I was supposed to blog about this two weeks ago, but lately, my mind has been so…  ugh, what’s that term…  “creatively challenged,” i guess, that I don’t know how to go about it.  Plus, it hasn’t really sinked in yet until I sat down and really thought about it.  I know I posted about it on Twitter and Facebook, but for me to formally talk about it in writing is something I knew I had to do.  So to formally start it off, I can finally say that I have reached what I set out to do January of 2010:  go from 198lbs. to my target weight of 160lbs.  Finally.

The original context of that goal was that it had to be done within the year.  Gave myself until December, actually.  Clearly, only half was met.  Well, come to think of it, looking at the goal itself, I’d say that I failed in both aspects.  But to be fair, I was in a different state of mind last year, compared to the guidelines I set for myself this year (refer to the first post I made for 2011).  Though the setting of the goal is one thing; the entire journey of 198 to 160 is a whole different story altogether.  Truth be told, what I learned and realized during the entire ordeal is what inspired me to set those guidelines I mentioned.

When I first told myself that I really had to lose weight, I honestly thought it’ll be that easy.  I mean, I have gone to the gym before and there seemed to have an effect after two months of thrice a week workouts.  Plus I believed in the notion that if one can easily gain weight, it can be lost just as easy.  But still, I knew that once I started I had to see it all the way through.  I also used to jog before, also every other day except weekends for two hours.  So I decided to challenge myself to go five days a week, skipping only on weekends.  To add to that, I had to reduce the amount of food intake, especially rice.  So I thought, a full breakfast, half a cup of rice for lunch and absolutely light dinner–no rice.  I admit, it was quite daunting when I put it in perspective that time, but I told myself that perhaps I can lose that amount of weight in maybe half the time.

January 4th, 2010, 4:30am.  I weighed myself for the last time to see where I was starting.  I made a vow not to weigh myself until my birthday which was about four months away to see if there’ll be real progress.  Then I started my daily routine.  The first five days went by that fast.  On the second week, I started to feel aches and pains on my legs and knees, but I pressed on.  Before, I used to listen to music on my Ipod whenever I go jogging.  This time, I decided to just skip the music and focus on just meditating while jogging.  That way, I can continue to motivate myself internally while keeping my brain going with all sorts of things.  This was particularly hard because if you know me that well, I’m a true-blue music lover.  The lessened food intake was no joke either.  Fighting the urge to eat is like trying to stay awake when you have important things to do and you’re very sleepy.  I would just have only one of the follwing for dinner:  a banana, a sandwich, two hard-boiled eggs or a bowl of oatmeal.  During weekends, that’s the time that I can eat “normally” so to speak.  Kind of a treat or reward for going through that rigorous routine.

Four months passed by quickly and on my birthday, I saw that I was down to 180lbs.  “Progress,” I said to myself.  I even went as far as calculating where I would be if I lost that amount of weight in that time.  First mistake I made:  assumption.  By July, I was down to 175lbs, and that’s where I made my second mistake:  overconfidence.  I mean, I was so having those two traits that I started to skip my jogging sessions, thinking that the dieting can make up for it.  Of course I would naturally skip sessions whenever it was raining outside at 4:30 in the morning, but there were too much times that when the alarm rang and it’s time to get up, I open my eyes, think, and go back to sleep.  I would make excuses to myself like my knees were hurting, or that I was not up to it, or feeling that I cannot run the full two hours so why bother.  But I was still losing weight.  Surprisingly, the dieting was helping compensate for the reduced jogging sessions.  I remember even posting on Facebook that I was down to 170lbs with more than two months to go.  I started to skip more and more jogging sessions with the same excuses.

December came and I was still at 170lbs.  With the christmas season already in full swing with parties left and right, I knew I couldn’t make the target.  I looked back and realized the things I did, and ultimately came to the conclusion that I failed in what I set out to do.  If i’ll sum up the total amount of days I skipped those jogging sessions, it would add up to around two full months.  That doesn’t even include the half-month christmas break I gave myself, vowing to start again on the first Monday of the new year.  It was around that time that I looked at what I gained, and what I would do differently moving forward.  At the same time, I came to realize and appreciate all that I have done, despite the setbacks.  Those led to the formation of the 2011 guidelines, and ultimately, to me having a new form of thinking and perspective to just about anything in life.  I mean, I’m still me, with the same likes and dislikes, but maybe this experience I guess made me a bit different in some ways.

I never thought that simple exercise and dieting can lead to more than a physical transformation.  Short of a renewal, I guess for me, it opened my eyes to new ways of rationalization and reasoning.  It may be cliche, but exercise really does wonders for the body.  Now that I reached my goal, what’s next, you may ask?  Well, the jogging does not stop.  Nor does the dieting.  For me, it has become a daily requirement of some sort.  I’m not saying that I won’t be skipping jogging sessions any time soon, but I’m thinking that, “i’m already here, so why slip back?”  Last week, I started to include weightlifting into my routine.  My brother has a pair of barbels (50 pounds each) that are gathering dust, so I decided to make them useful again.  I guess the new goal now is to build up or tone the physique, so to speak, but that’s not set in stone.  I’ll see now where can this take me, and if it’s that effective, then go with the flow.  Like I said in explaining my guidelines, better have the elbow room to move in reaching your goal, rather than be confined with a rigid procedure.

I’ve never felt better physically.  Granted, there are some aches and pains that come with the daily jogging sessions–plus the occasional sluggishness–but feeling lighter and more mobile, and with a new way of looking at things, I could say that what I had endured over the last 13 months was all worth it.  Since I resumed my jogging sessions last month, I haven’t skipped one yet, thankfully.  Now that I can track and accumulate my runs and the distances I’ve covered thanks to my Sportband (which was my brother’s christmas gift to me), there are even less reasons to skip jogging when it’s not raining.

Which reminds me, I still have to join my first fun run.  Hope I can do that soon.