Here Lies Patrick

Sorry I haven’t been keeping this site so fresh, despite just launching last month! The truth is the Peak Condition Project is a daily blog and by the time I get done with that I’m all blogged out.

I thought I would just keep a brief daily entry over at the PCP but it’s turned into full-on entries, because I find the whole thing just so damn interesting.

So that’s where I’ll be clacking away on my keyboard for the next few weeks. Join my progress and leave a motivational comment if you have the time. Remember, I’m drinking egg-white smoothies every night for three months, so YOU don’t have to! : )

Today WordPress was a real beast, I had all kinds of trouble with formatting and photos, so I’ve decided to put the whole Peak Condition Project on a Blogger page. That makes more sense anyway because I’ll be updating that daily and Here Lies Patrick is more for longer posts. So, if you want to keep up with the project go to

http://peakconditionproject.blogspot.com/

or just click here.

Well, here we are, March 22nd, 6:30 a.m. I was in Kyoto until last night so the start of the project was slightly delayed from the first day of spring (March 20th).

Last week I met with my diet and exercise adviser for the project, Chen Zhongtao, who figured out the menu for the first week.

The Peak Condition Project is all about math. Weight loss occurs when you expend more energy in the day than you consumed. The body, when it’s dietary needs aren’t met externally, will turn to its stored fat reserves. So it’s a numbers game.

Chen took my weight (65 kilos) and my usual daily activity levels into account, and came up with this diet schedule for my first week.

Breakfast
250 grams of carbs (bread, rice, pasta, potato). 250 grams is about a bowl of rice.
400 grams of vegetables. That’s about 3 whole vegetables.
250 grams of fruit. A large size apple is 250 grams.
150 grams fish or shrimp.

Lunch is the same as breakfast.

Dinner
For dinner, the following ingredients are mixed in a blender to make a protein smoothie.
3 boiled eggs, whites only.
1 apple
1 banana
150 ml of low fat milk

…and that’s it. Every night, for 3 months, a boiled egg smoothie. Dinner is definitely going to be the toughest, especially with everyone else enjoying a normal dinner.

But what I’ll try to remember is that motivation is also a numbers game. If you just focus on “I can’t have pizza, I can’t drink a beer, I can’t have dessert,” you’re definitely going to lose motivation. You need to look at the whole equation. “Yes, I can’t have dessert, but I also gain a better physique and get closer to Bruce!

**PS from here on I’ll be logging my experience with the Peak Condition Project on this separate blog.

Starting up this blog, I happened upon this Onion audio news clip, entitled “New Blog Gives Much Needed Look Into World of Geoff” which pretty much sums up all my misgivings about the world of blogs and the sheer frivolity of spending hours a week writing about yourself.

And yet here I am, starting up my own web-blog. I’ve been blogging on the Yoga Garden Blogger Page for almost 3 years now, and I don’t know the numbers but I think it has a decent following. But because it’s the blog for my business, I have to have a certain amount of restraint, I always need to remember that what I say there is a direct reflection of the studio.

As time has gone on I’ve branched out from yoga posts to a general theme about trying to live well in the modern world. And I’ve been feeling more and more like the Yoga Garden page isn’t the best fit for all that stuff. This became especially clear when I wanted to weigh in on the 2008 Presidential Race. I wrote a long, thorough post about it but the whole time I was thinking “Where else can I post this?” But there was no other place. Well, there is now.

So, Here Lies Patrick will be about the same stuff What’s Sprouting is about, but a little edgier, a little more random, and a little less composed. What I’ve found in my time doing online content is that people like edgy, random, and off the cuff. It’s more authentic in some way. I like that stuff too. When I first started narrating videos I was careful to cut out every single “um” and slightly off-beat word, but if you’ve watched any of the recent ones you can hear that a lot of that stuff is left in there. That’s on purpose, because it makes the videos feel friendlier and more approachable.

I’m also going to post all my projects here, the videos, Zen is Stupid, a new podcast, some of my music, whatever comes up. So if you’re interested in what I’m producing you don’t have to scavenge 4 or 5 sites, you can just come here. Lucky you!

And finally, I’ve conceived of this site as a place to do some personal projects in a public manner. Keeping everything transparent makes it easier to stick to things. So the first one will be the Peak Condition Project which will start the first day of spring. Go to the Peak Conditon page to find out more.

So welcome everyone, and thanks for reading, listening, and watching!