Some of you may remember that I did the Master Cleanse aka Lemonade Diet 2 years ago. Well, I’m doing it again and am currently on day 6. I would actually be on day 7 today if I hadn’t eaten half a pizza on day 1. So I had to start over. Anyways, it’s a lot easier this time around and I am planning to go 14 days. Unless I break down and decide to go to Brozer’s to get a burger! I’ve heard they are the best hamburgers in Tokyo. The girl sitting beside me at work keeps telling me how pale I look so if it gets any worse I may have to stop before 14 days. But that means I’ll be able to eat that burger sooner!! Yay! In November, I will do it again and target 21 days which is the ideal length for the cleanse, so they say.

You may also have noticed that I’ve not updated this blog for some time. I’ve realized that I have too many things I want to do but never seem to complete any of them. Then I read somewhere, I think on Lifehack.org, that the most effective way to get something done is to do nothing else but that one thing. This is common sense, but I’ve always been a multitasker so I thought I would try focusing all my energy into one thing at a time. The unfortunate consequence is that I haven’t been spending time wandering the streets looking for blog fodder, hence the lack of updates. Hopefully, this will change soon.

I am so out of shape. Been really busy dealing with life things that going to the gym and eating healthy took a back seat for the last 2 months. Adding the new car (and a bunch of other new gadgets) was not helpful either. But a couple of things transpired to help me satisfy my desire to get behind the wheel and working out. First, the gym which I joined recently closed down. This forced/freed me to look for an alternative. Next, a friend from work happened to tell me about the deal our company has with Central Sports where we can get tickets which we can use at a bunch of different fitness clubs including Central, Gold’s Gym and Wow’d. In case you haven’t heard about Wow’d, it’s that fitness club in Ginza under the expressway just north of Printemp. And on any given evening it’s full of the hottest Marunouchi office ladies doing their pilates and hot yoga. Seriously, I visited this gym once and was literally drooling all over myself.

Anyway, back to the story. So the other day I went to the Uniqlo on Kanpachi. I’m not interested in buying anything at Uniqlo but I wanted to see this shop because it just opened up and is the largest one in Japan. It also has a big parking lot for 224 cars. Well, I got there at closing time so I didn’t get in. But I noticed that there was a new Central Wellness and a Spa in the same building. I took a tour of the gym which was rather nice and has a huge pool, sauna, baths etc. The machine gym had a ton of aerobic machines but slightly lacking in the free weight area. The majority of patrons were senior citizens so obviously they didn’t need 60kg dumbbells.

My tickets arrived in the mail and tonight I took a leisurely drive there. Even with the tickets I still have to pay a ¥1000 fee but if I don’t go more than 12 times in a month it’s still cheaper than a regular membership. This gym is very nice and not smelly like Tipness. I ran on the machine a bit and worked out with weights as usual. A trainer at the gym asked me if I wanted to take a Spinning class. I’ve never done spinning before. It’s like riding a bike, right? Sounds easy enough. I joined the class of about 10 people including myself. All the others were old people. Well, I’m not that young myself but I don’t have gray hair or a wrinkly butt. That’s what I mean when I say old.

These older people must have turned the resistance on their bikes all the way down because they were pedaling like mad through the entire class. One elderly lady was spinning like there was no tomorrow. I thought for sure she was going to shoot right into the mirror. As for me, well, I didn’t bring any water bottle which was a big mistake because after 20 minutes I was almost dying of dehydration. I think I lost 2 kgs of water weight in that hour. About half way through I really felt like I should stop and get a drink from the fountain but I didn’t want to look like a wimp. Pride forced me to endure and near the end I almost collapsed. But thank god I didn’t. Next week, I will take the class again and this time I will be prepared. Those old guys better watch out!

The Japanese word for “body fat” is shibō 脂肪 which ironically has the same pronunciation as 死亡 “death.” The Japanese must know something. Check out this display at a local pharmacy. That big blob of rubber is equal in mass and weight to 1kg of body fat. Now figure out how many kilograms of fat you carry around by multiplying your total body weight by percentage body fat. Then imagine that you’re carry around one of those blobs of rubber for every kilogram of body fat. That’s enough to scare anyone into buying truckloads of those overpriced diet supplements. I’ve been down that road already and know better than to waste anymore money on fad diets.

However, in my continuing stuggle to get fit and ripped I’ve joined yet another gym. Yes I did join one just a few months ago but the repetition of that gym’s system turned out to be dreadfully boring and I’ve since quit. Also, even though it was very close to home their schedule didn’t fit mine. I’ve also quit Gold’s Gym, which is a good gym, but a bit too crowded and there were always morons just sitting on the machines reading the newspaper and not exercising (Don’t you hate that?). The new gym I’ve joined (which will remain nameless) is an Elite Fitness Club and has a ¥100,000 joining fee to keep out undesirables and newspaper reading morons. If you think that’s expensive, check out this fitness club which has a ¥1,050,000 joining fee for premium members. These are kind of like “country clubs,” I guess. At my new gym, the fee was waived because my buddy introduced me. Yey! Thanks Dude! It’s a rather small club and more expensive than a regular gym. The locker room is like a hotel and fully supplied with all the amenities, towels, razors, toothbrushes, skin and hair products etc. They also have many personal trainers on hand to design a program for you and do a one-to-one session with you if you want. You have to pay a fee each time, of course. I’ve never seen the point of paying for a personal trainer but since joining this gym, I’ve had 2 sessions and can say that it was money well spent. Having a personal training or at least someone to work out regularly with makes you more accountable and helps to motivate you to do the exercises better and harder. I’ve gone back to just doing some basic body correction exercises which looked very simple but I felt completely exhausted after the instructor was finished with me. I’ll report back in a few months on my progress…or lack of….

Tomorrow is Valentine’s day and as everyone in Japan knows, it’s the time when people spend billions and billions of yen on chocolate and chocolate-like products overly wrapped in paper and ribbons made from Canadian trees. Throngs of women crowd into the confectionary shops all over Japan to get their “giri” (obligation) and “honmei” (true love) choco for the male population. Shari has a post about V-day in Japan and I’m sure Ricky will be posting about what he got this year from his students like he does every year. English teachers in Japan get lots of chocolate. I was going to go out and take some photos of this madness but unfortunately I’m too busy tonight. Instead I will ruin your choco experience by introducing a wonderful book that I’m reading.

Get the Sugar Out is a diet book that focuses on how sugar is bad for you. It’s been around for a while now (published 1996) but I’m just reading it for the first time. Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that eating donuts and chocolate bars is gonna make you fat. But this book goes into detail about all the different health problems attributed to too much sugar in your diet and describes how there’s tons of sugar hidden in all our food as well as in food marketed as all-natural or low-fat. The book is divided into 501 bite-size tips on how to reduce the amount of sugar we consume and offers suggestions for dealing with sugar cravings. For example, everytime you look at a food label keep in mind that a teaspoon of table sugar is about 4 grams. Then calculate how many tsps of sugar are in one serving of whatever you’re thinking of consuming and imagine that number of tsps of sugar being shoveling into your mouth. As an example, a can of coke has about 40grams = 10 tsps of sugar. Do you know anyone who puts 10 tsps of sugar in a cup of coffee?

The book suggests eliminating sugar completely from your diet for 2 weeks to see how your body reacts and determine whether you are a sugar addict. This will be very difficult for me to do. Japan is a wonderland for anyone with a sweet tooth. Just visit the basement of any department store or “depachika”. It’s like Willy Wonka down there!! Rows and rows of confectionary shops selling pastries, cake, chocolate, cookies, cream puff, anything you can imagine all in one place, and pretty girls selling them too. In Tokyo, there’s a convenience store every 50 metres so you can easily get a Hagendaas fix anytime of day. Glico offers a service called Office Glico where a delivery person will bring a big plastic box full of pocky and other junk to the office for your late afternoon sugar fix. People bring omiyage to the office all the time and you have to eat whatever they give you out of politeness.

Since I’ve come to this country I’ve become incredibly addicted to sweets and crave all kinds of things like pudding, ice cream, cookies, you name it. It’s a miracle that I haven’t become a type 2 diabetic. I hardly indulged this much when I was younger and living in Canada. Could it be that Japanese food is saltier so I crave sugar after a meal? At any rate, Valentine’s day is good a time as any to start on my no sugar diet.

If you’re seriously thinking about your health this book may interest you. On the other hand if you’re interested in the getting some really nice cake, I suggest you visit the basement of Mitsukoshi in Ginza for a great selection of both imported and domestic confectionary. Isetan in Shinjuku is my number 2 recommended place. Whenever friends visit Tokyo these places are always on the tour. Just writing this post is making me drool. Excuse me while I go suck on a cinammon stick.

“Combini Fitness” as they’re being called, are small fitness clubs about the size of a 7-Eleven. I live within walking distance to 3 of them but I can only join one because the other 2 are women only and I am a man. At first, when I walked by one of these places I was skeptical about why anyone would pay money to join such a tiny place with a limited number of machines. But then I thought it would be kind of cool to be able to do some exercise near home in the evenings. Generally, I go to the gym in the morning because it’s too crowded at night.

The concept of Quickshape is simply a small gym where you do a circuit training course comprised of 11 stations. A couple 1 minute songs play on a loop and when each song ends you get off the machine and move onto the next station. It’s hard to do any kind of circuit training at a regular gym because you often have to wait to use the next machine defeating the purpose. The mini circuit training gym is a great idea and will really appeal to the Japanese who prefer to have a structured workout laid out for them. It’s also very convenient and “quick.” I could leave my house, work out and be back home playing Zelda on my Wii within 30 minutes.

The monthly fee costs ¥5000 which is about half of what you normally pay for a fitness club membership in Japan. You don’t have to change your shoes, there’s no shower and just a few lockers to keep your stuff in. They have a limit of 300 members per gym and it hasn’t been very crowded the few times I’ve been there. Only 3 or 4 people. The 1 minute rule helps to keep you moving along without resting too much or getting lazy. So far, I can only do 2 rounds of the circuit before collapsing because I’m completely out of shape. I still intend on going to Goldsgym in the mornings and joined this gym to maximize fatloss. 2007 is going to be the year of rock hard chiseled abs. Pictures forthcoming! ;-)

An involuntary eye twitch has been plaguing me for the last week or so. It feels like someone is sending an electric shock through my eye but without the pain. As a result I’ve been having some headaches and didn’t really feel like going out this long weekend, which was unfortunate because the weather has been fantastic. Probably to make up for all the rain we got last week. There was action around the neighborhood though. Yesterday, I saw some samba dancers, well just one really, and a bunch of other people dressed up as some kind of quasi-japanese-brazillian-creature-things. I have no idea what they were doing or what they were celebrating.

I took this underexposed photo on the way to Shinjuku and thought that I should really make more of an effort to discover what the GR is capable of. At Bic Camera they had a sale on hard disks so I bought a 500GB Linkstation, something I have been needed for a while. When I got home I found the neighborhood kairanban 回覧板 in the post. This is the clipboard that’s passed around from house to house on your block. It has notices about neighborhood events and charity etc. You have to stamp your name on it after you’ve read everything and then pass it on to the next person. Back to work tomorrow…

Today is day 10 of my first Master Cleanse (MC) and I’m still alive. I decided to end it a day and a half earlier so actually today is the first full day off the cleanse. Below is a summary of my experiences.

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I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve been frequenting this “Lady’s Convenience Store” near the office more and more these days. It’s really just a glorified AM/PM with cosmetics, more female oriented magazines replacing the porn, supplements and healthier food options, which is what I like about the shop. I bought this healthy bento and bean salad for lunch. And so did those 2 dudes walking out in the first photo. There were in fact a bunch of Salarymen going into the place to buy these bentos. The only problem with the store is that there is only a women’s restroom. No men’s toilet!! Sexual discrimination or what?

Got my shipment of mineral water from Kurita tonight. I’m tired of ordering it every month so I got more than the average amount. Should last me a few months. This shipment cost a little more than ¥10,000 which works out to be around ¥100 per litre. Not really any cheaper than buying a 2 litre bottle from the store but I like the taste of this water and don’t have to deal with all the pet bottles.

Collagen is the new “Low Fat”. Put in on any product and people will buy it. I’m a little more convinced that Collagen has more credibility though (1) I bought some Collagen Natto today. I couldn’t taste the collagen in the natto but you could tell there was some in the sauce because it was thicker and more gelatiny (2) Don’t have time to cook rice so I just spread it on brown bread and toast it with a slice of cheese. Add a glass of Soy milk and you have a perfectly healthy meal.

OK, this year for sure I’m serious about getting into shape.

My goal is to weigh 65kg with 12% body fat which translates to 57.2kg lean body mass and 7.8kg body fat. The last few weeks I got really fat. I didn’t eat that much crud but I sat around the house most of the time which means no calories being burned. I got on the scale this morning and my weight was 65.8kg with 24.8% body fat (16.3kg of FAT! Yikes!!) Imagine carrying around a iMac G5 with you everywhere. I’m aiming to reach my target muscle-fat ratio by end of April which means I need to gain about 8kg of muscle and lose the same amount of fat. Actually I’ll be happy if I can get to 15% body fat.

Stayed tuned for pictures of my rock-hard abs and pecs of steel.

Almost everyday for the past few weeks when I come back to the office from lunch I begin to feel sick. Headaches, heat flashes, dizziness and sometimes nausea. Usually, it’s not a big deal and goes away if I don’t think about it, but generally lasts up until I leave work. Today, the headaches got soo bad I had to leave work early and go home. Right after I left the office, I suddenly felt a lot better. By the time, I got home I felt normal and the headaches completely gone. Could it be something about the building, like the office temperature (usually hot and stuffy) or the quality of the air that’s making me sick? Or could the cause be totally psychosomatic? Like something subconscious telling me to get out of there! If this persists, I may have to actually go and see a doctor. God forbid! The photo is of the park near home. I hardly ever see this place in the daytime.