Run Against Pain! I’ve signed up for my first run!

The Pain Society of the Philippines has organized Run Against Pain, an eight-kilometer run on October 18, 2008, at the Quirino Grandstand along Roxas Boulevard. There are five competitive categories, with a variety of cash prizes for the top finishers.

I am so excited for Run Against Pain because it’s a great cause and an even greater motivation for me to go and do something to jump-start my weight loss program. It’s been 9 kilos so far, and preparing for this is definitely going to help make things happen!

Sign up with me! Registration’s only PHP250. Let’s run together!

EVENT: Run Against Pain (in celebration of Global Day Against Cancer Pain, for the Benefit of the Pain Society of the Philippines)
DATE: October 18, 2008
ASSEMBLY 5:30 A.M.
START 6:00 A.M.

VENUE: Quirino Grandstand, Roxas Boulevard
DISTANCE: 1KM walk; 8KM run

MAXIMUM PARTICIPANTS:
1,888 runners

REGISTRATION CENTER:
ANTA, Bonifacio High Street, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig
(For a PHP1,000 purchase, your registration fee is waived)

CONTACT NUMBER:
0921 410 00 11

EMAIL:
april.eventzone@gmail.com

CONTACT PERSONS:
April Lee (EventZone)

REGISTRATION FEE:
P 250

REGISTRATION PROCEDURE:

Sign up at ANTA, Bonifacio High Street, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

PRIZES:

Men’s Open
1st - PHP8,000
2nd - PHP4,000
3rd - PHP2,000

Women’s Open
1st - PHP8,000
2nd - PHP4,000
3rd - PHP2,000

Men’s Junior Veteran, Men’s Senior Veteran, & Women’s Veteran
1st - PHP2,000

For the past three days, I have packed the same lunch, and have yet to get sick of it.

A can of young corn, a can of button mushrooms, a can of tuna flakes in oil with kalamansi (Philippine lime), sauteed together with minced garlic and a few dashes of olive oil.

Couple that with daily exercise and lots of water, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t enjoy this fitness program!

I started being more conscious of my health in June, when I gave up soda cold turkey. Three months later, I’ve dropped eight kilos.

For the past few years, I haven’t enjoyed looking at myself in the mirror. Acres of rolling fat aren’t exactly the kind of pasture Julie Andrews would want to run through while singing The Sound of Music, definitely.

Bill Phillips recommends taking a picture of yourself before starting the Body For Life program, so I asked Cathy to shoot a shot of me. I took off my shirt and posed in my boxers, trying to look like all the unhappy fat people in their before shots with their bellies and frowns out. Before she pressed the button on our digicam, she asked me if I wasn’t going to smile.

Why smile? I thought to myself. All the other fat people in Phillips’ book aren’t smiling!

Then I figured, you know what? I should smile. Because this will be the last time I will be seeing myself like this, God- and body-willing. I am going to have a body I’m proud of! So I smiled.

The shirtless Ganns that grinned back at me with chipmunk cheeks and belly all a-jiggle will serve as the ultimate motivation to get myself back on track. I should frame it!

A little less than two weeks ago, Pastor Joey Bonifacio lent me a book by Bill Phillips titled Body For Life. Body For Life is a program that he himself used a few years back to get himself into better shape, and it apparently has worked very well for him.

After having gone through the book once, these were my observations:

• I think Body For Life has the potential to create healthy habits in individuals, increasing the chances of a person losing weight and keeping it off more permanently than other fitness programs.
• It is going to take a great deal of discipline to pull off Body For Life, but the rewards seem significant. The hundreds of testimonials in the book and available online are extremely persuasive.
• The diet aspect of Body For Life isn’t as restrictive as other diets, and it certainly isn’t quack nutrition (well, save perhaps for the recommended - but not required - dietary supplements that come from a company with which the author had connections).

The downside is that it will require a lot of discipline, self-control, and exercise. At the end of the day, that is to be expected, though. 70 lbs. of overweight don’t add themselves to one’s frame overnight. Anyone on this program is going to need a different kind of motivation.

After much thought, five days ago, I decided to go for it! I’ll be keeping a private journal for this, but I’ll be posting a weekly video blog so I can keep an image record of my progress. Please keep me in prayer; I believe, though, this is it. I am so determined to make this work!

Today, I breached 100 kilos.

Yes, I am 100 kilos. But I came from 105 kilos, so that means I’ve lost more than 10 pounds since I started the fitness program.

With only five days to go before the deadline of the 20% discounted gift certificate I won from Jaymie for a Nike+ Sports band, I am at a crossroads.

On one hand, I really want that Nike+. I can think of fewer gadgets that would motivate me to start running. A payday advance would sure be useful, but then again, I’d rather stay out of further debt. I want to be a better steward of the resources God has given me. There are so many better things I can do with PHP2,000.

So I think it’s best I just focus on doing my best at my job and losing weight in less expensive ways. I trust God will reward my faithfulness with what He’s given me.

I am now on Week 2 of my ‘Rest of My Life’ fitness program. I call it that because I intend to stick to it for, well, the rest of my life. (I can hear Raft3r now going ‘yeah right.’)

The ‘Rest of My Life’ diet is an amalgam of two fitness programs: the Fit For Life program of Harvey Diamond and the Get With the Program program of Bob Greene. Diamond’s program will help me deal with my food intake, making me eat healthier with almost 90% of my food intake being fruits and vegetables (which I love). Greene’s program, on the other hand, helps me get to the bottom of my issues, which include binge eating and emotional eating.

The end result, ideally, will be an overall healthier me.

Yesterday, I learned I won a gift certificate from Jaymie for a discount off a Nike+ Sportsband. (Thank you, Jaymie!!) From an original PHP3,300, I can get it for PHP2,700. I didn’t expect to win it, so this comes as a bit of a surprise; I don’t exactly have the budget for it. But after Pastor Joey Bonifacio spoke the world of his Nike+, I realized this was just what I needed - okay, wanted - to jumpstart my exercise program. (Since my Gold’s membership has expired and no one seems to want to join me for Lazer Tag or badminton, it’s been a lonely exercise trek.)

(So it’s not a need, it’s a want. The Bible tells me the Lord will grant the desires of my heart in accordance with His will and desires for me as I desire Him too, so I guess I will just have to believe Him for it.)

The GC also comes quid pro quo: if I buy the Nike+ Sports band, I should ideally participate in Nike Philippines’ upcoming Human Race on August 31. Jason, one of my volunteers, has been training for this marathon for months; am I so self-deluded to think that I should join this marathon having NO training, less than two weeks before the event?

Well, regardless of whether or not I get the Nike+ Sports band, I think I will start running. If Joey Bonifacio says it’s remarkably good for him, it’s gotta be good for me too.

Meanwhile, if y’all wanna join the Nike+ Human Race, you can sign up at any Nike Park store on or before the 30th of August.

I think it’s time for a Slim4Him update, don’t you? I peaked at around 230 lbs. (104 kgs.) sometime in early 2006. Here’s what I looked like in March 2006 at Big Buddha Greenbelt.

Look, it’s Big Buddha! LOL Okay, so maybe the jaw’s a little bit of an exaggeration. Hahaha. But you can see the fat around the cheeks, the shoulders, and even the fingers. A more realistic picture would be the one below.

Eating a Krispy Kreme Philippines doughnut, November 15, 2006.

I started South Beach in February 2007, and began going to the gym a month later. After six months, I’m now at 93 kgs., which means I’ve lost a total of 11 kgs. so far, or about 25 lbs. Here’s a shot taken three days ago.

Suiting up, a new haircut, less snacking - although I’ve got a bag of Nachos to help me deal with a superstressful event this morning - and a more active lifestyle is really paying off. I also joked to some friends that I was taking some Japanese pills. The truth is, I did take some pills a few weeks ago, but stopped them after about a week because I fell sick with influenza. After I recovered, I took them for another week, then got tonsillitis. When I recovered from that, I took them for another few days, then I got a cough and my tonsillitis came back. I pretty much decided, man, maybe I should lay off the pills for a while! LOL Haven’t taken ‘em since.

Six months, 25 lbs. If I can keep this up, I can actually reach my target weight loss goal of 50 lbs. in a year.

I officially started my Slim4Him weight loss program February 19, 2007.

Today is May 9, 2007, and these are my statistics.

Start: 103 kg (227 lbs.)
Current Weight: 95 kg (209 lbs.)
Goal: 75 kg (165 lbs.)

That means I’ve lost 18 lbs in roughly 11 weeks. That’s 1.7 lbs. a week. Actually, the first two months, weight loss was virtually non-existent, despite the vaunted power of the South Beach Diet. It was only when I started having regular exercise with twice- to thrice-a-week visits to the gym that I’ve shown some kind of improvement. Guess that’s the final nail in the diet-equals-weight-loss coffin; without exercise, when you go off that diet, you’ll gain it all back. Hwek hwek hwek.

I was starting to wonder if my 18-pound weight loss was starting to show. Today, I visited the office’s Finance/HR department to interview a prospective writer and the ladies there peppered me with compliments on how thin I looked! Praise GOD! With encouragement like that, I’m sure I’ll get there. I’ve already lost 18 lbs total since I started; that’s more than 25% of my total weight loss goal by the end of the year. If I keep at the one-pound-a-week setup, I should lose approximately 32 more lbs. by the end of the year, totaling 60 lbs!

Thanks, by the way, to my gym buddy, Kim, for keeping me motivated! (Dennis, our schedules stink. We’ve hardly worked out together at all!)

I have impressive bulges, but they’re in all the wrong places. Instead of situating themselves on my arms, pecs, calves, and Y-fronts, they’re lumped on my stomach and butt. At the moment, I look like a Michelin Man, but without the vapid smile and bloodless complexion.

It’s been two days since my first “workout.” After 15 minutes of cardio warmup that pretty much had my legs feeling like jelly, I did more legs, then arms, then abs. The training program I got at Slimmer’s came screaming back to me, and it was with that program that I went through the routine.

Two days later - as can be expected from months of relative inactivity - my long-dormant muscles came back to cuss me. My arms ache, my abs ache (even my side-abs; I didn’t even know they existed!), my legs ache. I feel like I’ve been run over by a steamroller. That, of course, didn’t stop me from walking an hour from the office to SM Makati to conduct some errands, and back. At this point, I feel like I’m making real progress. Some of my officemates are saying there’s noticeable change. Yay.

I look at some of my sophomore college photos, and I remember what it was like to be fit. At the end of the year, I promise myself, I will be.

Meanwhile, here’s a sample of some of the music I play on my (U)Nano while I work out. Not a big fan of dance-dance, but pop-rock with beats like this, I like, I like. Call My Name by Charlotte Church is one such track.

I’ve started a blog exclusively for my Slim4Him diet (using Arthur Agatston’s South Beach diet), and I am 100% determined to make this one work. I don’t even know what my starting weight is, but I’ll know I would’ve lost weight if my clothes fit better and people start to notice.

I wouldn’t mind getting a bathroom scale for my birthday. LOL That, and a healthy baby girl. Cathy and I will find out our baby’s gender on February 25, the day before my birthday. Well, regardless of the gender, we will love this baby as much as we love Nathan. It would be nice to have a girl, though.

See you 70 lbs. from now!