Day 66 - 70 - A couple slips of the lip

Like blo and bill, the week brought its challenges, most of which had to do with the egregious amount of travel involved.  On last week's trip to Germany, I was generally on point with the diet thanks to my wonderful asst, who was kind enough to bring me two hard boiled eggs to work everyday.  As previously noted, the German business dinners had their challenges, but stayed on course - that is until I landed in tokyo at 8 am on Friday.  

After cooking a quick breakfast for myself, I went to the office for what I thought was a token appearance to briefly catch up on some admin, attend a brief transition meeting and then discretely exit stage left for the gym and a late lunch.  However I was blindsided in the professional sense (not quite LT/Theismann but it was definitely a snot shot inducing blow) and spent much of the afternoon trying to understand what happened to our left tackle and reassess the game plan.  Lost my opportunity to eat lunch in the chaos that followed, but managed to wolf down the afternoon snack and get to the gym at 530 for a full, and very therapeutic workout session.  Grabbed a quick, but good PCP dinner and then went to meet my boss and a colleague for a little post script discussion of the days events.  Started with mineral water, ended with a glass of pinot noir.  It felt like a good time to have one and in retrospect, it was - actually, I am not going to lie - I loved it.

Family was out of the country, so I actually got to sleep in on saturday and make up for the lack of sleep over the previous 36 hours, which felt amazing.  Great workout saturday and quick trip to the market for dinner.   Flash fried some shrimp with paprika and taiwan chili pepper after soaking them in lime juice for an hour - it was so good that I cooked some extras for my flight sunday morning to taiwan, as I am getting tired of NOT eating on airplanes.  Made it to taiwan sunday afternoon, and my in-laws were gracious enough to cook a completely compliant PCP meal for dinner - boiled pork ribs (had only one), steamed white fish (they only know the name in taiwanese, so I have no idea what it was), yams, sweet potatos, asparagus, green beans and rice.  I was duly impressed and very grateful for the gesture because salt and oil are two staples of most dishes there.

Got a great workout in yesterday (though I still suck at sit-ups) and my wife and I went to meet some old friends at Nonzero in taipei, which is an excellent organic food place if you are ever in the area - the bell peppers they have there must have alpha veggie complex because they dwarf the offerings here in tokyo and taste much better.  Went with the grilled market fish of the day and the grilled seasonal veggie platter - it was excellent.  Avoided both the beer and vino, and was proud of the accomplishment, even though it really isn't one.

However, after dinner, I had to have something taiwanese.  Given that this trip was most likely the last trip for more than a year, that I had avoided all the things I love - like breakfast buns, sweet soy milk, dumplings (fried and steamed), fried noodles, other dishes like zazhiang mien (spicy pork noodles), mapo tofu, on an on and on - I was dead set on indulging in a taste that I usually get only in Taiwan, and made the executive decision to have some xiao xian cao 燒仙草, which is basically a chinese plant that liquifies into a black soup at high temperatures - it is usually mixed with some mochi balls, softened peanuts and taro balls.  As the soup cools, it coagulates into a jelly - it is great.

This is one of the best places in Taipei to get this on Zhongxiao lane 216

The options - i usually go mochi and taro

finished product ready to eat at the hotel, my photo does it no justice so I also included a link to some better ones.

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=燒仙草&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=60vrTPqsOYSsugPu7OXzAQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=6&ved=0CE4QsAQwBQ&biw=1281&bih=611

It was awesome - no regrets.

On other PCP related notes - 

- I am having trouble getting all the daily snacks down due to aforementioned travel.  should be better now that i am home for a week or so

- I still have trouble with plank (my best is three sets of 60 secs), bicycle (my hip flexors give at 45 secs), and situps (hip flexors...)  I guess it means my abs really sucked prior to starting this...

- I am getting better at pull ups - did 8, 6, 6, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2 yesterday and banged out the shortfalls on the incline.  

- said I was going to hot the rope 2 times a day last week and have only done that once thus far. will get better. 

- still can't shake the visceral fat, and actually think I have gained some, so really need focus over the last three weeks.  

- have A LOT to get done given the movers arrive on Dec 14 and I have a business trip from Dec 6-10 - will be an eventful 20 days.