Actually, I have been thinking about it for a while now, wanting to be back on the road.

It’s been a few years now since I have seriously progressed on this journey, but I am ready to get it going again.

I am talking about a journey down the road to better health.  Primarily, I am talking about weight loss.

I have struggled all of my life with excessive weight, and in my adult life with obesity.  I have made progress in the past decade, though.  I first moved to the Philippines in May 2000.  While still living in the States, in the late 90′s, I reached my maximum weight of 430 pounds.  By the time we moved to the Philippines I was at about 395.  Since then, I have lost a fairly significant amount of weight, but still have more to lose.

Heavy - The show really motivated me!

Since I graduated from high school, in 1980, my lowest weight was 269 pounds, which was in 1981 or possibly 1982.  From 269, I went as high as 430, as I said earlier.

I want to be more active

Starting in around 2004 or so, I started doing more physical activity in an attempt to become healthier.  In 2008, I got down to 275, and I was really feeling good.  At that time, though, from a mosquito bite, I got dengue fever, a tropical disease that is quite debilitating.  I basically went 6 months with no energy, and was physically unable to work out or swim as I had been doing.  Because of that, I gained weight.  About 9 or 10 months ago, I was at 318, but I believe I went up to about 330 or so subsequent to that, although I did not weigh to confirm that feeling.

About a month or so ago, I was up one night and could not sleep.  I turned on the TV, and just by chance, I came across a show from A&E, I believe it was shown on TLC here in the Philippines, as I recall.  Perhaps it was on the Bio Channel, I don’t remember for sure.  The show is called “Heavy” and it covers the progress of extremely obese people on their journey toward weight loss and a healthier life.  After watching the show on local TV, I was inspired, and I was able to get a hold of a set of all of the shows in the series.  I watched the shows, and with each episode I felt even more inspired to get back on the road to personal weight loss and improved health.  You can watch a promo for the show below:

So, as I said, in the past months, I know that my weight increased to 318, but I feel that I probably went as high as 330.  After watching the last episode of Heavy, I decided to get back on the road, and my first step was to get my current weight.  I was surprised when I stepped on the scale last night, and I was actually at 292.2, quite a bit lighter than I had thought!

Tuna Sashimi is delicious and nutritious

So, I am exercising more now.  I had been walking already in recent months, but I am walking two to three times the distance now.  I am also moderating my diet as much as I can.  One thing that I am trying to do is to work in some exercise with my meal too.  For example, today, I decided to have Tuna Sashimi for lunch.  We didn’t have any fresh tuna, so I walked a mile to the market, bought the tuna, and walked a mile home.  I ate about 6 ounces of raw tuna, which is only about 175 calories.  So, I got some nice exercise, ate a healthy lunch, and felt good about both!

So, starting this morning, I am back to my journey toward better health, and I’m excited about it.  I feel confident that in a rather short time I can lose the 23 pounds that will be necessary to put me at my lightest weight since I graduated High School!  That will be a milestone for me, and mean that I am getting healthier too!  I want to enjoy a long life, and that is less likely at the level of health where I am today, even though I am much healthier than I was back in the 90′s.

Wish me luck!  And will power!

One of the big pieces of news here, in my opinion, is that I have a new cat!  I should say that “we” (as a family) have a new cat, but I consider this one to be “my cat” and she stays in my office and in our bedroom, so she hangs out with me all day, so that’s it… she’s mine!  Here name is “Sputnik” or just “Sput” for short.  She’s pretty ugly.  In fact, she is so ugly that it’s cute!  If you know what I mean.  Anyway, Sputnik is a kitten, not very old at all, and she is quite playful.  Unfortunately, our other two cats hate Sputnik, and they even try to kill her!  We have to be very careful about making sure they don’t get together, unless closely supervised, because there will certainly be trouble!  That’s one of the reasons why the area where we keep Sputnik is limited to my office and the bedroom, to keep her away from her two enemies!

My new cat, Sputnik, playing in a cardboard box

Feyma with some Christmas Gifts we will give out

So, as I said previously, it’s been the holidays lately.  But, wait!  A few weeks ago I wrote about A New Holiday, right?  So, did I follow through and do what I had been thinking about?  No, I didn’t.  Feyma and I considered it, but in the spirit of the season, we decided to follow the normal holiday schedule.  I do think it is an excellent idea, though, but breaking traditions is not an easy thing to do, is it?  No indeed.  So, we followed the regular holiday schedule just like most everybody else did, and we had a very nice holiday.  It was nice having the kids home for a couple of weeks to enjoy the holidays as a family.  But, this week they are back to school, which is also nice!  I like having the kids around, but it is more peaceful here if they have school, which means that it is a more conducive atmosphere to getting some work done!  ha ha… I must confess that I like that too.

Another thing that I wrote about recently was the new coffee that I ordered recently, two different varieties, both originiting from the Nyeri region of Kenya.  Well, I am happy to report that both coffees are really excellent.  I have been enjoying them emensely.  I just finished having a cup of the Nyeri Tambaya coffee.  It’s really good, with a tangerine taste to it.  But, the one that kind of surprised me was the Ndiani Kyagundo decaf.  It was my first time to try a decaf, and I was a bit hesitant to try it, given the advice of a friend.  But, to my surprise, I like it even more than the Tambaya!  The decaf has a very strong flavor of strawberries, which I love!  I sent a sample of this to my friend who advised against it.  He didn’t even want any, but I forced him to try it.  And, he loves it too!  So, the decaf is really a nice bean, and I think I’ll be ordering more, as I only have about 3 1/2 pounds of it left. After roasting that, it will easily go down to about 2 3/4 pounds (it gets lighter when you roast the moisture out of it), so I will be needing more of this wonderful bean!

What else is going on?  Well, I just got back from a nice morning walk.  It’s been very hot here in Davao recently, but this morning was pleasantly cool.  Not cold, but not hot either, just cool.  So, I enjoyed a nice walk around the neighborhood.  It’s a nice bit of exercise, and also gives you a chance to see what’s happening in the neighborhood.  There is a lot of construction going on around here.  Plenty of new houses going up around the neighborhood.  That’s a good sign, but also bad.  Good because it shows that more people are appreciating this area, and it makes the neighborhood look nicer to have new homes being built.  Bad because it will increase the amount of traffic in the neighborhood, which is already bad!  Oh well… not much I can do about it anyway, so I might as well look at the good side!

I hope that all of you who are reading this had a nice holiday season, no matter which holidays you celebrate around this time of year!