Seeing things change physically

It's funny, someone I once worked with, described me as a 175lb person in a 300lb suit. He said that in response to me bumping into doorways at work. I think about that comment from time to time. When I first hear those words, I weighed nearly 270lbs. Life seemed at the time to be okay. It wasn't terrific, nor was it bad, just okay.
Before I started in my career field, computer visual effects, I was in good shape. I was nowhere near the weight I mentioned before, but seeing it so long ago, I can not remember the weight I was before I started down my career path. I know that I was not that large. I worked out, not religiously but enough to maintain my weight. You see I was pretty corpulent growing up. I wouldn't consider myself obese by far, but pudgy 'round the edges. As with every boy growing up and being exposed to mass media, you see images of in shape men, and muscular guys etc. I was no different from your every day typical youth seeking to change my appearance. When I eventually reached high school, I still kept my pudgy form. Just like typical teenage boys, I had my pubescent natures, of being afraid to go to the chalk board in fear of "exposing" myself. I eventually made my way to becoming a senior. Amongst other adventures I had in high school, I wanted to at least be able to letter in football.
So there I was summer of '91, practicing at becoming a lineman. I don't think I have ever worked out so hard in my life. Three months of conditioning, and that did not include hell week. I didn't realize it but a lot of my friends noticed a physical change in my appearance, and they commented on it. I felt confidence for the first time in my life about how I looked physically. After graduating high school and eventually attending college, I found myself in the beginnings of a long relationship and my career.

Having started my career with a company called Computer Cafe, a visual effects company, I began my life as an average weight person. I started there as an intern, and wanted to learn and do everything I could to earn my stay. I eventually became a staff person there, working on the company's first full fledged movie. In becoming a staff employee, I stayed late worked late and ate a lot. I noticed that I had not been exercising and that some of my clothes began to fit tighter. I paid no attention to it, as seeing my career was more important. When I began at the Cafe, I was at a 36" waist. Life at home was good too. My girlfriend at the time that lived with me, baked like no other. I brought the baked goodness to work and started to fatten my co workers up too.
Fast forward three years. I relocated to Los Angeles to work for Walt Disney Feature Animation. I got married and settled in. In settling in, I gained even more weight, and keeping with the pattern I established for myself at the Cafe, I worked long hours and ate more. Soon I saw my weight escalating even more, and my waist went to a 40" waist. I started getting disgusted with myself. I had to buy bigger clothes. Bringing the new clothes home, I saw that I had to start cleaning out my drawers of the clothes that no longer fit me. I did however keep some of them with the hopes that I'll make the effort to loose the weight and be able to fit back into them again, but no it never happened.
Fast forward a few more years, and now I was working for a company in Hollywood, Cinesite. A lot of the patterns I began to live by still played themselves out. Not exercising, eating excessively and started to realize that my marriage was miserable, which in turned fueled my eating habits. It wasn't that I was eating like a mad man, it was that I was eating without boundaries. I found myself making excuses to eat whenever I wanted. I justified the cake and ice cream. Hell I had extras at lunch, and had the "comatose" after lunch fatigue.
Well by the end of 2002, I was just absolutely miserable. I had my yearly physical with my doctor. He informed me at that weight of 265 lbs, that if I did nothing to change my life, I will die. I had a failing marriage, and beleaguered body ready to quit on me. My marriage was so bad that my wife, decided to move out and that separation was the best thing for us. Beginning of 2003, she moved out, and I turned to food for comfort. February of that same year, she requested a divorce. I was completely devastated. Food was no longer giving me the comfort I so needed. On top of all that, the parent company of Cinesite, Kodak, decided to close our company. In addition, I was a supervisor on a big name movie, X-men 2. Life seemed to be spiraling out of control. In the short of it, I ended up on a depression diet. For those of you who do not know, it's basically you don't eat for days on end. I must have lost at least a dozen lbs by not eating. When ever I ate, I was nauseous. I could not keep anything down. I was seeing a doctor, and making my necessary attempts at sanity, but still not eating was the primary effect of all this. Seeing as how there was basically two options, live or die, I chose to live, and in doing so I had to change a great many things. Mentally I saw it this way, "there was nowhere but up". So I began my slow journey back to health, mentally and physically.

Over the next 2 years, I found myself back in the gym. I started there first because that was what I remembered the most from high school when I got in shape. I joined 24 hour fitness with a few friends and began going with them o get motivated. It helped. After being laid off from Cinesite, I was hired at Sony Pictures Imageworks. Fortunately for me they had a well equipped gym on site. I continued to work out. In addition, a friend of mine Mark, exposed me to a book called "Body for Life". I did notice how Mark had lost a good amount of weight, and he attributed it to this book. I adopted it's nutrition and workout information and began my path of self-education. I began to notice that my weight was dropping. When I began working out at Sony, my weight was at 256lbs. At last glance of my weight, prior to my separation, my weight was at 294lbs. Not bad. But I had a long way to go.
Over the next year, I became more self-aware of my body, read and learned more about nutrition and exercise. It completely changed how I look at my body, what I ate, and how I worked out. Not to leave my mental state out of this, but at the same time I educated myself about my physically well being, my mental well being was healing and becoming better. I found and surrounded myself with friends and people that would bolster my feelings of becoming better. I saw new relationships develop, come and go, and take with me what I learned and remember all the good things that once was.
By the end of 2004, I joined a halau. For those of you who are Hawaiian illiterate, that's a hula group. And yes, men do dance hula, get educated if you don't believe me! Anyways, I digress. After having joined my halau, I saw that there even more individuals that would bolster a great mental well being. Eventually in June of 2005, my halau had a show called, Ho'ike. My kumu, instructor, informed us kane, men, of our attire for the show. It was a malo. I describe this story in another post of mine, so if you want more details about this story, you can check out the archive. Anyways, having that description of basically just wearing a groin cloth, I decided to embark on yet another journey to get more physically in shape. I enlisted the knowledge of my bodybuilding friends and other individuals educated in fat loss. On top of that, I read more books on the topic. I ended up loosing another 15lbs. To bring my weight down to 205 lbs. In looking back, I had gone from 294lbs. To 205 in over a year and half.
I to this day am continuing to loose more fat weight and gain more muscle weight. I am not looking to compete in bodybuilding, but am interested in at least being able to see my six pack for the first time. We'll see. But I now wear a 34" pair of pants. A far cry from my 48" waist pants don't you think?

All in all, see myself as an ever growing individual that will never cease to learn and grow...

kama

Fun times for all at Mai Tai's

Talk about serendipitous events. I am continually amazed and at the same time bewildered at how the universe seems to unfold in time and relevancy. I mean, I am always learning new things, meeting new people. I welcome and relish the newness life has to offer.
Take for instance my buddy Abraham, or Abe. I've known this guy for how many years. It started with hanging out with his sister Damaris. I've know Dam for almost what 13-14 years now. Well in the process of becoming friends with Dam, I was fortunate enough to make friends with her whole family. Now I have partied and gone places with Abe. I have however not had the fortune of seeing Abe when he went off to college. He played football for St. Mary's in San Francisco. I never did make it up that way. After which this guy got married to a beautiful woman, Evelyn. He joined the U.S. Airforce and is now stationed in Florida. Now that family life is his focus, he and I have not had the fortune of hanging out again. Well as life would have it, it dealt us a hand where we hung out again. Many things have transpired in our lives since last he were together. I was married and since then divorced, and live now in the metropolis of Los Angeles, and being on the opposite end of this vast expanse of "Jebus-land". Abe has made it back to this side of the country to visit family. And he has made it known, that we needed to "kick-it".
I was initially shocked that Abe was returning to the west-coast again. I was excited and exhilarated at the same time. He initially wanted to spend most of his time with his family, which naturally you should. But he made it clear that he wanted to come down my way to Los Angeles, for two reasons. One, was to see his long time friend, Me of course. Second, to finally "party" in L.A. He never had the opportunity to make his way down here to peruse the party scene, nor has he had anyone to browse it with before until now.
As with everyone, you want to do what you can to make things memorable for someone doing something for the first time. I embarked on a short journey to find out what I could do to have a fun time. I had no idea who to call to enlist to find places to go. I figured I would play it by ear. But as fortune would have it, one of my friends, Yoko, told me about this place in Long Beach called Mai Tai's. It's a sister bar/club of one in Honolulu, Hawaii. I thought, what the hell, it would be good to check the is place out. Yoko described this place to be cool and hip, so it would suit our needs. Now our original plan with Abe was to have himself, and two of his friends come down party and crash at my place. But unfortunately his friends were not able to come down. It was going to only be Abraham. But prior to Abraham coming down, his sister-in-law, Angie, also lived in Los Angeles. So we both agreed that we should drag her out and party with us. I also invited Yoko to come out with us to have kind of a "group" thing going on. So as it stood, it was going to be myself, Angie and Abe, and potentially Yoko and a couple of her friends. All of us were going to Mai Tai for the first time, except for Yoko, and we had no idea what was in store for us.
So the night began with a little start time at my apartment where Angie met up with us. From there we headed down to Long Beach. I suggested that we find someplace to eat as none of us had eaten, and seeing that there was some embibing going on, we needed to pad our stomach. We arrive, park, and find the first restaurant we could find, sit and eat. The place wasn't bad at all... pretty good we all agreed. From there we made our way south towards Mai Tai, laughing and making jokes along the way. We arrive a short time later and find our selves greeted by a large Samoan doorman. He of course was asking usfor ID. I was kind of shocked, because for as myself, I sure as hell don't look like I'm 21. But for Angie, double edged sword. I'm sure for her being asked for her ID made her feel young again. Not that she's old, but I'm sure it's still flattering. But of course, she didn't have her ID. What were we going to do? Head back to the truck and get her ID? So I suggested we wait a bit for the line to die down a bit, so I could talk to one of my "polynesian brothers"... Sure enough, the doorman waves us in and we're good!
Upon entering this establishment, it's clear to me that this was no ordinary place. At first glance, there were an awful lot of polynesians, something I'm not used to in L.A. I was very excited to be there. The music was pumping and people were jumping, how freakin cool! I quickly made a once around the club to check out the scene. DAMN there were a lot of polynesians. Okay we're staying. We mosey on up to the bar, order some drinks and make our way outside to get clear of the music. We chat it up the three of us. Sadly though I didn't see Yoko, whom i called earlier to see if she was going to be there. She was saying that her friend was late and that in turn made them late. So we just chilled out and enjoyed the scene.
Ten minutes in I tell Angie that all the security guards are Samoan. She responds with, "how do you know?" To which I tell her, "you can just tell, they're all huge, Samoan guys are just huge"... I suggested to Angie, to tell one of the security guards the phrase, "Talofa lava". She and Abe were very skeptical, and gave me the look of, "are you trying to get my ass kicked?" I assured them that it was perfectly fine. Sure enough, in the veil of inebriation, Angie sees a security guard lumber by and she quick spurts out. "talofa lava!" The security guard, astonished, turns around and says, "Hey yeah! Right on!" A huge grin settles in on Angies face, "I told you" I said proudly. Moments later my cell phone rings, it's Yoko. I answer and she asks, "Where are you?" "Outside..." I respond. "So am I" she answers. I look and sure enough there she is, with her friend Cathy. She makes her way over through the crowd and now it's a Party of Five.
We do the usual aloha pleasantries and found seats and the girls sit and chit chat. Abe and I are still standing and talking. Soon after, two tall ladies pass by us, and I for some reason had a feeling of familiarity pass over me. I look at Abe and give him the same look of familiarity. I tell him that I think I know those two gals that passed by me. I kind of shrugged the feeling off. Moments pass by and I see the two girls on the other side of the patio of where were standing. I look over, and one of them looks over, and she has this huge look of surprise written all over her face. She's pointing at me and then it hits me, I DO know them. See, there's this online community called Myspace, where people can subscribe and havea network of friends based on their immediate network of close friends. Well we three got in touch with each other because of the the hula and polynesian connection/thing. Seeing that this girls is pointing at me, I wave her on to come over and join us. She bolts over with her friend in hand. It's Lisa and Mealii. Our meager beginning of the evening of three just became a fun evening of 7.
Needless to say, the rest of the evening was filled with banter and chit chatting and laughing a jokes and prodding. We had a great time. Two o'clock was soon upon us, and we were all leaving the club. I walked Yoko and Cathy back to their car so the wouldn't be accosted by anyone. They drop me back off by my friends, and we head home. Once home, we kept horsing around. It seems Angie has heightened sense of courage and is enticing Abe and I to wrestle.. . Okay, sure... We'll wrestle. After an hour or two of that and a half dozen rug burns, Angie calls it quits! Yep that's right... You mess with the horns, you get the bull!

Well in the end, Abe was seemed to be completely happy that he came down to see me. And the three of us had a great evening!