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I just want to share some old and new pics that encapsulates how quickly our lives progress and how wonderful every single minute of it has been.

Starting off with the two kids, it’s cliché to say how time flies, but it’s even more amazing seeing how fast and how different they are now.

Speaking of the kids, as they grow older, their fights and arguments are becoming more and more frequent, but trivial in nature, and battling for attention. They’re still as close as ever though.

Ice cream days

Oh, their posing has evolved quite a bit as well.

Yoke’s first swimming experience was a thrill as Dad allowed him to drop under the water while Mom panics.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8779486344830671204&hl=en

Nowadays, he can swim between 5-8 laps in a standard pool.

As they grow, the adults aged as well, but in a good way. We can’t wish time to stand still for us as that’ll make life boring and pointless.

Some things never change though, just different.

Another fun thing to watch is seeing how being amused with niece and nephews turn into the fascination to one’s child.

Now isn’t that worth looking forward to?

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m determined to shed several percentage of my bodyfat and just be active again, for my own sake and for my family as well, and this week Yoki and I enrolled in an Aikido class near at our community center.

Yoki’s naturally excited to don a gi as he feels like he’s Ryu from Street Fighter. I am just as excited as this experience is quite new to me.

Rewinding my life back to 1983, I started Shotokan Karate at around 7-years old together with my sister, Carol, and my mom. I kept at it, twice a week until 1991 or so, then the practice sessions got serious and went up to 3-4x a week until I left for the United States for college in late 1994.

I had a two-year hiatus in martial arts until I found a qualifier Karate tournament in Vermont that allowed me to compete even if I’m not enrolled in a U.S. dojo. So for another 8 months or so, I was back at it and practiced some kick-boxing in my dorm room until I finally shelved my phase of martial-arts obsession in ’98.

Fast-forward to 2010, I’m back in a dojo, wearing a gi, and for the first time in almost two decades, a WHITE BELTER again. It felt weird but humbling at the same time. I know NOTHING about Aikido and hold no presumptions about the defensive art so I was literally starting from ground zero.

The same as the Yokes!

Yes, he’s my classmate now. We’re equals inside the dojo, and as silly as it may look for a 34 year-old fatso to wear a white belt, I was ecstatic about it. I had to give it my best not just to get my money’s worth, but also to show my son it’s alright to look silly, clumsy, hopeless when you’re starting.

He (along with everybody else in the dojo) was having quite a feast watching me attempting to roll gracefully across the mat, and failing – miserably.

I just found it challenging, and honestly, I was having so much fun doing it.

Looking back, I appreciate what my mom did for me and my sis when we first started Karate. She was in her mid-40s then, my sister was in her mid-teens already, and I was 7. She joined to make us comfortable and she stayed at it until she got her yellow belt and saw that both her kids were genuinely having fun and doing well already. Then she stopped.

Tonight, I understood how awkward it is to be schooled  (literally and figuratively) by guys and gals half your age.

We had a treat in our first session as well, the club had a group of senior Senseis who just flew in from Shanghai conducting lessons for the club’s anniversary.

After an hour-and-a-half of basic throws, rolls, joint locks, and drills, Yokes was really into it and he really enjoyed the company of his new friends and his patient teacher.

I, on the other hand, am sore as heck. My hips and ab (no abs yet) feel like I just fell off two flights of stairs sideways. That’s what happens if you’ve been dormant for over 5 years LOL.

Huge thanks for Vio and Nicky for waiting for us and the pics as well. I hope you guys were entertained. Hehe.

I’m anxiously waiting for next week’s class now. Not just to see if I can progress and look less silly, but to see how far Yokes can surpass me in Aikido. He’s already a better swimmer than I am when I was 6, I have no doubts that he’ll just leapfrog over me in Aikido.

(Embarrassing videos to follow)

I’ve been putting this goal off for the past 3 years or so already and it’s time to take appropriate action.

I’ve been a pretty big gym and diet nut in several stages of my life in the past. I started getting serious dieting and lifting when I was in the 10th grade and got off the fitness train when I went to college. At the same time, I was ‘peaking’ in my karate performance as well.

I ballooned from a fit 140-pounder to a 190-pounder in just four months! At that time, I had a solid excuse. I just started college in the frozen state of New Hampshire, there were no “healthy food” choices within walking distance, and all four of my good friends were foodies as well.

Buying size 38 pants was quite an experience, not something I want to relive though.

The next spring, more buds arrived and I started getting back into shape with all the sporty activities I participated and was able to get back to about 145lbs at around 10% bodyfat. Boy was I active back then! Basketball, soccer, Frisbee, and tennis all in the same day, 4 days a week!

I returned to the Philippines fit and I was able to stay off the fat train as my wife and I were saving money to get married. Our daily diet of healthy sandwiches for over a year really helped, but I was no longer exercising, so atrophy begins.

After we got married, the spiral began. Not only was I not doing any exercise, I’m surrounded with friends who love eating ‘unhealthy’ food – BUT THEY WERE ALL SKINNY! I wasn’t.

It wasn’t all that bad though, I went back up to about 160lb or so and that’s when I was ‘forced’ to eat less, not by choice, but because I got retrenched and I just started a new business.

Enduring half-a-year of small, cheap meals, I lost a lot of weight but it’s not the weight I wanted to lose. I lost a lot of muscle mass and still hovering near the 18% bodyfat range.

Dieting only (especially with poor food quality and lack of calories) isn’t only detrimental to your health, it also makes you lethargic and weak.

I needed to get back to corporate work to get medical coverage as we were expecting Yokes to be born and Vio to retire from office work, so I returned to being an employee.

I’ve never been an early riser my whole life. Early usually means 9AM for me, but when Yokes was a newborn, waking up 5x a night allowed me to get used to being up by 4am or so, and that also forced me to start my day earlier and plan for timing of my meals and schedule.

A big gym opened in a mall just a couple of kilometers from our house and I made the decision to hit the gym once again.

For almost a year, I biked to the gym, eating high-quality (read: bland but healthy) food seven times a day!

I hit the gym like crazy. I go to the gym for a heavy lifting session at 6AM and again during lunch time.

The hard work allowed me to stay about 155 but with just 10-12% bodyfat. I had tons of energy and I felt great.

Now comes the strange part, I can’t recall why I stopped going to the gym and dieting. I just did.

It’s been over five years now since I last engaged myself in a regular health routine, and I’ve once again bounced back to the 85kg range with close to 20% bodyfat. Not good.

The last year or so, I’ve been noticing more aches and pains that never bothered me when I was younger. I tend to get injured a lot easier as well. In fact, it was my latest injury that kicked off my drive to get back into shape.

My foot got stuck to a slacked seatbelt while I was getting off a cab in Manila. During the flight, my toe swelled and I ended up limping when I arrived in Singapore.

A slight dislocation and sprain used to take me 3-4 days to heal, but it’s been two weeks now and my toe still hurts and I have to get my foot x-rayed next week to see if anything else is slowing down my toe’s healing.

I’m fragile now – DAMN!

I started eating ‘better’ yesterday (Aug 13), eating less quantities but more frequent meals. I figured, I didn’t gain all this fat in a month, so I should not expect all these bulk can disappear quickly either.

I’ll start hitting the gym in two weeks (after my foot check-up) and since Yokes will start getting his feet wet in martial arts as well, I’ll try to join him as well.

So here I am, trying to restart my health-quest as I enter my 35th year here on earth. I figured I may still have 40 or so years to go, might as well extend it a couple of years more by taking care of myself now than spending craploads of money on medicare when I’m 60.

Signed,
The Fragile and Out-of-Shape Oldie

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-662516185182553355