Since early last year I have made a decision to start losing weight. I have gained a total of almost 94 KGs and was extremely unhealthy. My typical diets includes my favourite crispy skin pork with egg chiffon on rice at A1, Big Macs at McDonalds and Wicked Wings at KFC. Here is a picture of me during a fishing holiday in Phillip Island:

December 2008	December 2009

Noticed the difference?? Nooo.. it’s not the fish… comee onnnn… Yes that’s right!! I have lost a total of 12 KGs!!

What inspire me?

The most important thing behind all endeavour is the main root cause. There are a lot of totally valid reason to lose weight… but none of it really inspire me.. the following are the examples:

• I look ugly
• I look like Santa Claus (Because red is my favourite colour)
• I’ll get heart attack soon
• I am unfit
• I won’t be able to get a girlfriend

The real reason of why I should lose weight is that during a quiet session in Borders, I was reading a book called ‘the power of full engagement’. This is a very exciting book about the fundamental of energy management in human. Apparently, high performance is not by the longer hours you spent on a task but instead by how effective you do on a task. To be very effective, a human must balance between rest and work. Physical energy need to be trained to harness the effectiveness of performance, so do spiritual and mental energies which can be gathered from various means . The author used various examples of various clients that he has, including many tennis players and highly stressed executives at fortune 500 companies.

Nevertheless this book inspire me and get me going to start to lose weight to achieve better performance.

How do I do it?

I drew up a to do list of things to do. First of all I draw up a list of things that I have tried on the previous year and why this have failed:

• I went swimming with friends… but my friends are the one who pulled me out from the swimming pool to go the Jacuzzy
• Then I went jogging with friends.. only when they pulled me to a nearby KFC within the first 10 minutes to savour the wicked wings meal deal.
• My last effort is to cut down my eating.. only when they started to give me discount vouchers to my favourites restaurants.

SO HOW DO I AVOID THESE TEMPTATIONS??

As Steve Wozniak famously quote:

"If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone."

The moral of the story is: DON’T DO IT WITH FRIENDS.. DO IT ALONE!!

This actions started early in January 2009 where I started to swim everyday.. alone..

This is followed up by me buying books on how to lose weight:

THAT BOOK DOESN’T WORK!! DON’T BUY IT!! I gave up after a week of writing every single calorie that I took.

Then I started to bet with my friends, there are 2 bets, with a very expensive dinner at the end of the bet. To win the bet, I must systematically lose a kilo a month for a year. And I lost to both of the bets… this is because initially this is very easy.. but  later on they are becoming more and more difficult. As I shed more kilos, the curve of effort is becoming steeper in the later months. But it was good experience though, challenging and entertaining. I remember at one point in time, before the actual ‘weighing day’ I wore a super thin clothing, just to remove the excess weight in jeans.

I continued on to join charity runs. I incrementally increase 5 kms for each run. At this point, I will be running a 15 KM charity run. Hopefully one day I will be able to run 42 KM marathon. My dream is to join the great tibetan run and the new york city run. There following are some of my photos of the charity runs:

Besides that, I have also joined several other exercises such as tennis and badminton and I joined gym.

My reflection after successfully losing weight

Losing 12 kilos is truly my biggest achievement so far in life. My reflections are the following:

It’s a very expensive endeavour

Both time wise, psychological wise and money wise. I have to repurchase my entire wardrobe.. that costs me thousands of dollars. To save cost, I put most of my clothes in the dryer.. so that it’s shrunken. Time wise, I quit spending time with my friends. Most of them have deserted me, except for several very close friends. Psychological wise, I almost went crazy, because of the pressure to become thin when I put my bet on, I kept on working hard each day to accomplished it. Fortunately enough, the endorphin that’s produced each time I went for exercise makes me ‘high’, so that kept me happy for a fleeting moment, before I started to rushed again to work on it again.

Maintenance

The thing is, this kind of goal is not a one off thing. The moment I stopped gym/exercise, they came back.. yes.. the fat!!! The key is to maintain it..consistent exercise need to be performed..

Was it worth it?

Hell yesss… I looked great and feel more confident… I am able to focus at work better.. and avoid getting sleepy at work.

(By the way as an aside , here is a photo of a colleague of mine who failed to exercise and getting sleepy at worked… we happily decorate him while he slept at work ;P)

What next?

In early 2010, I have set up goals to gain more muscle. At this point in time I have joined gym and going to see my fitness instructor next week. Hopefully if all work out fine, I will be able to gain some muscle at the end of this year.

Btw, here’s a photo of me last week: