Day 27 : The Benefits of Chocolate

This from http://www.pastrywiz.com/archive/whatis.htm.

The pharmaco-dynamic substances (those whose action is similar to medications) found in chocolate are responsible for its reputation concerning its abilities. Four of these such substances can be found in chocolate: theobromine, caffeine, phenylethylamine, and serotonin. They appear in a negligible quantity, but each in infinitely small quantities plays an important role. Theobromine stimulates the central nervous system, facilitates muscular efforts, as well as having diuretic and cardiotonic action. It is an orexigan (appetite stimulator). Caffeine increases resistance towards fatigue, favorises intellectual activity, and increases watchfulness. Concerning phenylethylamine, it has a chemical structure similar to amphetamines and therefore contains psycho-stimulating properties. Serotonin, on the other hand, is a neurotransmitter (substance freed by the nerve endings) in the cerebral cortex--its quantity is often found to be lower during certain nervous depression states. The serotonin found in chocolate helps correct its initial loss. Likewise, the caffeine and saccharose stimulate the body's stimulation of serotonin. Finally, due to the pleasure it offers, chocolate stimulates endorphin secretion thus procuring naturally the same effects as opium. With this description of chocolate's chemical composition, it's never-ending list of virtues are easily explained.

Yeap, it's another "light" blog day. Patrick sent out the updated diets a day earlier than usual. I note that Nate, Adrian and I are all now allowed a spoonful of cooked rice with our dinner. This is easy for me because I always have (brown) rice in my rice cooker and it has been my carb of choice for most of PCP (I had a few potatoes earlier but the rice is so much easier) but I'm wondering how the other will cope. Of course, a spoonful is a rather inexact measurement. At the risk of incurring Patrick's wrath and appearing even more subversive than usual, I thought I could eliminate my carbohydrate cravings by using this one, apparently located at a place called Cramlington, Northumberland, in the north of England.

My indulgent day off tomorrow has been halved because there are some necessary things to be done by the end of the working day. But I'm going to take half a day and have a long lie-in.

Day 26 : My Indulgence

I've been reading the respective blogs on consuming the indulgence but I have a confession to make. I don't have much of a sweet tooth. I don't really like chocolate much and while I might have been tempted to gulp down some Haribo Gummi Bears, they used to make me feel sick before PCP (crazy what we do to ourselves) so I certainly don't want to do that now. I might be more tempted by some crisps (= chips in US, what we call chips translates to french fries) or corn chips, but they are so laden with fat and salt that I don't want to go there either.

My real indulgence is my now weekly visit to the Thai massage place and that hasn't cost me any calories. I called in on my way home tonight and decided that I wouldn't finish Workout 1 (I got as far as the squats this morning) and take today as my rest day.

Another calorie-free indulgence I'm thinking about is taking Friday off. Monday is a public holiday and that would give me a four day weekend, which I need!! Having said that, I'm planning to join a hike on Saturday so it will be interesting to see how my stamina holds up.

So the favorite for my calorie-filled indulgence is still the sorbet, and I know I'm going to love that. And let's face it, a good sorbet should be pretty healthy anyway. But I'm not going to go out of my way to get some. Maybe the urge will hit!!

Day 26 : A Ritu Rettis

Today's lunchtime vegetables were salad and a memory from the past popped into my mind. On the American Forces Radio a few year's ago, there was a spot trying to teach the servicemen a few words of Japanese. The lady's name was Hiroko Kubota and she ended each lesson by saying "and remember, a ritu ranguage goes a (w)rong way". The Japanese have no equivalent sound for "l" and "r", the Japanese equivalent being about halfway in between and they are well-known for getting them mixed up.

So I was staring at my lunch and think what a nice quantity lettuce gives me. And the thought popped into my head that " a ritu rettis goes a (w)rong way" too.

From that you can gather that I haven't got too much to say today. Slept late (7.15) trying to recover from the previous day's tiredness and only skipped this morning, doing Workout 2 when I got home. I was surprisingly energetic on the workout, doing the maximum on all except the leg-ups.

I've continued the exercises on the PVP (Peak Vision Project) and am losing the ability to focus well through my glasses.

Day 25 : A Smoother Smoothie

I figured I was going to have to sleep late to recover because I didn't get to bed until after midnight and set the alarm for 7.20 thinking I would just have to leave the workout for the evening. But I woke up at 6.10 and after a major debate about whether I needed the extra hour, got up and did everything in Workout 1 (hate the plank, but did it) plus a load of laundry and cooked a batch of rice all before breakfast.

I felt some cooked vegetables had been chilling in the fridge a bit too long so I combined my morning yogurt and the vegetables in the (old) blender, added a bit of water and some pepper and boiled it up to what amounted to a cream of vegetable soup. OK, to be strictly accurate a yogurt of vegetable soup. It seemed to make the quantity much more. Needed a bit more spice but not too bad.

Shame I didn't know about the dispensation while I was drooling in the ice cream shop on Saturday. Ah well. My real craving is for an aloo gobi at my favorite Indian restaurant but that would blow the 200-400 calorie limit. Let me think.

My day gradually ran out of steam. Patrick is right about needing the sleep. I lasted really well until mid-afternoon but felt really tired by 6pm. I tried my new blender out when I got home and got a much smoother result.

So, back to eyesight.

Leo makes the interesting point that opticians are not in business to make your eyes better, they are in business to enable you to see (and sell glasses and contact lenses). By wearing glasses, you train the brain to believe that eyesight can't/won't improve and get used to the physical requirements of wearing lenses.

My eyes are not good. Quite badly short-sighted, the eyes quite unbalanced, with astigmatism and recently some need in the prescription for reading assistance. Leo felt that (1) I was on a course to make my eyes worse and worse and (2) they CAN become better. So I set a target to eliminate the astigmatism by the end of September; "balance" the short-sightedness by the end of October and stop wearing glasses by the end of the year. Maybe it can be done quicker. Certainly, as a result of the exercises over the weekend, I'm not seeing too clearly now.

All I need to do is exercise my eye muscles, provide the eyes with enough energy and BELIEVE. Sounds like PCP, right?

Day 24 : Not Enough Time

Up early, exercises done, off to the workshop (this is me, Leo and Wile), didn't have time to make lunch so found an organic food shop selling cooked items and guessed the weights (interesting how they don't label the weights on small packages, only on bigger quantities) - I won't have been too far out, I'm getting to know what the quantities look like. Dashed back for a family birthday dinner (all the more trying because I didn't eat) and finally went down to the all-night store to change the food mixer that was broken when I opened the box - got a replacement nearly double the price and a new blender since my hand-held one is really not coping with the dinner smoothie. And that's it - the day gone and already not enough sleep.

More in control tomorrow ........ maybe.

Day 23 : Similarities

I've had a very interesting day. I managed to get the exercises done and out of the door so that I was only a couple of minutes late for the workshop and Leo himself, had not yet started talking.

Did you know that only 10% of your focusing is done by the lens? 80% is actually done by the cornea which is why laser surgery "works". And he had some super statistics on why Asian kids have very high incidences of poor eyesight.

Leo's teaching had remarkable echoes of PCP.

1. You have to believe that it is going to work
2. You have to put in some exercise to restore the functionality of the muscles
3. You need to ensure that you have enough energy (in the eyes, in this case)
4. Imagery and memory are important aspects of the visual system.

And he works with the following assumptions

1. Vision is 90% in the mind
2. Clear vision is the natural state
3. Sight is a learned ability
4. The visual field is a mirror of our energy level
5. Vision emanates from within the self, goes out and then returns within
6. Eyesight reflects belief imprints about what can be seen and what must not be seen
7. Muscles will regenerate in exercised.

It will not happen immediately but if I work at the exercises, the underlying assumption is that I will be able to restore my vision. I am both astigmatic and short-sighted. I always thought that the astigmatism was the real problem but if fact, it seems to be relatively mild and something that may be relatively simple to eliminate in a couple of weeks or so. After that, more work to bring my short-sightedness back to normal.

In fact, the only grumble about the whole day came from my stomach. I became very hungry towards the end of the afternoon and that was compounded by walking past my local ice cream shop without weakening, despite my favorites sorbets, cassis and passion fruit, being at the front of the display. Such self-control!!

More tomorrow.

Day 22 : Time

Both Nate and Emiko & Adrian have posted recent blogs on the effects of PCP in terms of changing the eating and exercise habits (or lack of them) that we know are bad for us but that we do nothing about (until now).

The knock-on effect of last night's karaoke has got me reflecting on another aspect that hopefully will be corrected - time "management". Karaoke is fun and so inevitably, I had to do a song or two more before leaving the group I was with, still singing their socks off. I told myself that as long as I got out of there by between 8.30 and 9, I would be home by 10, have time to eat dinner and be in bed by 10.30 to get 8 hours sleep before the morning exercises.

Hah! I think I left at 9.25, got home at 10.45 and got to bed at 11.30 (and didn't manage to go straight to sleep, either). I moved the alarm back to 7.30am thinking I would leap out of bed and get everything done. No chance, of course - I still have most of Workout 2 to complete.

So that set me thinking - what is the problem?

I don't know about the others, but I've created this bad habit of trying to do "too much". I stay longer than I need in the office (maybe because I feel I need to get "my day's work" finished when there really is no definition of what that means) and then fill my evenings with other fun/interesting/necessary things and get home too late, (used to) eat out a lot because that "saves time" and consistently didn't get enough sleep (past tense because I am trying to follow the PCP directive). Even then, I use being "busy" as an excuse for not doing some necessary things in a timely manner - the laundry and other housework, for example. And I don't even watch much TV.

So in the same way that we eat to much, we do too much. Or like eating too much of the "wrong" things, we do to much of what is really unimportant or unnecessary and not enough of what would be good for us!

"Keeping busy" is the driven search to find and do something "fulfilling" and that search probably is looking in the wrong place. It just fills time rather than finding balance. Maybe PCP will, by the end of the 90 days, have rearranged at least some of my priorities so that I can get a new perspective on things.

In terms of a "three week" report, a few random comments :

1. the lunch box I bought three weeks ago is now too big - my lunchtime rice ration is now half of what it was.

2. on the question of saving time, I've been eating quite a lot raw - salad vegetables and I've been mixing my whole egg uncooked into my morning rice (carbs) - a very Japanese thing to do that most foreigners cringe at but which is actually quite good to eat, particularly with brown rice that has a lot of flavour

3. my weight this morning was just a touch above 86kg, 6kg down in three weeks.

4. the massage did have an effect. My legs were quite sore afterwards and it wasn't until yesterday evening that I realised I'm able to walk downstairs without the stiffness that I've had for most of the last three weeks

5. Patrick asked for comments on physical changes - I'm smelling different (unfortunately for the worse) and my breath is smelling. Undoubtedly down to the change of diet. I hope my body gets adjusted to it quickly.

6. my new diet has me eating fewer carbs. meat and vegetables but more fruit; and my frugal outlook has me cringing at the thought of throwing away THREE egg yolks A DAY. I always liked the yolks better - but I know that four a day would definitely not be good for my heart.

7. I'm going to run out of Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies signs to hold up in my photos soon. I've been looking through the Road Runner cartoons but I've only identified three more at the moment. Yikes!

Oh, I nearly forgot, on the subject of time management, I've wrecked this weekend already (no time for the household chores) but maybe in a good cause. I mentioned NLP before (sorry Adrian, I haven't written more yet but it is on the list), and there is this amazing guy called Leo Angart who corrected his own eyesight after wearing glasses for 26 years. He came across the use of hypnosis that had been used to correct vision, researched the background and other techniques, and devised a methodology for correcting "incurable" eye conditions - like mine. Leo is in Tokyo this weekend giving a two day workshop and I am signed up. I'll feel pretty silly, although very pleased, if I can improve my eyesight after wearing glasses for 52 years. For more information, read http://www.vision-training.com/.