"Great Expectations"

Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.-- [Dickens, Great Expectations]

It is with palpable anticipation and a touch of anxiety that I turn a new leaf today. I have managed to get through a grueling three-month training process in the past for a triathlon so I should possess the will power to have a successful Project as well. Be that as it may, I am three years older, my metabolism slower, my work schedule busier, and I have commitments I must make to my girlfriend as well. Three years ago I had a cleaner slate and more free time.

I also cannot say that I eased into Day One, either. My last two dinners were spent eating unhealthy, salty, fatty food. I say good-bye to cordon bleu and churrasco and hello to chicken breast, veggies, and egg whites, I suspect. I know that during Week One, we can eat what we want, just half portions of what we normally eat, but I don't intend to eat out this coming week. Actually, final two dinners out aside, I usually try to eat at home and when I do cook at home, I do eat healthy foods. I use no sugar, very little salt. Perhaps a bit too much olive oil, and I don't cut out carbs at night. Cooking is one of my passions. It will be tricky and exciting to try new healthy recipes at home. The biggest challenge I think will be lunch. Lunch-times are busy at work, so it's usually a bento or bowl of noodles. I guess pre-prep the night before will be essential.

I slept in this morning before having a half-sized organic bowl of muesli. Though it is all organic, they use organic sugar in there so I am going to have to find a different source for grains, assuming we are still able to eat them. I then went outside my building about 1pm to do the jump rope. I knew this would be the toughest part. I used to do some kick-boxing on a once-a-week basis and that involved some jump rope warm up. I am an incompetent jump-roper. I jump way too high and have poor rhythm, making the effort involved much greater than it needs to be. Sure enough, that was the case again today. The first two-and-a-half sets were easy enough, but the combination of the cold air I was breathing in, my poor conditioning and my jumping too high made the second half quite tough. With my heart rate elevated, I did the rest of the exercises back inside and did the high end of the requirement for each. 15 reps for the squats and sit-ups per set and eight push ups per set. The sit-ups were tougher than I expected even though I normally do that much or more when I go to the gym once a week. Again, I believe this was due to the elevated heart-rate, ie., the whole thing together with only short breaks makes it an overall cardio circuit that is fairly tough by the end. A question for Patrick on the sit-ups if he happens to read this. Are we doing crunches or full sit-ups where we come right up to our knees? I did proper crunches and felt plenty of burn. Finished it all and came back to weigh myself and take my Day One photo.

I need a new digital scale. Mine is all over the place. I weighed myself three times and had three different read-outs that were up to 600grams apart. I've known this scale to have issues in the past. Is a digital scale the way to go or is an analog one more accurate? Anyone have suggestions? Anyway, for now I am going to split the difference and assume myself to be 71.2kg with shorts on, or thereabouts. Call it 71kg. This is the heaviest I've been, I think. Four or five years ago, I got up to 70kg, but I started to lose weight, then did the triathlon training from a base of 66kg three years ago. I dropped down to 60kg, which was way, too skinny, and now I have slowly gone back up from a combination of hitting the gym and lifting weights and adding a fair dose of fat as well. Although the idea was to add muscle so I would burn more fat as I went, without daily cardio I was adding as much fat as I was muscle. Three years ago, my method may have produced some results, but my metabolism is clearly slowing and I am going to have to work harder to get that fit body I want.

All in all, it's an exciting time and I can't wait for the 90 days to end and to hopefully see good results. I have great expectations.