Treats

Still keeping the ace up my sleeve. Truth is as oddly as it sounds, that I do not desperately crave any particular food, more so the spontaneity of the here and now, having the flexibility to go meet soem friends and have a taps nibble with a glass of wine: Guess Spanish rosquillas (essentially a type of donuts) dunk in milk is one of the things I miss the most, but when I think about how it feels after eating a few of them, then much of eating them disappears. Either way as I am due in London later in the week for my friends´ funeral and some business meetings that I have tagged along I deliberately have left my treat allowance to use when there. There will be undoubtedly a lot of food and drink-based mourning, as is socially customary in this cases, and I would like to part take in some of it without imposing too much in terms of constraints when out for dinner etc. I have to say that I am not particularly looking forward to all the disruptions that travel and social gatherings bring about in terms of breaking my well scheduled routine. PCP is so much easier in a well controlled and regimented routine, with little in terms of temptations or disruptions to eating hours etc. But I guess is a bit like enlightenment...anyone can achieve "special" states of mindfulness being a hermit away from distractions and external influence, but what is the point if do not make you functional amidst the realities and turmoil of "real life". I guess this is the same, int eh sense that you cannot live forever in a PCP world, the human being is a social animal, and in order to extend the PCP benefits beyond the 90 days of the programme, we need to make the PCP principles work in a social context that involves overating, overdrinking as part of our somewhat disfunctional social interactions...even so, I wish i did not have to travel to London, as PCP on the road is always so much more difficult, and also will have to miss on one of the highlights of Heathrow terminal 5: loading up on the creamy chicken found in the BA lounge as I wait for my flight to depart....
I guess a little bit of a catch up in workout progress is due...
1) Resistance Bands. THE GOOD: I had found that the max strangth bank in the set of 3 that I bought was not strong enough. Luckily I have figured out that you can hook 2 together, adding to extra resistance and this combined with virtually no rest between sets, and extra focus on the negative part of the movements (releasing the tension ever so slowly in a controlled fashion rather than simply letting go of the band after the point of maximum stretch has been reached) works fantastically well giving me a decent muscle burn
THE BAD: have already snapped or broken 2 bands...at this rate this could be a very expensive PCP
2) Workouts: lunges are the biggest killers, but all in all thus far not as tough as I expected
3) Diet. So far surprisingly much easier than I thought. PCP discipline is exactly what I needed as on my own I would not have had enough motivation or will power to sustain teh diet required to reach the dramatic physical changes into peak condition given the horrible physical state that I managed to get myself into. How many months of living in denial and lying to myself that "I am not that fat", or " I can start tomorrow and get really serious about working out and eating well, but for today, given all the stress of work I am entitled an extra indulgence..."
4) Time: this is the most difficult variable. Many concessions have had to be made at many levels. Taken zazen time, reading time, etc away from me. pretty much what I do at the moment is work and PCP, not room for much else in my life, which is hard to accept. But I do sense that it will all be for a good reason as the physical and mental improvement that will follow PCP completion will carry on to all areas of my life. is just hard to accept that there is not much more at the moment to life than work and PCP, just feels quite shallow and single dimensional. I even feel most importantly that the time and though that I allocate to my loved ones (and most importantly my wife) has gone down substantially and that this has become a bit of an egotistic quest. A thought that I find somehow troubling and at odds with my inner moral convictions.