Total Transformation

fitness

By Dr. John Cuay

Looking at the pictures of myself 10 years ago, made me wonder, what was the real culprit that boosted my waistline to 46 inches, and that astonishing reading of 265lbs on the weighing scale, every time I step on it. Could it be my food intake, or am I just a lazy bum, which is a lot worse than a couch potato.

At this stage of my life, the word “fitness” basing in my experience both theoretically and the practical implication of it, I have concluded that it is just a simple matter, that a lot of writers or the so called experts who make it really complicated. Which confuses the neurons of the lay individual. I personally think that you just have to focus on 2 umbrellas in terms of fitness: that’s whatever you put in your mouth (fuel), and how do you make use of that fuel through your activities. You could think of a gazillion of factors in fitness but the bottom line, it will be just under in one of those categories. Well, this blog would be a good opportunity for us to talk about the never-ending topics in the plethora of this field. Thanks to David Bonifacio for this opportunity.

But first of all I want to share with you guys on my experience on how I became a fitness rut myself, from a guy who just want to enjoy food, and appreciating all the convenience that technology induce, to limit my movement. Let me start with the first umbrella that I mentioned here, and that’s: “What you put in your Mouth”
Lemme reminisce what’s my eating diary was like then: Well all I could remember is that my staple food were from the chefs of all the convenient fast food drive through, back in New Jersey, My typical working day is, stopping at an Indian owned Dunkin Donuts, where I usually have a blueberry bagel with cream cheese, which I remembered getting an extra packet, on top of what they already put inside the bagel. Of course my caffeine booster, and its always the biggest cappuccino, just throwing sugar to it until, it satisfies my taste buds, I would say for a 16 oz. drink, I matched it with 5 packets of refined white sugar. When I get to work I usually check the hospital cafeteria if they have freshly baked oatmeal cookie (my motivation to go to work early), rarely that they are out of it though. Must say I have 2 of those, before I start dealing with my first patient of the day. (Was working in the physical rehab department as a physical therapist, in one of the well known hospital in Jersey City)

Depending on my schedule, my lunch will always be from a local Chinese delivery, the sound of beef with broccoli with fried rice still give me a drip of my saliva until this very moment, or maybe chicken egg foo young (scramble eggs with chicken meat, and smothering red sauce) with a generous serving of fried rice. Dessert came easy after that at the cafeteria; a blueberry muffin or an egg pie is the typical star in my plate with another big size of gourmet coffee from the little Gloria jeans kiosk. When I get home from work I usually eat whatever is in the fridge, could be my leftover lunch/dinner or a big bag of baked potato chips, I love the word bake when they used it as an adjective to any of the junk food, cause it just give me a go signal to engulf more, since its supposed to be healthy. As much as I like the word diet before a certain soda for the same reason that I could drink as much, till the last drop that could satisfy my belly. I would say my average diet soda is about a liter a day during the week. Dinner is again another big meal for me as opposed to the great advice to eat like a slave during dinner; it was still a kingly hefty meal. Typical dinner was either from a pizza delivery, a burger king/mc Donald’s super combo meal or KFC original bucket special. After dinner, depending on what I see in the freezer, I usually bring a pint of Baskin and robins with me, while watching my favorite TV shows or the morning news on the Filipino channel. Sounds a very appealing food diary right? But talking about calories, basing on my knowledge now, I must have engulfed approximately 6000 calories on a typical day during the week. Weekends could possibly double the amount, as I could add up all the calories from the drinks that I had on my 2 weekend nights. Getting drunk on my weekend then, is an understatement.

Now, was I using those foods as a fuel to my activities? In one-way or the other “of course” but am I maximizing the utilization of the fuel? Hmmmmm I doubt it. A typical working day is: I wake up in the morning, drive to work, deal with patients and usually commanding them on the exercises I prescribed them to do, with just me standing, making sure, he does what I told him to do. Then get off from work and just go straight home. Going and nonchalantly walking inside the mall is not my thing, cause it just blow my self confidence down to the brim, who would want to spare his eye to an overweight Filipino guy anyway. Then when I get home around late afternoon, that’s basically the start of my busy self activities, which are pretty much watching TV, reading a book or participating over the internet chat rooms (using fake pics of fit studs), till its time to hit the sack. At the end of the day, I would say my calorie expenditure is lower than the average working class guy, if the norm is about 2500 calorie; mine was probably at 2000 calorie.

If a typical person will analyze what’s my so-called fitness life is like then. In simple math it will give us a clear picture of what would be my physical outcome. A physique that triggers the release of hormones of insecurities. My social life is dead, though I’m still thankful that I have loser friends who could give me company at those Manhattan bars on weekends, that we have to mask ourselves with alcohol just to have temporary confidence to interact with strangers inside. I even hardly go to Filipino gatherings back then for the same reason, and now I realized that I have never been invited to be the best man to a wedding or one of the groom’s men at least. (Can’t imagine how it will ruin a scene in a wedding picture if I was in there). Describing my life till my 25th year in existence in this world is totally full of insecurities both physically and psychologically. If I should have known that it was possible to have a relationship with someone intangible, I could have force myself to engage to that, though I know that there’s a God, the reason why we have to go to church on Sundays. But I want someone who will interact and help me deal with typical daily scenarios. Maybe that is why I’m always in a never-ending search of the meaning of the word “happiness” since I don’t have that heart of “FAITH” that God wants me to have.

In spite the fact that I had achieved the greatest degree in my Education at an early age, I still have that feeling that I’m not good enough to live in this world, for some reason, I just want to finished school to satisfy my parents dream for me. As a physical therapist that specialized in sports kinesiology (study of movements), I was given the opportunity to deal with the different athletes pre and post preventative injury managements, as well as strengthening on all the soft tissues needed for his specific discipline. I get to enjoy in one way or the other, since for the first time in the history of my life, I finally had the feeling of authority and that sort of kick my self-esteem to a higher level. Since I get to work with athletes, I get to go with the events of my patients. I need to study the usual movements that there body will go through during a game for me to plan on the do’s and don’ts of possible injury recurrence. The highlight I would say at that stage of my career was, me given the chance to work with the Princeton Lacrosse team. I was a frustrated ivy leaguer myself so I took that chance to at least prove that I could be tag somehow with a speck of the “Princeton Mentality”. Low and behold that was the turning point of my fitness lifestyle. Apart from the fact of being part of a great institution, was dealing with the sarcasm and harsh words of bitterness that I couldn’t help hear while working with the athletes. “What’s up with that Asian PT’s (physical therapist) body man, can he at least run as par as we do? “; Does he really do what he preach? Obviously not”; “Man that fellow is “FAT”, name it, I hear all of it, all I have to do is to desensitize my heart just to numb my ego since all the words are true. If I won’t do something about it, I guess the harshness would keep on pouring in my system that I don’t actually be affected to it, even though deep inside I was hurting big time. To make the long story short, I need to make a total U turn from the fitness path that I have been taking, if I want to be healthy, I need to lose weight and enhance my credibility physically not just through papers.

South Beach diet was so enormously popular during that time, I tried to ignore all the possible carbohydrates in my diet, I enrolled in a local gym and shopped for oversized sweat shirts and pants, I still remember buying branded apparel just to be at least through it, I could be noticed. The very first few months through the journey, totally brought my world upside down. The smell of Chinese food while having lunch with my colleagues was not very supportive. Drinking a sugarless coffee does not make the drink enjoyable, and waking up couple of hours early to workout is way hard to get used to. By accepting those hindrances as my inspiration. I was able to go through the obstacles, it may not be easy but I still went through a lot of trial and errors till, I made myself straight on what I real want to happen, and that’s to lose weight. In three months time I had lost 25 lbs. and went down a couple of inches smaller jeans. That gave me more strength to continue pushing for my goals, especially when you hear people saying, “you have lost weight dude, what have you’ve been doing?” Boy! Those phrases are like music to my ears. Persistence and perseverance are the words that kept me going till I’ve lost 80lbs in a year span, I can’t even use my old pants anymore even with the help of a belt, I guess 10 inches extra length of a belt is not a good sight of an accessory.

It was thanksgiving of 2001 that I actually was planning to eat a normal meal, I said to myself that I deserve to have a binge on that day and I want to splurge all the food I sacrificed in that span of time. But to my dismay my brain was actually bigger than my stomach, I probably just ate less than a quarter of the amount that I had served in my mind that time. I couldn’t take any more food since I feel my belly bulging and could explode anytime if I will not stop munching. The emotions that I had that night was vividly ambiguous, happy of my new perception about food and disappointed, that I wasn’t able to finish the meal that I set in my mind.

Going to the gym had become a priority more than anything else in my daily routine; I started to create different exercises that would suit my needs. The principle of Pilates as to focus emphasis on one’s core, made me develop my very own mantra as far as exercise is concerned with the help of my scientific background in managing the muscular system.

As I look back, I still can’t figure how I did it, How I gained the respect from my athletes and colleagues, and how I became excited to help and share all the knowledge I had learned through my personal application.

The only two major changes I made then, was my eating habits and increased my physical activities, other than that, I don’t remember making any. Which brought me to a conclusion that, fitness lifestyle is just all about on what you eat and boosting your active lifestyle. Next time I want to talk about the very details of what my food intake was like, during that course. I’m looking forward to hear from you guys with regards to any fitness concerns, My principle is basically not too scientific but its more of through experience on what worked both with my clients and my very own.