Track Ton’s Tummy - an intro and history

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 

Weight has never been an issue in my family.  Not that eating healthy and living an active life is natural in our family, I guess it's just a genetic predisposition.  Our eating habits haven't exactly been healthy at all.  Growing up, our meals consisted mainly of fried food such as fish and porkchops as well as canned and processed goods such as ham, vienna sausage, corned beef and sardines.  We've also always been avid fans of junk food, especially chocolates, and softdrinks.  We don't eat a lot which I guess could have worked in our favor to mitigate at least the weight gain, but our diet wasn't very kind on our cholesterol levels.  As far as I know, my father has high blood pressure, my brother had to start drinking medicine before he was thirty to reduce his cholesterol level and, just last year, my annual medical results came out with very alarming results.  I was even prescribed some medicine to help reduce my cholesterol. We're also quite lucky that neither heart disease nor cancer run in our families - either that or they just died really early for these diseases to develop.

In terms of physical activities, life at home is pretty lethargic.  I don't do chores but even if I did, I doubt it would make such a big impact.  From birth all the way up to mid-high school, I was rather chubby with some fluctuations.  As a kid in elementary, my main activity was sipa which I would play almost everyday for hours right after school.  I was a bit of a loner, which I still am, so I didn't really play a lot of social sports like basketball.  I also wasn't as good then as the other kids who had matured physically much earlier than I did.

I started out highschool as plump as I was in elemetary but had more opportunities for physical activities.  I was about 154 cm and probably about 56 kgs.  I grew to about 160 cm by the second year and had started playing and training competitively for Tae Kwon Do up to three times a week, at least two hours each session.  I started looking more and more lanky as I grew taller.  By senior year, I was already 169 cm but only weighed 65 kgs.  That was also the time I learned to love basketball, so much so that I literally played everyday right after class.  If time permitted, I would play during lunch and even recess.

I continued Tae Kwon Do through to college up to the second year.  By then, I had started playing basketball more often than Tae Kwon Do to the point that I would schedule my classes with as much free time for basketball as possible.  I also finally grew to my current height of 173 cm and weighed in at 70 kgs, which is still considerably light.

HIGHSCHOOL/COLLEGE PICTURES TO BE INSERTED HERE

Everything went downhill as soon as I started working.  It was slow at first since I was able to maintain some physical activity, and possibly because I commuted everyday.  I first worked as a management trainee for a large multinational shipping company where there was a lot of travel involved.  It was during one of my trips that I learned how to really drink.

At that point, I was still really really thin

The next series of pictures shows what I really did in those travels.

RECENT HISTORY 

I now weigh in at a whopping 80 kgs.  I've been going to the gym irregularly since graduation, so that might explain some of the poundage I gained but it's very clear, especially on my face, that I've gained weight significantly since. These are just some of the more recent pictures.

January 2007 at 82 kgs

December 2006 at 82 kgs

I gained the most weight in 2005 when I spent seven weeks in London with hardly any physical activity combined with lots of carbohydrates in the form of potatoes, weekends spent travelling and eating, weeknights drinking, etc., etc.  The following pictures document my first and last weeks.

This is me on my first day and first week in London, June 2005

This is me on my last week in London, July 2005.

See the difference?  For sake of comparison, the below pictures are able to show the very dramatic difference. 

November 2004, still fairly thin

December 2004

March 2005

March 2005.

This is right post-London, when I was at my heaviest.  Possibly around 84 kgs.

I immediately began playing sports again as soon as I returned to Manila.  I suspect having gained as much 6 kgs in just those 7 weeks.  I made some progress since then but it has fluctuated because of the irregularity of my physicaly activities.

Look at that tummy!

These are November 2005 in Kuala Lumpur.

This is December 2005

This is March 2006, in Hongkong

Nov/Dec 2006 at Piedra… a litte fat here too.

And, as they say, the rest is history.