By Marvin Casiano
Part III
(For Part II, click here)
Many wondered how long this fad of health consciousness would last. I even got the question “Are you sure you want to do this? Seems like it’s just way too hard to do.”
I discovered that there are 2 types of people that care about you.
Ones that don’t want to see you fail and ones that want to see you succeed.
Literally they both mean the same thing but there is a profound difference in the way they support you.
My wife set aside time and space to do my workouts and even made sure we got all the errands done in time to be able to work out every night. My friend who let me borrow her TV series also bugged me about how much pop I drank and encouraged me to join their ball hockey team – despite me being a 240 pound pylon. She meant it in a supportive caring way for which I am forever grateful.
The others that cared seemed to wait for the opportunity to mention how hard it was going to be if I failed.
The path to healthy weight loss success was not a particularly smooth one. I had injured my legs which sidelined me from working out for a few weeks. My replacement for pop was canned green tea which I later found out had just as much sugar as pop – so I had to quit that too.
It was a particularly hot summer the year I decided to do this and you wouldn’t believe how tantalizing a cold Pepsi sweating from being pulled out of the ice cooler would have been.
Filipino food is not particularly supportive of my health initiative and the community looks at you weird or offended for turning down their offer of rice.
I tried a video workout series promising me a beach body only to find that the recipe book included with it was more important than the tuck jumps. That is if and only if you bought their special ingredients and protein powder.
No, I did not get any jaw dropping before and after photos from that insanity. The before was the same as the after. Would I ever lose weight? I found that my perseverance would be thoroughly tested. I placed myself in the mindset that these were only setbacks to learn from and not failures to stop me completely.
The results started to visibly show at 192 pounds.
I was totally addicted to the results I was getting and started to refine the goal learning more and more along the way.
At 155 pounds now, I am starting to gain the weight but in muscle instead and the goal has changed now to be more about appearance. I know more about the caloric and nutritional value of food and that food is not the enemy that I previously thought it was. I have learned how to work out properly and not work out to injury.
Patrick Marvin Casiano
I am an Electrical Engineering Graduate of the University of Calgary who dedicates his livelihood to applying technology for solving problems. I am fortunate to have landed a career doing what I do as a hobby with the motivation to take care of and support from my loving wife Ronalyn and three boys, Isaiah, Lucas and Arthur. I have recently embraced a healthy lifestyle reaping the benefits of positive changes. Exchanging and acting upon ideas that solve problems are a guiding principle in how I interact with people.
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