi weren't that good (Don't bother trying the sushi restaurant in Regal Hotel at the HK airport, costs a lot for low quality).

I woke up on Sunday without pain in my legs (finally!!!). Stretching finally paid for the mistake on the first 2 days! :-)    Workout went smooth and even went to the swimming pool on the afternoon to swim a bit as it was so hot! Swimming made me super hungry around 4pm: fruits and a bit of crackers made the trick until dinner! We went for dinner at Prime Steak House in Elements as we wanted to watch Hangover 2 there... we ordered the wagyu 24oz for 2 and only ate half but we took the remaining home as such a nice meat couldn't be left... I probably could have eat it all but the movie time was getting very close and had to leave. But contrary to Marlon and his wife, I didn't managed to see the movie as I apparently booked the tickets online for the following day! After such a nice (half) dinner and the inflexibility of the cinema's staff, we decided to go home!

Woke up early this morning (early considering it was a public holiday in HK), did my workout and went to China for massage. That was a great idea! The massage was painful but that was what I needed and I feel soooooo good now! I'll probably do that every week depending how hardcore our workout will be. If you want to join, please feel free to email me!

I don't know about you guys, but the squat and lunge are the 2 exercises that are the most difficult for me, it kills my legs! For the lunge, in the last reps, I need to help myself by pushing on the knee to stand up, otherwise I can't finish it! I notice a small progress since the first set but still not there...! As Patrick mentioned in his email, legs are the largest muscle in our body and we'll do a lot of these... I better get used to it! ;-)

I appreciate to have Mark, Andrew and Nick in the previous PCP batch, it's really motivating to see you guys progressing so well and if you can do it, we can too! I haven't seen my two colleagues Khoi and Vic very active in their respective blogs, I hope to see more from them! ;-)

For the one in HK, I suggest to organize a nice junk trip in the first weekend of September after the end of our 90 days PCP. We could finally have some alcohol and show off our future-to-be beautiful bodies! Let me know if you're interested!

Enjoy your 500 jumps tomorrow! :-)

Days 1-2-3

Hey Everyone,

Day 3 today... so far so good!

As I wasn't very active on the blog since the beginning, here is a summary of what I went through:

Day 1: A lot of enthusiasm and eager to start.The first workout on Day 1 went pretty fast but... the pain in my legs on day 2 and 3 killed me! A proper stretching session after the workout is a MUST to not walk like a grandpa on the following day.

Day 2: Workout during lunch time with Vic, but instead of going to the gym (nice fresh a/c), we went downstairs in the sort of park... 31 C and 75% humidity... not a good idea... wasn't feeling well after we completed the session! We forgot to bring some water with us and that probably didn't help!

Today: The pain in my legs was quite strong this morning and I wasn't looking forward to start today's workout but after completing it and stretching properly my legs, I FEEL GOOD!

Eating half is ok so far, just feeling really hungry around 4pm... will follow Patrick's advice and find some crackers.

It will be a long weekend in Hong Kong as Monday is a public holiday, I'm looking forward to it! I just need to stay away from my reserve of Swiss chocolates...! ;-)

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Sign-up is done

That seemed pretty easy so far, I hope the rest will be as well... ;-)