I was talking to the wife about giving our leftover Nutrisystem food to the church for the homeless. I had already dropped off one unopened box last month. It had shipped out before we cancelled with Nutrisystem. I'm not going to knock them per se. I did lose weight with their food, but I got tired of eating it.

So in the pantry we have 2 months of food left and I was going to give it to the church, but I decided that I'm going to finish it off. As I'm not working this quarter, we're going to have less money and in general, we should be eating out less.

Just before Christmas I hoped on the scale. It read 265. This is the biggest I had ever been in my life. This is also partly influencing my desire to finish off the Nutrisystem. It irks me to be giving away hundreds of dollars worth of food.

I just got done commenting on a site about being Filipino, when lo and behold there is an article on Blog Rush by a Filipino blogger. What is it with the Filipinos? Are there more Filiplnos per capita blogging? Or is it that they're blogging from their cell phones? It's common knowledge that Filipinos are fiends at texting, presumably to avoid costly overseas phone calls.

Now I happen to be Filipino, but I don't consider myself typical. No other Filipino influenced me to write this blog. I was not culturally coereced nor was I Catholically guilted into writing it. This blog is purely a creative and hopefully financially profitable outlet.

Speaking of profit, I was thinking about my picture with the Ferengis. I think I need a better photo. I do like that I was in the shot with a couple of them, but it's not a good photo. Plus the Star Trek experience has changed to a 'Borg' theme and I may not be able to find any available Ferengis.

Which leads me back to concept of weight loss. I went to the Star Trek Experience several years ago and there was a fat guy in a Starfleet uniform working the turbolift. His pot belly pressed out obscenely against the synthetic material. It sounds crazy but I wanted to kick his ass for disgracing the uniform.

Fat people do not belong in jumpsuits. Someone should have told Syd Mead that in the future they might not be able to eliminate obesity. But I digress...getting back to this fat turbolift operator. I was really offended that he was in uniform. Having grown up in the military for much of my life, I have certain expectations of the armed forces. I realize that Starfleet is a ficticious entity, but if I'm going to throw down my hard earned dollar, I want to be fully immeresed in the experience. This guy's beer belly was ruining my fantasy. I couldn't enjoy the rest of the day. The only thing that made that whole experience worthwhile was the two Klingons who took the time out of their busy day to hang with us.

Anyhow, if you're going to have a job that has expectations of appearance, you had better damn well meet those expectations. My fat ass may not be able to find a frisbee, but I would never disgrace the uniform.

{mosgoogle left}For the past several weeks I've been playing tennis with Kevin.  Now that the summer is over we can actually play without being burned alive in 110 plus degree heat.  I had been doing some treadmill for cardio and lifting weights.  Like I said I had a hard time with the bench press trying to lift the weights that I had set up when I quit a while back.  I'm realizing that I should probably take some weight off and work my way back up to what I was lifting.  Over the weekend I felt like I had torn something in my right arm.  But today, i was good.  The weather this morning was spectacular and we played longer.  I'm still hesitant to run full out as my knees are still dogdy with my weight as it is.  I am hitting better and harder.  In fact I broke my strings on one really sweet slam.  The thing I like I about tennis is that when you hit the ball, you can feel whether you hit it right or hit it wrong immediately.  Back in high school, playing tennis was awesome because, I felt like my body didn't matter.  As if the purpose of my body was to get my arm in the right place. 

Nowadays, I'm not as quick as I used to be, but in my mind I still feel like I'm not that far off.  It seems like I'm hitting better because I not moving as well as I used to.  I'm not at the point where my body motion has fully moved into my subconsious, but I'm getting there. 

Overall I'm feeling better.  When lifting I can feel my muscles tightening up again and it feels like there's some armor under all these layers of fat.  I'm looking forward to this coming year and continuing to shed pounds.  I haven't lost much so far, but I feel less malaise.

{mosgoogle right}

Got on the scale again the other day. I'm down to 256 lbs. Been doing more time on the treadmill and trying to finish off the nasty Nutrisystem leftovers to make more room in the cabinets. I'm finding I can put on a DVD and watch half the movie while working out and finish off the movie the next day.

I'm keeping thicker sweaters in the weight room so I can wear them while on the treadmill. I tried benchpressing the last amount of weight I had on the rack from when I last started working out and I couldn't even do 3 sets of 10. I guess I had lost that much muscle from working out. That's pretty depressing. Not like I was ever a champion weightlifter, but to realize that I had lost a measurable amount of strength is pretty demoralizing.

Anyhow, after running a few errands, I'm getting back in the weight room.

Speaking of the blind part, I will eventually start posting more art along with a link to my paypal so that if anyone wants to, they can help me fund lasik surgery. I want to see if there are people willing to save me from my own nearly incorrectable astigmatism.

One of the most dramatic things I've witnessed recently among bloggers is massive weight loss. I am 5'10" and I weigh 262 lbs. I need to drop 80 lbs. at least. There have been moments in my life when I realized that I should have done something about my weight sooner. I remember back in the early 90's. I was on the beach in Guam with a bunch of friends playing frisbee(Aerobie) when it went into the water. One of my friends had a camera and was taking pictures.

Weeks later after the pictures were developed I was looking at them and said, "Who's this fat guy helping us look for the frisbee?" It slowly dawned on me that I was the fat guy and I was insulting myself because I didn't recognize myself in a photo.