In the Words of My Dad ... "You need to reduce"

There's this thing that I call the "Raymundo" curse.  What is it?  Well it's the fact that once you reach a certain point, the weight gain starts and that sexy body that everyone loved through high school is no longer there.  I think the curse hit me when I was a sophomore in high school ... so it came a little early for me, at least that's when it started.

It's happened to other family members, but there have been those fortunate enough to stay away from the curse completely, while others have been able to battle their way back from that curse.  

During college years I was able to maintain and keep to my 180-190 pound range.  With little to no working out I was able to maintain this for a few years ... but it snowballed from there.  With my mother passing away one of my many defense mechanisms came up ... it was to eat.  The amount of weight I had gained in the months after her death I'm not really sure of, but all I know was that when there was food, I was there too, so food was never lonely when I was around.  Even if I just ate, I'd welcome more food to come my way.

This weight gain continued until I hit about 235 ... yeah you read that number right!  I was 235 for the good part of the middle of 2008.  Usually when I go through tragic moments in my life that will increase so easily, but in September I was actually able to get away from the curse!  Triumph, for once in my life!

Going through a break up I found myself unable to eat.  Yes, this is a true story, for those of you who know me, this is extremely hard to believe but I really couldn't eat, no matter how much I wanted to.  Whenever I would be around food and wanted to eat, after two bites at most I started to feel nausiated to the point of not eating anymore.  This got really bad where I was only able to eat two spoon fulls of rice and ulam a day for about a month.  A crash diet in the worst of ways, and unvoluntary too.  

There were parties going on where the most I could do was smell the food, what a tragic time where I wasn't able to enjoy in the many feasts that were going on.  Even a short trip to California didn't fix it for me, I wasn't able to eat that wonderful Caliornia goodness.  Jack in the Box and Royal Mandarin definitely missed me.

In the span of about a month and a half I was able to lose 35 pounds.  Almost one pound a day ... and I was still alright physically, no dizziness or fainting.  I dropped to 200 pounds for the first time in a long time.  Here I was content to keep this weight and maybe I could go a little bit lower!?  Do I dare try and was it too much to do?!

After the regular meals started again I was actually able to maintain the 200 pound mark.  My clothes fit me better, I had less of a gut when I sat down, I started to turn some heads on the street (ya know the deal!), I started to play sports again and I wasn't winded running up the stairs on the subway!  Definitely an improvement from where I was healthwise.  I even joined three or four different volleyball leagues and it did me well.  The lowest I got was about 195 but it would usually stay at the 200 pound marker.

Introduce Holy Week 2009 ... here is where the Raymundo curse decided to hit me hard.  It was more of Lent 2009 than just the Holy Week.  The weeks leading up to Holy Week I was going out and eating food that I really had no business eating, you can tell from the reviews on my blog.  I wasn't reviewing salad places, they were burger joints, chinese food, and whatever else you can think of that would make you smile from the pure unhealthiness of the food.  I thought it had peaked when I went to Cherry Valley ... but I was wrong, so wrong.  The trip to Cali was supposed to be a spiritual one, and it was, but the curse took hold of me.  The only day from that week long trip that I didn't eat a burger was during Good Friday, but the other days were filled with burgers, chinese food, hot dogs, ice cream, soda, more burgers and chinese food.  It was just filled and so was my stomach.  

The weight that I gained was invisible to me until I got back to NY.  Here I am going through vidoes from the trip and I see myself on Easter Sunday huge as a ball!  I did weigh myself when I got back home, but it said that I was only 209 pounds ... so about a nine pound trip to Cali, not bad I thought.  I'll just play some more volleyball and eat less.  But how can you eat less with a tray of Salt and Pepper Chicken Wings in the fridge!?!?!?  How I ask!?  It's not as great as when you have it fresh, but it's still good!  Crack chicken is crack chicken to an addict.

Today was another losing day for a diet, I thought I would start today by just eating soup and rice.  That quickly turned into another fantasy, it turned into a foodfest for me.  First breakfast that my dad cooked, then Ikea for more food ... here is where we actually loaded up on food and came a wake up call.  Walking through Ikea, there was a scale on the floor (I believe that this scale was put there by God Himself to tell me to stop eating so much), I confidently walk on the scale waiting for the 210 to come around ... and around it came, and went.  It kept on going ... up to 220 pounds.  I'm not sure if this was wrong or not ... but my dad tried it out and he said it was wrong because it was ten pounds over what he knows his weight to be.  But with that explanation ... he was with me the whole trip so him gaining ten pounds is not out of the question whatsoever!  That was not the end of the day as I tried to eat soup and rice for dinner ... but the chicken just called my name so loudly that resistance was futile.  

Here I sit, shirtless and typing away seeing my belly come up again and my moobs (man boobs) and stomach forming sort of what would look like a chubby bear with big cheaks.  The Raymundo curse has his me a number of times already and I think that Dudoy is next on it's list.  I hope it moves on already from me and goes to him so that I can "start" my diet again.  I don't have a magic number that I want to hit but I do want to go under the 200 that I was just a few short weeks ago.  The summer if coming up and I don't want to be sexy ... I just want to be sexier because everyone already knows that I am sexy. 

Diet here I come to fight off the Raymundo curse, I'm just not sure if the diet can win.  I hope it doesn't take another tragic event in my life for me to lose the weight and win the fight.  So ... I need to reduce.

+ mon

Back to the Reality

Ahhhh yes I'm back in NY, I landed yesterday around 5:30am and it's that "horrible" feeling of coming back from a nice "vacation."  Going to Cali wasn't a vacation when I go during Holy Week, it's time spent with the other BNP people from all over the world and it's definitely a great way to jump start that spiritual part of your life and is always a great experience. 

The day started out with us landing in JFK and the rain welcoming us back to NY.  One of the worst parts of being at the airport is waiting for checked-in luggage!  I don't check luggage in but I had to wait for everyone else that had their bags checked.  That's the worst when you're sitting there just waiting for the belt to start spinning ... and it's even worse when your luggage just happens to be one of the last ones to come out of that chute.  Here it is about 6am now and the belt starts, people are crowded around it shoulder to shoulder waiting for their bags to come.  I find it funny how some people stand about 10 feet away from the belt and hope to snag their bag up when it comes out.  There was one guy who had that hope ... as his bag came out of the chute he seems it and instantly bounces up from sitting against the wall.  Now his bag is on the belt and as he's slowly walking parallel to it there is a wall of people in his way until he finally finds that small opening, just big enough to get his hand through.  It was with his skills that he was able to grab one of the straps on his duffle bag ... but now comes another problem!  He has to pull the bag out of that small opening ... while other bags are still coming and about to push his bag further down.  Sounds like a video game huh???  Now the success of this plan lies in how heavy his bag is and how strong he is.  If he's not that strong and his bag is too heavy for him to pull with three or four fingers on the strap, then he loses.  His bag will get swept away with the other bags and he'll have to wait for it to come back around.  But fortunately for him the combination of his strength and weight of his bag was perfect and he was able to snag his bag and pull it out of that small opening from the wall of people.

We all know that feeling of taking a "nap" because we're so tired but then when we wake up from that short sleep we feel so much worse!  It was about 6:30am when we got home and I changed real fast into house clothes in hopes of getting some sleep in my bed for an hour or two ... but saw what became of my room for the past week.  A bad part of "vacationing" for me is that when I leave Shadow (my dog) alone, I think he gets mad at me ... either that or he just has some problems with his butt.  He greeted me as happily as he could when I came in the door, but when I looked into my room, I saw what he had been doing for the past week.  He was virtually alone except when my brother was there feeding him, so there was no one to take him out to do his business when nature called.  I won't go into detail but if you want to know what it was like, it's similar to the movie Dumb and Dumberer.  That scene when younger Lloyd was in the bathroom with a Hersey bar in his back pocket and it melted on the radiator.  The chocolate went everywhere and when the father (Bob Sagat) later went into the bathroom he saw the chocolate everywhere but thought it was something else and all you could hear him yelling was that "he sh*t everywhere!  ... Look what he did he sh*t all over the wall!"

I ended up sleeping on the rug in the living room and couldn't fall asleep for a while, I wish I just got up and started cleaning up instead of trying to knock out.  But I did end up falling asleep and woke up around 10am and had to be at work by 9:30am.  Woke up with that feeling of "damn I wish I didn't sleep" but somehow made my way to work.  I don't even remember what happened at work ... the day went by and I had volleyball that night but wasn't sure if I was going to make it.

Going home on the train, you know you're tired when you knock out immediately after sitting down.  Also, when you wake up because your face is cold from the drool dripping down your chin and down your neck.  Yes I was drooling ... again.  Ended up missing my stop and the only reason I woke up was because I had one big snore and it made me jump to see that I passed my stop. 

At home I cleaned up the mess in my room and ended up weighing myself ... it wasn't surprising to see the results.  I knew that I had gained some weight during the trip and it was about eight or nine pounds, you'll find out why later with all the food that we ate while there.  So I had to go to volleyball to try and work some of this new poundage off! 

Back to the daily grind ... wishing I was in Cali or going back soon.  Now I have more time to blog, blogon!

+ mon

AFK

I forgot to mention that I'm going to be in California for Holy Week and won't be back to NY until Wednesday, so my entries are going to be limited.  I have some things to post about but I haven't had enough time to put them up yet.  

Hope everyone has a great Easter!  

+ mon