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Done, done and done (is it really done??)

I think I've been in a bit of denial that day 90 has come and gone.  Was it really only 3ish months ago that I was thinking of starting this thing??  Wow.  Still haven't gotten my head around what I want to say, but I'm a born procrastinator, so I guess I'd just better JFD this thing!  Unedited mind-dump to follow...

This post is a tribute to all of the inanimate objects that helped me get through the PCP.  Here's the list - although I'm sure I'm forgetting something (but since they're inanimate objects, none will be offended - love how that works)...  Future PCPers - consider this an addendum to "must have" list Patrick sent out on Day 2.

1. Jelly roll pans - I have these for baking, but used 2 or 3 almost every day to roast any/all veggies of every shape and size (also helpful - a giant roll of aluminum foil)

2. My BlackBerry - for both its timer/stopwatch function and the Pandora app. (Apologies to my neighbors who may have heard crappy 80s music blaring from it at 7 in the morning)

3. Balsamic vinegar - I went through a giant bottle of it in 2 months.  And I still love it - go figure

4. Avocado saver - this was a gift from the fabulous Sarah, and got lots and lots of use  

5. My blender

6. The best jump rope in the whole wide world - only took me 1 month of tripping over a crappy one to figure this out.  New PCPers, save yourself some time and get this one from the beginning!!!

7. Glasslock food storage containers - I have two sets of these and they were in constant rotation with veggies, protein, etc.  Highly recommend.

8. COFFEE!!!!  I couldn't have done this without you.  Really. 

9. Bananas - you were my go-to fruit for 90% of this. I know variety is key, but nothing beats a banana, milk and cinnamon smoothie! 

Check out the photo my husband posted on his facebook page last week.  I didn't really want the attention (and I probably would have chosen a more flattering jump rope photo), but how often does your husband warn others that you can kick their ass???

The before and after...

Day 1                                                             Day 36                                                         Day 90ish

Day 1                                                         Day 36                                                          Day 90(ish)

I think I'm going to have to burn that bathing suit now..

Here's me and my "skills" - funny how I felt like I was jumping MUCH faster than I actually am.  If I knew how to edit, I make this much shorter....

Thanks to Patrick for your guru-like fabulousness.  Nice to know that you're always there, many time zones away, to provide support, advice and some "get your act together-ness" when we/me needed it.
Chen - thanks for all the behind the scenes things you do - and for giving me AMAYW veggies very early in the program:)
All the teams before us, especially Sarah - thanks for laying it all out there - giving the nitty gritty of all things PCP and providing the inspiration for me to do, and finish, this!!!
Team Orange Crush - you guys made AMAZING transformations and it's been fun going on this ride with you.
My swonderful husband - thanks for giving me all of your support and space and time I needed to do this, and do it well.  It wouldn't have been possible without you (and yes, I forgive you for finishing my leftover protein and vegetables on more than one occasion)
And finally, Team Cookie Monster/Team JFD - you guys were great.  I love what a diverse group we were, and really appreciate all of your support, blog posts, photos, etc. etc...  let's meet up sometime and have a giant jump rope fest, shall we??

JFD, guys, JFD.

Holy shit - that's me??  Neato!

Final post is coming!!!

Still getting my head around what I want to say/do for my final post, but just read this article in the NY Times and wanted to share.  Another study has shown the benefits to exercising first thing in the AM.  Patrick, your finger is on the pulse, my friend!
Phys Ed: The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast

Day 90 - I am DONE

I had a homemade chocolate chip cookie for breakfast.  more to come.....

Everyone's working out now

Even my 4 year old.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Day 89 - plans, part deux

So I never made it gym hopping, my post-Hanukkah returns to various stores and grocery shopping ate up most of my morning/early afternoon.  But there was a rain-free window around 4 this afternoon and I got to jump outside.  Bliss.  It's really warm here today (50ish degrees F) so I tried to make the most out of it.  Photos and videos of all my fancy jumping moves to come.

Just finished the last superset and wow - I almost didn't make it!  I do like them, I like the speediness/intensity of them - my basement looked a little like an obstacle course for the first half of them:) Music was blasting through the second half of the sets and I'd like to thank Pandora's Greatest Hits of the 80s for helping me to get through them (Come On Eileen, Need You Tonight, Sunglasses at Night) total cheese, I know, but it worked!!!  That, and doing the final reps with my eyes closed - not sure why but that made a huge difference.

Yeehaw.

Day 89 - Plans

My favorite saying has always been, "Want to hear God laugh? Tell him your plans."  My plan today, on my last "real" day of the PCP, was to get up, jump rope outside in front of my house as usual, bang out my workout and get on with my day.

Woke up in a cozy bed around 8am (after being peed on by my 4 yr old - don't ask) and seeing pouring rain outside.  Jumping rope first thing? Out.

Have a ton of errands today and will start on those, including a trip to the local gym.  My new "plan" is to gym hop to a number of local places to find a place that will let me work out for free today.  I don't really have interest in doing the supersets outside of the comfort of my basement, but I would like a place to jump rope that doesn't involve moving tons of furniture.

Wish me luck.  And jfd!

Day 87 - wow

I didn't think I was going to make it through the Davinci's and shoulder raises today.  Really - thought after set 1 I was DONE.  Couldn't move for a while when I was done today.  I guess that's the point, right?

Cold jumping

this morning it was 18 degrees F when I went outside to jump. I'm now the queen of layers - wearing a t-shirt, sweater, 2 fleece jackets and a vest.

It's now warmed up to a balmy 21 degrees.

Winter jumping is going to suck!!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Supersets begin NOW!

And I have to say I'm scared.  Have been hearing about them for at least 4 months and I hope I'm ready!  Giving myself 2 hours (while kid #2 is at school) to get today's done.

Good luck, everyone!!!

UPDATE: Superset #1 complete!  Totally spent.  The v-sits and planks to failure were the worst - mostly because of mindgames I was playing with myself.  Happy it's over - time to go consumer 15 egg whites...

Indulgence #3

I don't know why I am having such a mental block on blogging about my third, final and fabulous indulgence.  I guess because it's so photo heavy and downloading photos I've already posted to Flickr is a minor pain in the ass.

Here goes.  My husband and I went to a great restaurant in our teeny town.  I was happy eat like a grown up in public again, he was happy to have his non-gram counting wife back for a couple of hours.

Me and my first glass of wine (or any type of alcohol) in 80 days.  A yummy Pinot Noir from Oregon.

 

Doug and I shared two appetizers (do you think I could decide on just one? Ha.)  This was creamy polenta (read: tons of butter and cream), topped with a poached egg (score one for the PCP) and prosciutto di parma

Finished in no time flat - I think Doug got maybe a couple of nibbles.  

Next up was a salad topped with smoked figs (I normally would avoid any type of dried fruit, but these were unflippin' believeable) and chunks of gorgonzola.  As my mother would say, it was to die for...

.

 My entree - hangar steak with braised escarole and potatoes so fried they tasted slightly like a potato doughnut.  By this point I was a little overwhelmed in the food department, so only ate a couple of bites of potatoes and greens, and brought home 1/2 of the steak. 

 Dessert! Warm chocolate polenta topped with pretzels, fleur de sel and caramel.  I'm convinced this recipe didn't come from someone's Italian grandmother, but rather was the invention of a very stoned chef in the kitchen.  Sweet/salty is one of my favorite combinations and this thing was right up my alley.

All and all, YUM.  I didn't completely stuff myself (ok, I guess I stuffed myself a little), but I definitely couldn't eat like that all the time (ok, I could drink wine like that and eat dessert like that on a daily basis, but the total meal would do me in!)

Didn't really feel any ill effects from it, other than a grumbling belly for a couple of hours.  I never blogged about Indulgence #2, and now, compared to #3, it seemed so little and minor.  Doug made some homemade pesto and one night I ate a meal my family was having - pesto with noodles and lots of parmesan cheese (and salt!), followed by 2 pieces of Halloween candy (my only candy consumption while on PCP) and multiple handfuls of peanut butter filled pretzels.  That night if felt good to eat whatever I wanted, but I'm really glad I decided to make #3 a real event.  And it was.  YUM.

Ok - off to tackle workout #85 while the house is still quiet.

:)

On the 7th night of Hanukkah my true love gave to me....

A jar of Nanami Togarashi - chili pepper, orange peel, black sesame see, white sesame seed, japanese pepper, ginger and seaweed.  A PCP-doing girl couldn't ask for any more, really...

Excited to try it tomorrow on my egg.  Has anyone tried this?

Push ups

I still owe my indulgence post, which was unbelievably fabulous, but right now I'm sitting watching my son's gymnastics class and typing this on my phone.

Was just thinking how cool it is that I can actually DO push ups - real, live, not-on-my knees push ups. That's a major accomplishment for me.

Next time someone says to me, "Drop and give me 20!" I'll be ready. (Not that anyone's ever said this to me before or ever will, but that's besides the point:)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

3 hours until Indulgence #3....

and i'm STARVING!  I'm a little out of whack because I'd normally eat dinner around 6pm, but we have dinner reservations tonight at 8pm, post Hanukkah candle lighting and putting the kids to bed.

Lunch was a bit makeshift, I was at a baby shower luncheon for a good friend today, and I basically ate salad and some beets (ok, and the onion tart, but to my credit, I didn't eat one bite of tart crust!).  When I got home an hour later I ate cold chicken from the fridge and some crackers and avocado to finish up lunch.  And then I was still starving, so I went right into my yogurt and egg white afternoon snack.  Then it was 5 hours until dinner!!!

Oh well - only 1 hour until Doug gets home and I can get my workout in, and then we can leave.  We're headed to one of my favorite local restaurants, and I realized today this is the same place where I ate my anniversary dinner with Doug at the very beginning of this project (we were still on halfsies at the time).  Can't wait to bust out tonight, might even have a glass of wine - my first in 80ish days!!!  Hopefully my belly will go along with the plan, that remains to be seen.

In denial a bit about this ending so soon.  It means my chances of racking up a whole bunch more "perfect PCP" days are dwindling.  I think my grand total is around 10.  I'm sure in a month from now I'll think, "shit - why didn't I work HARDER at the PCP?  Why didn't I choose the max number of reps per set instead of always going with the min number??"  Lots to think about......

lots to blog about, but no time....

Kid #2's 4th birthday is today and the party is tomorrow.  I've just spent the last hour putting brownie goodie bags together.  Oy.

Anyway - lots to say, but no time to do it.

Did want to say that like probably a lot of PCPers, I'm thinking 3 things.  1: Why didn't indulgence #3 come a couple of days sooner (ie - thanksgiving day??) and 2: Since I went slightly off the PCP wagon on Thanksgiving (not horribly, just a little bit), I'm feeling slightly guilty about turning around and having a big blow out meal a couple of days later....

and finally - trying to figure out if turkey gravy is a veg, a protein or a carb.  Answer - none of the above, unfortunately!

JFD, team Cookie Monster, JFD!

I fell off the horse, but got back on...

I thought the weekend was going to start out ok, until it wasn't.

Was crazed all Friday and knew by 3pm that day that I wasn't going to get to my workout that day.  Fine, but then I went to dinner that night at a friend's house.  She was concerned about PCP and wanted to make sure I had food to eat that fit the program.  That was great, but then I couldn't help myself and had to eat some of the apple/pear crisp I made and brought for dessert.  Ugh.  Got home, ended up staying up until 3am to work on a cake that I needed to have ready for Saturday morning.

Got 4 hours of sleep, and finished the cake.  Meals were off since I was sleeping weird (delivered the cake, slept from 12:30 to 3pm) and then had to work on another cake for that night (a bday party for a friend). Got home that night around 10:30 and then did my work out, but I was so annoyed with myself that I did a really crappy job at it.

Sunday was filled with nothing at all, but still I never got a chance to do my workout.  Planned on doing it after the boys went to bed, but 30 mins after all was quiet, kid #2 started crying!  I laid down in bed with him and that was it - I slept last night from 9:30pm until 7:30am this morning.

I missed my regular early AM jumping session (I actually had neighbors ask where I was!) but the good news is I jumped while #2 was taking a nap and finished my whole workout before #1 came home from school.  So nice to finish it before the nighttime!

Anyway - I realized two things.  Making cakes and PCP don't really mix.  It's less the temptation of eating things I make, and more that my weekends get completely sucked up by cake making and in the previous 3 weeks it's thrown my eating/sleeping/workout schedule all out of whack.  The good news?  No more cakes (except for my son's bday cake next week) until Dec. 18 - AFTER PCP is over.

Other thing - I've gotten better picking up and moving on.  Tomorrow is a new day and just because I fuck up today doesn't mean it's the end of me.

Thinking about all my teammates today - hope all are hanging in there.

Just need to fucking do it for 21 more days!

Saturday night's cake 

Saturday morning's cake

it's the very little things...

today I put pumpkin pie spice in my smoothie instead of cinnamon.  Quadruple yum.  Highly recommend...

(the depth of my blog posts sometimes astounds even me!)

Day 64 - FOOD!

My food consumption seems like it's doubled this week.  Not that I'm complaining, but Patrick, if you realized you made a mistake and gave me Alex C's food instead, I'd figured I'd let you know now before I start getting used to eating carbs at every meal, and 3 egg whites a day!!!

:)

Missing my PCP peeps

It's a gloomy day here and I am very happy just to have jumps today (already did them this am).  The last couple of days I've been doing the strength training part later at night and it SUCKS, but that's really the only time when I can get an hour+ to myself, no kids, no car pool, etc.

Happy that it's now my second week in a row that I managed to get all the workouts done on their assigned day.  I originally thought the idea of a "perfect PCP day" was silly - how could each day NOT be perfect.  Realizing as we get further and further into this that perfection is very difficult to obtain.  But I keep getting back on the horse.  My slip ups are never major (too much applesauce at snack, stealing bites of my kids' noodles at dinner, adding honey to my yogurt on a regular basis, eating morning snack at 1pm, followed by lunch at 4pm), but they're slip ups just the same - another day that goes by w/o perfection.  It's a good goal to have, but I can probably count on one hand the number of days I've been PCP perfect.

Anyway - thinking about all my other team Cookie Monster/JFD team mates.

Jack - your progress is AMAZING.  Photos look great and you still manage to blog regularly, in addition to all of your school work.  A+!!! :)

Susan and Ian - hope jet lag has been gentle on the whole family and you're getting back into the swing of being a family of 3 again:)

Erin - I think of you and little Vincent all the time.  I have done the newborn thing twice and know where you're at (but in my case, I had 9 months to prepare, sounds like you had a couple of days, which is even harder!)  Anything you're able to do PCP-wise is just gravy - the good stuff is in that little bundle who's going to call you Mommy very soon:)

Alex - bad elbow and hospital?  Blech.  Hope each recovery is quick and easy and that you get back up on the PCP horse very soon.

Nicole - hope PCP is treating you well - and when are we ever going to see some photos of your fabulous PCP self??

Fish - so impressed that on top of the PCP you're getting out to volleyball games every weekend (or more!)  I can barely get my exercises done, so the idea of doing things on top of that has me bowing at your feet:)

Brian - Every time I go to the grocery store and see Greek Yogurt on the shelf, I think of you.  Love your photos, love the beard.  Perfect winter attire:)

Ok, lovefest over.  Want to rant about one thing.  It's been said that pregnancy/breastfeeding wreaks havoc on one's boobs, but in my case, PCP has been my #1 boob wrecker.  Don't get my wrong, I've never had huge boobs, but now?  Holy crap - where the fuck did my boobs go?  Ugh.  

Kick ass blog post, not my own

Great blog post today, from one of my favorite websites, Jezebel.com about women, strength, body image, etc. etc.

A favorite line:

"Your body was made for so much more than being looked at, deprived of food, and enjoyed by others. Your body was made for kicking some ass."

Highly recommend.