Days 25 and 26: indulgence and drop of water sitting on top of a lotus flower

It appears Patrick has even calibrated the times when PCP gets really hard. The message informing it's time for an indulgence, as well as the one about people reacting to what we are doing with negative feedback, came both at exactly the right time.

Over the past two days a desire, not necessarily for chocolate or some oily food, but simply for a 'normal' meal, has been creeping my mind so strongly that it's thrown my mental balance repeatedly throughout the day. Such mental turbulence is leading to some bad feelings, like a ferocious hatred towards my digital food scale and an urge to scream "$,&@#%^*{}~<>€|^{#<>|%#+¥[_]}{|~" so loudly that the decibels and pitch would make that little machine blow into a million pieces.

But, like all turbulences, I just fasten my mental seatbelt, grab on to the handles, breath and regain some control of myself. The truth is I really like my food scale. Yet I know this isn't OK, it cannot be! Just a few days ago I was feeling so balanced, happy, calm, so effortlessly well... What's happening?

And then came Patrick's email asking us to have cheesecake or some wine, or just whatever we choose so long as it is really a choice, flashed our mailboxes like a divine revelation.

The message itself was mentally therapeutic. It helped me turn down the chocolate cake last night during our son's first birthday, at which moment I thought "don't be stupid man, you can have something better than that".

So, although I still have to decide what I'll have, I've already decided to ask my wife on a date. We will go out today for lunch to one of my favourite restaurants, one called WOK, which is comparable to Wagamama, which surely most of you know. In the end, I didn't have any wine last week when celebrating our fourth anniversary, nor the cake (which looked yummy) last night.

I hope this indulgence will be more than ingesting some forbidden food. I hope the moment alone with Maria will restore that blissful balance I had reached last week. I hope this will get me going for another month. I will let you know how it goes.

With regard to negative feedback I have to report our family came over last night for dinner (you know, to sing the happy birthday song and rejoice to see their first grandson on both sides of the family turning one). A very happy time to be honest. All very generous and loving with their gifts and good vibe.

Except for just a moment when somebody asked how was my "diet" going, adding I was looking a bit thin. And so I started the exegesis from the start, excited to brief all of them about what PCP is, who invented it, who are my peers, what the workouts are like and what restrictions and rules I must to observe. There was a positive comment congratulating me on my choice to lead a healthier life and admiring my self discipline and will power to stick so strictly to the rules.

But then there were other comments, one too many other thoughtless, negative and mocking remarks for my taste: "that sounds exactly like the kind of thing I would never do in my life", "no point in doing all that just to live 15 minutes longer", "I disagree with the diet, be careful, you will fall sick if you keep on doing this. You need at least 60% of carbs in your diet and far more lipids", "the last thing on my mind is exposing myself shirtless on the Internet for everyone to see", "well, it's amazing you've gone this far, but do you really expect you'll be able to finish", "and then what, what will happen after day 90" (fair question, I must say), but the tone wasn't well intended.

So I kept quiet, went to the kitchen and helped serve the capelleti with pomodoro sauce, the focaccia and the wine, which they all enjoyed very much. Guess what: no one had seconds! They all looked at my plate and I could detect in their eyes shame and guilt for judging me, conferring my plate an unexpected theatrical value on which I capitalised by very slowly chewing on my salt free meat balls and a colourful salad.

One thing surprised me. When I walked in the kitchen my mother in law was cutting the bread and out of the blue she asked me if I had ever seen a drop of water sitting on top of a lotus flower. She added that it looked as if the droplet weren't touching the leaf at all. That, she said, is how you should go about your more personal and cherished habits. To keep them pure you must keep them to yourself, and you will be able to enjoy the presence of others without having to put up with anybody having a say or an opinion about what you do. She is right. I think I have done as instructed telling a good amount of people about what I'm doing. But at this point, I can on without most of them. So next time they ask, no matter what will be going on internally by then (as Patrick so often says), I'll just say it's going on splendidly well.