Sleep With Me.

Has anyone seen the movie sleep with me?

It starred Craig Sheffer, Eric Stoltz and, I think, Meg Tilly.  Hang on, I'm going to check on IMDB....

....Yeah it was Meg Tilly.  Anyway, the premise of the film is Eric Stoltz and Meg Tilly are married and Eric's best mate, Craig, falls in love with Meg.  I'm not sure if they go anywhere with it in the end but Craig basically loses his mind a bit over the whole thing and it all becomes a bit uncomfortable.  They patch it all up in the end but it's the final scene which interests me today.  The movie ends with Craig Sheffer standing in the street in LA at night as a big house party goes on around him.  An LAPD helicopter is in the sky and its search light illuminates him briefly which has the most bizzare effect - he seems to waken from a dream like state and goes running off down the road.  Roll credits.  The effect is to make you think he's been acting under some weird spell for the last two hours.

We'll that's kind of how I felt last night.  I realised that it was me who decided to do this program - nobody's forced me into it - and I realised that only I can make it work.  I've been living in a dream state for the last three weeks.  I haven't been exercising, I haven't been sticking to the diet and I've been drinking FAR too much.  Last night I came to the decision that I just need to simplify and get on with it.

Incidentally, there's an excellent cameo in this movie by Quentin Tarantino.  He plays a guy at the party and has this long monologue/rant about how Top Gun is one of the most subversive movies ever made and how it's all about Maverick's struggle with his own latent homosexuality.  We'll worth checking out.

A real kick in the teeth.

So I've been missing in action since just before my birthday - around the 8th of February.  I did try to keep things going on holiday, managed a couple of skips, but basically went completely tonto.  I've been eating whatever I want (what I want is invariably pretty healthy, apart from cashew nuts) and drinking far too much too.

Consequently I've been avoiding the exercise like the plague and not talking about it here or adding photos.

The email the other day was the spur to start talking though so I asked myself "what would Kev tell me to do?"

"Post a photo."

So I've done this and I'm shocked at the results.  Putting my day 39 photo next to my day 22 photo was a good move.  On day 22 things were starting to look pretty good.  By day 39 I've started to slip back towards where I was on day 1.

Not happy.  Getting serious as of today.  I'm going to step back a couple of weeks in the workouts (I'm pretty sure today's workout would fucking floor me) and get back into the fucking groove pronto.

Apologies for this massive ballsup, I'm back on it as of fucking now.

A fucking ass kicking.

Pretty much describes the last few days for me.  Went up north with the best of intentions (my plan was to stick to the diet during the day, exercise completely and break gently in the evenings.) In reality I managed two skips over the last week and have pretty much completely abandoned the diet.

Still, I'm back at work today and have prepared my food completely for today so in theory I'm back on it.  I'll just need to have a mental readjustment and crack back on with things.

On a separate note, Swee has expressed interest in doing Tough Mudder and Nicky has said "no fucking way."  Does anyone else have a preference?  Is anyone else still doing this?  What the fuck, nobody said anything about radio silence, get blogging ya dicks.

No photo today because all you'd see is a sad little slide backwards.

Day. Something.

Difficult workout on Tuesday - ate my lunch at noon as I was fading away then didn't have any fruit on me for the afternoon.  Meant that I had nothing in the tank at six when I did my workout.  That put me firmly in the fat burning zone but also meant I was a quivering wreck at the end of it all.  Couldn't complete my last set of leg raises and felt dizzy as shit for the next hour.

On top of the food yesterday but my triceps and shoulders were so sore that I didn't bother with the workout.  Poor form, I know, but I was shattered so fuck off, don't judge me.

Today my arms are fucking killing me but I'm gee'd up for today and looking forward to another solid workout tonight.  Think I'll skip today's specific workout and do yesterday's instead - pull-ups are more appealing right now than more triceps work...

Hope everyone else is getting on all right; did Nicky manage to pull it all together?  Are Kev, Joe and Mikey still alive?

Oooft

Monday's workout was a hum dinger.  I think that is mostly down to the lost weekend though - everything just felt like a massive effort.

I did, however, manage everything and man am I sore this morning.

I'm no longer counting skips though - I'm sick and tired of losing count (my rule is "lose count, start again") so I've switched to timed skips.  We're going to do this anyway before long so I'm just getting a head start.  Three sets of three minutes equates, I think, to more skips than we're supposed to be doing currently anyway so I'm definitely not cheating.  The ridiculousness of skipping in driving snow sunk in yesterday, thanks very much winter.  Who's idea was it to do this shit in February?

It's my birthday on Sunday and we're going en masse to Gorthleck (Auntie and Uncle's house near Invershnek) so there will be drinking and eating but I'm going to limit myself to evenings off - during the day it's going to be business as usual.

Went to bed at 9.30 last night because I was so fucking hungry I couldn't think of anything else to do (last night was the first night of egg whites and apple for dinner.)  Breakfast this morning was an absolute joy.

Haven't got any updated weights for you, but here's the latest photo.  I'm pretty happy with progress so far.

That's all, get back to work.

The Lost Weekend.

As you know from Nicky's blog an old friend was in town this weekend so we had a bit of time off from FIYL.

2pm on Saturday saw us in Hamiltons where several beers, slippery nipples, burgers and nachos were consumed.  I got off quite lightly, Nicky and Joe were hard at it from Thursday.

Saturday night was a bottle of wine and some sort of Yorkshire pudding contraption from M&S and Sunday night was another bottle of wine and a roast chicken.

Needless to say I'm feeling a little sluggish this Monday.  A week of strict diet and exercise will follow.

It was good to see Christophe though, he's in fine shape - he's a purveyor of pull-ups himself and is a dab hand at the human flag.  Gives us something to aspire to.

Fruit

Fruit for tomorrow sorted.

Just a thought...

We're due to finish this marvellous program again some time in April and I was thinking to myself "what can we do to mark the passing of the program in a meaningful and charitable way?"  Actually, I wasn't but you get the idea.

So how about this: http://toughmudder.co.uk/events/scotland-2013/

It's not until August so that's both a problem (quite far after the end of the program) and an opportunity (something to continue to train towards.)  We'd do it as a team, of course, and could get some witty banter printed on T-Shirts/do it in mankinis etc.

Anyway, like I said, just a thought; give it some.

Ballsed that right up...

Last night was hellish.

Did a full workout in the evening - fantastic.  I can manage 4 full pull-ups on the first set, 3 on the second set, 1 on the third set and sweet fuck all on the fourth set.  Always topping up with the inclines, of course.

That's not really the issue here though.  The issue is that my son was being a tiny terrorist and refused to go to sleep at bedtime.  I ended up going with him at 9.30 and just lay there, silently managing his escape attempts until about 11pm when he finally wore himself out.  Vivienne had planning and school work to take care of, hence my involvement.

Trouble is, now I don't have any snacks or lunch prepared.

So now I have to go home at fucking lunchtime and sort it all out from there.

Bastards.  Seriously, try doing this with a toddler - then you'll learn the meaning of the word pain.

A River Runs Through It

Last night, on my way home from work, I popped to the great Missouri river in Montana and did some fly fishing with Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer and the mighty mighty Tom Skerritt.  While I was there I developed a new style of casting, much departed from the traditional 10 to 2, and taught it to Brad for some movie he was doing.

Managed to catch myself a beautiful 16lb salmon which I filleted and had some of for dinner last night with asparagus, broccoli and corn.

Here's a photo.

The salmon was baked in foil for twenty minutes with pepper and dill and then had a further ten minutes with the foil open - to crisp up the skin.  Corn was boiled for 20 minutes and the asp and broc were steamed for 7 minutes between them.

Day bladabuva

I've no idea what day it is.  Day 16?  It must be.  Something like that.

Listen, I was rudely woken at 4am by a hyperactive one year old who wanted nothing more than to lie in my bed, kicking me in the ribs, whilst singing at the top of his voice and then loudly applauding the end of every song.  THAT is why I'm tired.

The most annoying thing about this - the most annoying thing - is that you can't even be annoyed with him for it.  It's fucking hilarious.  Even at the time it's funny (admittedly not for long) but the fact that I ended up, freezing cold, on the sofa is not even remotely amusing.  I'm reminded of the "get plenty of sleep" email...

Workout yesterday was tremendous.  I went to Burn Town on the arm work and liked what I found there.  Had a wee bit of mind-failure mid-way through the pressups (God, how I fucking hate you pressups) but a stern internal talking to sorted that right out.  Speaking of which, I've lost one of the pressup bars that Nicky bought me.  How do you lose one pressup bar?

Abs work is starting to ramp up a bit, which is good.  I'm now finding the last five or so reps of the last two sets to be a bit sore and that, as we all know, means it's working.  The abs burn is the best.  The way you feel, more certainly than you've ever felt anything, that you are about to shit all over yourself.  And the way the burn fades almost instantly as you relax the muscles.  Brilliant.

On another note - reading Nicky's blog this morning made me realise that I'm doing the first timers an injustice by spreading the seed of possibility in this blog.  I, like Nicky, don't want to come across as patronising but if you don't do this TO THE LETTER then you're just not going to get the results you want.  You will get results but you will always know that you could have done better.

I guess my feeling is that I'm not starting from the near-enough-18 stone which I was last time round, and therefore I feel I can tailor the program to my own needs a little (indeed Kev is pretty much advocating this, no?) but - and this is where it's bound to get patronising - you have to earn that right.  You have to go through this full-bore to be able to tailor it.

On that note, here is my day 16 photo:

I can't figure out how to link my flickr account to my blog but if you want to see the whole library of fatty-to-thinny, you can link here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/82239330@N06/

Good night, and good luck.  And good beard.

Morning Scott.

Another good weekend.  Varied the diet a little, with the judicious addition of wine, and still managed to keep the food where it should be.  There's something quite satisfying about having a couple of glasses of vino - not enough to get drunk, not even tipsy.  I know it's not allowed under strict FIYL rules but, second time around, I feel like I have the power to make changes to the program which I did not on the first pass.

At the end of the original program I went a little crazy.  I felt like I had just been released from prison and had to sample all that the world had to offer.  This time around I need to make it stick at the end of the 90 days and for this reason I think it's important to take ownership of the food and exercise, not just blindly crash on with what's prescribed.

So my plan is this: during the week I will diligently stick to the diet.  No booze, no treats.  Truthfully I actually enjoy this part of things - the fruit especially is fantastic.  At the weekends I will, if I feel like it, add the odd G&T, wine or beer but still stick, as much as possible, to the diet.  In this way I think I'll hopefully avoid alienating my wife from the process and also manage to make it into something sustainable for the long term.

Exercise wise, everything is tickety boo.  Managed to work out before breakfast on Saturday and Sunday thus maximising my fat burning potential.  Looking forward to another big week.

Sorry, no day 14 photo this morning, we were all a bit late up so I'll get it to you tomorrow.

Word.

Day 12

Great day today. Full workout plus extras. Extras being carried a full height fridge freezer up three flights of stairs on my own and a washing machine up one flight. Bearing in mind there were broken versions at the top of the stairs waiting to come down.

Food in the evening was different -y wife insists on making a big deal out of Burns night every year so I stuck to the veggie haggis and got to my mash before anyone put butter on it so all good. Only real departure was a gin and tonic and a couple of glasses of wine. Wrong, I know, but unavoidable really.

Up early this morning (day 13) to smash out the rope work before breakfast.

Swings and roundabouts indeed...

No workout yesterday, life got in the way I'm afraid.  That means of the four days we've done this week, I've only worked out on two of them.  Saying that, however, if I can nail Friday, Saturday and Sunday then I won't be doing too badly.

Feeling pretty good about it all, fantastic meal last night of salmon fillets baked in the oven with pepper and dill only, asparagus and broccoli steamed to perfection and a cheeky bagel for the carbs.

Shedding weight well, belly is tightening up nicely and I feel great.  Really looking forward to smashing a good workout tonight.

Happy days

Another full workout last night, hopefully this is a sign of things to come - that missing a workout will be the exception rather than the rule.  Legs are pretty smashed this morning, last night as well in fact - couldn't stand in the shower so had to have a bath instead, which I never do.

On a different note, here's a photo of my pull up station so far.

It's a work in progress - my intention is to fit a second bar above the existing which will extend out beyond the timber hangers so you can also have a wider grip if desired.  The grip at the moment is, at most, 60cm wide so you can only really do bat-wing pull ups on it (working the biceps, lats and triceps.)  By adding the extra width I'll also be able to hit the back and lats harder.

I've already tested it and it's fucking rock solid.  And the whole thing has cost only £12!  £9 for the 34mm steel tubing, of which there is still over a metre left and £3 for the coach bolts for the stud - the stud itself I stole from work.  Only took about an hour and a half to put together as well so, all in all, quite a good effort.

Edinburgh FIYLers should feel free to come and give it a test drive.

Glad to hear everyone else is struggling a wee bit with fitting FIYL into their lives, it's nice to know I'm not the only one - I guess the golden rule is don't let the diet go and don't let the skipping go.  Everything else can slide once in a while if required.

Would be nice to hear from the newbies at some point as well - Joey, Mikey, Topper, get some bloggage in pronto por favor.  How's it all going with you monkeys?

That's all just now, see y'all tomorrow.

Swings and roundabouts

GREAT day yesterday.  Came home at a reasonable hour, Vivienne was already there, smashed out a full workout - to failure on the triceps because sometimes three sets of eight reps just isn't enough.  Loved the jumps, loved the ovations and the rowing, tolerated the lunges and gobbled up the leg raises.

Full proper day of diet, beginning to notice some real differences in my body - Swee posited the theory recently that we'd notice changes fast as soon as we cut out the salt and I have to say at this stage I agree.  Tight as a drum in the mirror this morning.

Legs feel a bit stiff this morning, but in a great way.

Feeling so good about yesterday that I know there's no way I'm not going to make this work.  I suppose sometimes something will need to give but I'll just need to make sure that it's never the diet and it's never the jumprope.  And never the abs.  I'm going for real definition this time around.

Peas and love.

It's all coming apart at the seams.

In spite of my best efforts it's just not happening this time around.  Week one was okay, basically sticking to week twos diet but with the odd step back into week one.  Exercises were great.

There's one vital change from last time around though which is screwing everything up, namely Vivienne's back at work.

Last time round she was on maternity leave and looking after Harris.  Now she's back at work and the grandparents are looking after him two and half days a week each.  Last time round I would finish work and head to my gym to do my workout, safe in the knowledge that Viv was with Harris at home sorting out his dinner, getting him ready for bath time and all that.  The difference now is that Viv's not getting home until six pm some nights (being a probationary teacher is fucking hard work - after dinner she'll be in the office planning until 2am usually...)  It just doesn't seem fair to me to leave two sets of retirees' to look after a tired one year old at the end of a long day when he should be with his parents having dinner and getting ready for sleep.

So, needless to say, I arrived home yesterday at half four ready to work out.  Harris was dropped off before I even got my shoes off.  I then, basically, waited for an hour and a half before Viv got home to take over.  During that time I sorted Harris out with dinner and we had a little play.  When Viv got home she then had a bit more planning for the next day to do so I bathed Harris and got him ready for bed (Vivienne still gets him to sleep, I won't go into the technicalities) thinking that I could now, finally, do my workout.  Of course by this time it's 8pm, I'm exhausted and haven't had anything to eat since my fruit snack at 4.30.  So instead of my workout I just cracked on with cleaning the kitchen, tidying the living room and making dinner.

So, you see my problem: there just aren't enough hours in the day.  I'd love to say that I will just be selfish and make the time to do the workouts but the truth is, it's not fair on those around me to do that.

I get up at 6.30 in the morning and get ready for work.  I have my FIYL sanctioned breakfast and Harris and I walk out the door at 7 to drive to Marchmont to drop him off.  I get to work, if I'm lucky, at 7.45 and then I have to just get on with my job.  I leave any time between 4 and 5.30 and I head for home where I have another full time job.  I'm lucky if I'm in bed before 11 and then I can expect to have to get up to warm milk for Harris a couple of times - usually at 1am and 3am.  Before you know it it's time to get up again.

I know that FIYL means that one is to fit into their own life but sometimes FIYL just doesn't fit into your life. This is particularly true for those with children and other such responsibilities (watch out for this Mikey) and sometimes it feels like a truly insurmountable problem.  I really want to do this - I know how good it is going to feel in a months time - but I am having a really hard time figuring out how to do it.

Suggestions will be welcomed with open arms.  If not open eyes.

Day 8 photo:

What do you want?  I'm sleeping.

Week one: done.

I liked jumping straight to week two diets.  I feel a sense of achievement in that I'm already one week ahead of where I was last time around.  I know the main focus of the half portions is to get us thinking about the volumes that we're eating but to be honest I was already there.

Week one exercises were a breeze.  Nice to get back on the ropes and nice (if a little punishing) to get back on the pressups.  The abs work was pretty easy too - so easy in fact that I threw in a couple of 8MA just to get the burn.  Looking forward to ramping things up a bit this week.

Good stuff to Nicky and Swee on the blogs, the rest of you need to start getting into bloggage as well, it's what makes this whole thing bearable.

Let's get some!

Food delirium sets in.

Weirdest thing: Harris and I were walking home on Saturday afternoon in the snow.  On Ferry Road we happened upon a big old pile of sick.  My second thought was "that's disgusting."  My first thought was "man, I could take on a pizza tonight."

I know full well that before long this will all be second nature again but at the moment I'm just hankering after all the food I can't have.  Bottle of wine, cashew nuts, peanut butter fingers...

All good though, because I'm already noticing the no-salt benefits - I'm showing muscle definition already in the stomach area and we're only one week down.

Snow joke

Skipping in the snow isn't on my bucket list but it appears I'm going to get to experience it anyway. Definitely not excited about this one, just going to power through. I'll let you know how it goes. If I make it.

Oh the pain, the pain.

My neck and shoulders are agony.  I think it may have been the pressups (fuck you pressups, you're a crazy bitch pressups.)

I've also got a shitty cold; the second illness I've had this year meaning of the 17 days we've done so far in 2013 I've been ill for about 10 of them.

Trying not to let this affect my FIYL but there's only so much you can do when you've got snot streaming out of your face.  At least it's early days and I'm not going to fall behind because of this.  The jump-rope is still somewhat less than challenging at present and I can still perform all reps all sets on everything else.  I know fine well that things are going to get harder before much longer so I'm happy that I'm getting my bout of illness out of the way early doors.  All the healthy eating and exercise is going to go a long way towards making me generally healthier as well.

Ropes

I fucking love my ropes.  It's been far too long since we spent some quality time together and last night was magical.  Let's never fight okay?

Lunch

Two wraps with grilled chicken, sweet corn, lettuce and peppers. Fucking delicious.

Day 2 - I'm back on it.

Apologies for yesterdays blog.  I don't know what came over me.  Needless to say, the mere writing of the words was enough of a spur to get me motivated and up for this again.

So.  Photos.

Front view:

Side view:

Back view:

Starting weight is 15st 10lbs.  Which is not actually that bad, based on my final weight from last time which was 15st 4lbs.  Obviously some of that visceral has filled back in (based on the photos) but I haven't slid that far back, especially considering Christmas intervened...

And breakfast:

Don't worry, the veg was there - I just ate it in the car on the way to work.  Chopped raw peppers.

Honesty is the best policy.

And in that spirit, I've done fuck all.

I haven't stuck to the diet, I haven't done any skipping, I haven't even stopped drinking!

In my defence, on Sunday night I was expecting the slack-ass half portion week (where everyone just eats whatever anyway - sorry Kev) and I haven't quite managed to buck my ideas up yet vis-a-vis getting back on it.

So I've no day one photos, no weigh in, no nice pictures of healthy breakfasts or any of that other shit but I will, I sincerely promise, be on it by Monday next week.

I, Sam O'Regan, hereby swear, in front of all my FIYL witnesses, that I will GET ON IT before 21 January 2013.

Sorry, I will make up for it.

Day 1 part 2.

Christ, here we go again.

I'm fairly sure I said at the end of my last FIYL round that 90 days is not that long.  We'll it looks pretty long when you're staring down the barrel of it from the beginning again.  Saying that, breakfast this morning was two boiled EGGS for the first time in ages and I bloody loved it.  Truthfully I am so looking forward to the food that I'm glad we're dispensing with the half portions bullshit and firing straight in with diet week two.

I'm really looking forward to the jump rope as well.  It's been several months and I'm missing my ropes a great deal.  I'm going to try to wear them out this time round.

Excited about the prospect of a bit of backup on this one too, last time was a bit lonely during the dark times so to have such a winning team will be very refreshing.

Let's get some!