Losing Nalin

Moving to Thailand was a big change for our family. The kids had a new school to attend and new friends to make. Tim had to transform herself from stay at home mom to the second in command of a decent sized company.

My challenges were a little different. While I assumed the primary role of child care giver, the role is a bit different here in Thailand. In the states, Tim would cook, do the laundry, clean the house, as well as spend time with the kids. Here in Thailand, we have a maid to do the cooking and housework. If I need to run out for something, I don’t need to bring all the kids with me; I can let the maid watch them.
Still, while life for me is easy in one sense, it presented its own challenges. I went from living in a country where effectively command the written and spoken language to one where I cannot read at all, and can speak only a little. Not only is the language different, but the Thai culture is so different from that in the U.S. It takes time to adapt to it.

One of the biggest challenges was also one of the greatest opportunities. Prior to coming to Thailand, I had a fairly successful IT career. I left an IT consulting position with BMW Financial Services that put me in the upper percentage of wage earners. The reason that I mention earnings is because it represented a big part of my identity. I saw the fact that I was paid so well as evidence of my value to my company and society in general. It was like when I was in school. I always did very well, and it provided an anchor.

When I got to Thailand, I was no longer the wage earner. Not only did I lose some of my identity, but I suddenly had a lot of extra time. While work was not always exciting, it did fill up a lot of the day. I would have to find something else to fill the time with.

Don’t get me wrong, I was actually looking forward to the free time. I thought about some of the things that I wanted to do, but hadn’t gotten around to doing before. One of the first things that I wanted to do was to learn to cook. I could cook some things already, but I wanted to add to my repertoire. I didn’t want to cook every meal, but rather wanted to be able to cook a nice meal when the spirit moved me.

My success in the cooking endeavor has been mixed. I haven’t learned to make a lot of new dishes, but I did master one new skill. I learned to make pasta from scratch. It was actually pretty easy, although it can be a bit time consuming. When I went back to the U.S. this summer, I picked up a pasta roller to help speed up the process. Rolling it out and cutting it with a knife was not fun. Now I can just make it, roll it out, and slice it with the machine.

The second thing that I wanted to do was to learn to be a better photographer. Before I came here, I bought my first digital SLR camera (Canon XT 350). I’ve learned a lot about photography over the last eighteen months. I replaced my original camera and kit lens with a new camera (Canon 40D) and a handful of high quality lenses. I’ve read books, magazines and websites on how to be a better photographer. Between the better equipment, my research, and practice, I think that I’ve really improved. The photographs that I have taken over the last six months are much better than those I took the year before. I believe that my most recent trip to Sukhothai resulted in my best pictures yet.

I love photography in that it has both a technical and creative aspect. It’s not enough to learn how the camera works and the tricks necessary to get a sharp picture. You need to compose the shot; to decide not only what is included in the picture, but what is left out. I really enjoy trying to take a picture from a different angle than everyone else. I’ve got a long way to go in the creative department, but I’m making progress.

The other thing I like about photography is taking pictures of the kids. It will help me preserve these times not only for myself, Tim and the kids, but also for future generations.

The third thing that I really wanted to do while I was here was to get in shape. Weight has been an issue most of my life. I was chubby as a kid, but I slimmed down quite a bit in high school, largely because of cross country and track. I was fairly sedentary in college and law school, and put on quite a few pounds. I probably weighed around 230 pounds when I graduated from law school. In the summer between law school and starting the PhD program at Boston College, I got in shape. I read Susan Powter’s book on low fat diets and became a believer. In addition to eliminating most of the fat from my diet, I began running again. By late fall, I had lost about 70 pounds and was down to a 32 waist again.

After I left Boston College and began working, my exercise and diet regiment slowly deteriorated. For quite a few years I would diet and/or exercise. I would lose 15 or 20 pounds, but would put it all back on in fairly short order.
As those who saw me when I returned to the U.S. this summer, operation weight loss was hardly a smashing success. In fact, I put on a few more pounds when I was here. Although I rode my bike a fair bit, my exercise regiment could kindly be called inconsistent, and my diet was atrocious. Not only was I not eating healthy food, but I was eating a lot of junk.

I’m actually almost embarrassed to say how large I had gotten. I went to the doctor’s back in May, and I weighed in at 114 kilos. My cloths probably accounted for almost 2 kilos, so that put my actual weight at 112 kilos. For those of you who are not familiar with the metric system, one kilo equals two point two pounds. That’s right; my weight was about 246 pounds. I was wearing a 40 waist to boot. There was no question, I was fat. Actually, fat was far in my rear view mirror; I was obese.

This past October, I started back into the gym again. At that point, I probably weighed close to 110 kilos (242 pounds) I’ve started the workout routine a few times since I’ve been here, but after a few weeks I would stop for some reason. Perhaps I’d get sick or I’d go on vacation and throw off my schedule. So during this iteration of my workout phase, I started off on the rowing machine and occasionally lifted weights. Gradually I added the treadmill into my routine. I was exercising three or four days a week. I was making a little progress, but my diet was still pretty much the same as before.

In mid-November, I was at the club and was talking to James, one of the personal trainers. James is an American from Las Vegas who trains people at the Clark Hatch Club here in Nichada. He’s a good guy, and although I hadn’t hired him, whenever he saw me in the gym, he would give me a word of encouragement. I told Jim that I wanted to slim down and that I was tired of being fat. Jim told me that in addition to the exercise, I needed to change my diet. I remember telling him that I didn’t know if I was willing to do that. He looked at me and said, “You already decided you wanted to do it by asking, why you want to talk yourself out of it.”
I walked out that day somewhat skeptical of dieting.

A day or so later I decided to give it a try. James had recommended eating six or so small meals each day. He talked about not eating a lot of fat and sugar. James actually eats mostly Thai food, but I’m not quite there yet. In addition to the diet, James suggested that I use the Stair Master. He said that it was a much better workout than any other cardio machine they had.

I started off exercising fifteen minutes on the Stair Master and another ten or fifteen on an elliptical glider. At first, fifteen minutes was pretty difficult. While not as hard as running, it made me work. It was a much more vigorous workout than the rowing machine, elliptical glider or even the tread mill. I really do not classify using the treadmill as running. I don’t think the efforts are even comparable.

Gradually I increased the time on the Stair Master to thirty minutes, and added swimming to my routine. I started off swimming a few laps, and worked my way up to swimming one kilometer each day. That’s ten full lap in an Olympic size pool. Currently I work out and swim five or six days a week. I had not done a lot of swimming in the last few years, but it’s really nice to be able to swim year round. About six weeks into my workout, my knee started to bother me. I visited an orthopedist who said that there was basically nothing wrong with it, but to avoid exercised that put a lot of stress on the knee. I saw swimming as a great low stress cardio workout.

I’ve really made an effort to control what I eat. I have cut out a lot of junk from my diet. Sometimes I’ll eat stuff that’s not healthy, but it’s in moderation. Instead of eating half or even a whole pizza, I might have two slices. I try not to eat after eight in the evening (although tonight I did for some strange reason). I have actually started eating a lot of sushi.

Within a few weeks of exercising and controlling what I ate, I started to notice some results. I started to lose weight at a pretty decent rate. My waist size didn’t change much at first, but my stomach become noticeably smaller. The shirts in my closet that had been too small began to fit. By mid-December, I was down to 103 kilos. In mid-January my weight was sitting at about 97 kilos. Now I’m between 91 and 93 kilos; just a few pounds over 200.

So in just over three months, I lost twenty kilos; over forty-four pounds. That is Nalin’s approximate weight. I lost an entire child. I lost Nalin.

It’s just the last few weeks that I’ve noticed my waist size changing. I now am wearing size 36 pants, and have punched new holes in all of my belts. I actually bought a pair of size 34 shorts, and I can wear them, but I need to lose a bit more before they “fit”. I’ve been doing some of that lately; buying clothes that are a little too small and “working out” my way into them.

I’m quite pleased with my progress, although I’m not yet at my goal. I want to lose another ten or fifteen kilos, and drop my waist another two to four inches. When I am ready to stop losing and start maintaining, I want to have lost a Jacob.

I’ve kept my exercising out of my blog because I wanted to make sure that I was going to stick with it. Sometimes I wanted to blog about something that might have happened in the gym or that was in some way related to my weight loss plan, but I resisted. I guess if it turned out to be a failure, then I wanted it to be a private one. Even now, part of me wants to hold off, because despite the weight I’ve lost, I’m still too fat.

I decided to go ahead and blog about it because I am confident that I am going to continue this for quite a while. I enjoy working out each day. I feel better, and have more energy. Before I started this, I could actually feel it walking up and down the stairs. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t panting and out of breath, but I could feel my legs.

While I could decide when to share my workout efforts from the people back home, people here noticed. Tim was the first, noticing that my belly was getting smaller. She was probably the only person that I told that I was doing this besides personal trainer at the gym. Other people at the kids’ school have noticed the weight loss and commented on it. It’s nice to hear. What really encourages me though are the results.

At some point I might post some pictures. I don’t know that I have any really good “before” pictures. When I get really fat, I don’t really go out of my way to take my picture taken or even to get on a scale. That’s part of the reason that I don’t really know my maximum weight. I know I weighed almost 250 at one point, but it could have been higher.

My big challenge now is lifting. I have been lifting off and on over the last three months. The issue is that I don’t really love lifting, so it’s easy to omit it from my routine. I find it easy to forgive myself for not lifting when I just spent the entire last hour working my cardio. Still, I need to work it into the routine.
Well, going to head to the gym soon. Lately, I go between 8:30 and 9:00 am. A lot of the moms who go right after they drop off the kids at school have cleared out by then, and the adult swim class vacates the pool at 9:00 am.