this year in review



it started off like any other year. still smoked about 2-6 cigarettes a day.... i didn't agressively try to hide the fact that i smoked, but i still made an effort so that people that didn't know i smoked still thought that way. i had quit for a while, but i started up again sometime during november, and it just stuck. a friend visited from torrance, and all it took was that 1 to get me hooked on it again. that's the power of nicotine. all the things that they tell you how addictive nicotine is even compared to heroin is true.



year 2001 ended without a bang. all of my friends were away from san diego. my parents lived in a business stucture they owned...and wasn't a place i was willing to stay at. so i decided to just stay home alone for new years. i was reading harry potter, chamber of secrets at the time. as new years day drew near, i had tuned to the new years countdown coverage on various channels on TV. then i noticed that a party was going on behind my apartment at the Aventine in the HYATT hotel. this was being covered on one of the channels as well. then the fireworks started. and i could see little sparks from my balcony. but the buildings around it were covering most of it. i had a smoke and realized how depressing and lonely this new years celebration was for me. i felt empty as the new year started. i went back to reading. finished harry potter 2, about 8am on new years day.



january. i had been living with 3 other people, tommy, raymond, and casey. it was really fun living with them. the living environment felt like the sacred college life i had once had during 1st and 2nd year of college even though it had been six months since i had graduated.



then came the end of january. i'm not sure when or where my interest in DDR (dance dance revolution) came from, but it was just another monkey on my back at the time. it was something i wanted to try and get better at. so during one boring day, my roomates and i decided to buy the game. i'm not sure how much i attribute quitting smoking to DDR, but i haven't smoked since i started playing. my initial decision not to smoke, at least for a while, was so that i can build my endurance with DDR....even maybe lose some weight.



feb. the progress with DDR was slow. i couldn't play anything more than 1-2 foot songs for 1-2 weeks. then i started barely passing 3 foot songs. 4 foot songs still felt like something really impossible for me to even attempt. this month, i played DDR about 6 times a week, 1-2 hours at a time. i wanted to get really good at it. but it was going to be a long road ahead. prior to starting to play DDR, i had never developed lower body coordination. even being a 23 year old, legs and feet to me were only meant for going from one place to another at various speeds, and catching yourself so you don't trip and fall.



march. still played ddr just as much, and my endurance had noticeably increased. and i had lost some weight. definitely raised my metabolism. this was a very important month for me. with my raised metabolism, i actually wanted to do more physical activities. it was as much as a psychological change as it was a physical one. so i picked up rollerblading. i also liked the results with the weight loss from DDR, and knowing i had just barely scratched the surface, i decided to start working out. i had no clue on how the body responds to exercise. i thought, the harder you work, the more calories you burn. so i tried very hard biking every day at the gym in my apartment. little did i know i wasn't being very effective at all.



i also heard some bad news. the roommates that i had that i really liked living with all for various reasons were leaving san diego (except raymond who moved into his uncles place). tommy, upon hearing the news that he would have to move out of san diego, had decided he should get his most out of san diego, so we decided to eat out every day. nutritionally, this set me back quite a while. i'm not sure how much damage i did for the next 6 weeks, but it really impared progress on the weight i wanted to lose. had i known what i know about nutrition now, i would have never ate out like that. but in a way, it also fit perfect into how i do things in life. i like to do things in excess. so for me, because i had eaten out so excessively, it would help me be more dedicated to my new healthy diet. so along with the biking i was doing almost daily, i started lifting because travis informed me that i can burn more fat if i pack on muscle. asking travis 101 questions about health and nutrition a day, i started making gradual improvements to my activity and diet hoping to make a permanent change to my health and fitness.



april. i was still very motivated on physical improvement. i kept up with my work out routine. i tried to keep my goals realistic. i knew it was going to be a long road ahead so i just said to myself i would only do it for a few months, and then see from there. i did not focus on all the hard work it was going be to get to where i wanted to be. i just aimed on keeping up with the routine for as long as i could without breaking it once. it was an important for me not to give into missing out on working out on a work-out day, even days when i was sick. my motivation fueled this devotion, because i knew from myself that if i miss one day, it will quickly lead to failure. this is what i come to know about myself from my previous attempts at trying to dedicate myself to doing something. i also began a gradual change in eating much healthier. i tried to out less and eat more frequently. but i was still not very informed on how our bodies process the food. so i went on a no fat, diet consisting mostly of protein. did i follow some recommendations? not really. i just eliminated most of the fat from my foods, and just ate incredible amounts of protein. little did i know that cutting out the fat was a really dumb thing to do. at least it was a step up from eating greasy junk food on a daily basis.



another thing that happned during april was finding out that A&E cancelled the show, that became to be my most favorite show ever, NewsRadio. after realizing how important it was to me, i went searching hoping to find some episodes off the net....i really didn't know what to expect. then it became a journey in the next 3 months to find a whole complete collection of all the episodes. throughout the whole time, i always had doubts that the collection will ever be completed. main reason being it was not a widely recognized show. the episdoes didn't even exist when we, me and this guy on irc named CaseZero, started collecting them. we just hoped for that the episodes would reveal them selves, and concentrated on getting the episodes that existed. and by the end of it, we had the complete collection of episodes. NewsRadio to me is more than just a show. it was more than a great emsemble of characters brought together by a great casting crew. there needs to be a stroke of luck involved along with the genius that is needed to make chemistry like this happen in a show. i have seen every newsradio episode countless times. for a while i left it running when i went to sleep, and it was running when i woke up. like family they are always there when i slept, and always there when i wake up. i don't watch the episodes as much these days...but it is something that will have endless replay value for as long as i can see it.



may. i was continuing to work out in the small gym downstairs but i learned that working out with freeweights is the next step up. so i bought a work out bench, and moved from working out with machines at the small gym downstairs to working out with free weights at home. i played ddr to warm up for 12 minutes before i started working out. working out with a bench at home helped me eventually get familiar with working out with weights so i don't look like a total weakling benching just the bar when i eventually start working out with rimac. i was very motivated at the time. i couldn't wait till the next time i worked out because it meant that i'll be that much closer to achieving my goals.



as the end of may rolled around, i realized i had to get cracking on finding a new roommate so i don't have to move out of la jolla. i usually find that worrying about this stuff always proves to be useless. i don't feel that i am being irresponsible when i say this, but stuff like this always works out for me. it's always been like that for as long as i can remember. so i have learned not to worry. but i finally got around to trying to find a roommate. and even though i knew not to worry, as the deadline drew near, i became very stressed. if it weren't for wei, my current roommate, i don't know where i would be right now. i really like living in la jolla and i hope to live here as long as i can. but if i had to live alone, it meant i would have to move out of la jolla because i wouldn't be able to afford ~$1000 for rent a month. so approaching the dealine, i was at a stress level i had never experienced before. even moret han the stress i endured during my college days. i wasn't sleeping well. and when wei decided he was going to move in, that was one of the biggest boulders off my back.



june. i started finding cardio activites outside the gym. went running a few times around la jolla colony with raymond. beginning of this month also marked the beginning of trying out varios supplements to build mass, and lose fat. they are not all bad. the supplements i started out with (creatine and glutatmine), i still take today. i can't say the same for all the products i have tried as i will get into later. i also started some consulting work on the side to make some extra cash. unfortunately, my focus and time for consulting work was non existant. i quickly learned how much i hated consulting work. i also felt like i was cheating my official job at ucsd of my loss of attention to my regular duties. more importantly at the time, i didn't want to lose focus on fitness, so i pretty much gave up consulting after a few excruciating nights in a row. at the end of june, all the roommates had moved out and i gave up rollerblading.



july. i was finally ready for rimac. going to rimac for me was a bit of a task. it was important for many ways that i started working out first at home, then gradually moved to working out at rimac. when i saw the need for me to improve my workouts outweigh the convienience of working out, it was time to start working out at a real gym. diem and wendy joined me and we all helped eachother be just a little more dedicated than we would have been if we were there our selves. i also got a body fat scale. and this helped me to start understanding how my body responds to exercise by measuring my body fat. i wish i had gotten it sooner. if i had to make a guess, my body fat was at about 25% at the beginning of january. and the lowest i got it to read so far this year is 14.8%. the scale does read pretty high. with the calipers i got read 10.5%. whatever it may be, i have defintely made a significant improvement. as i am writing this, i am in the process of bulking up, and my body fat percentage has gone up some, but i know that i have a total control of my body now, so it's more of a question of much i want to lose, rather than the question of if i will be able to lose body fat or not. by now, i felt like i had total control of how i wanted my body to be rather than wishing my body would change.



august. i went backpacking for the first time, and started doing more activities that i always shunned away from because i never felt like i would enjoy. everything was going great. i felt like i was making some serious positive changes to my life. then the journey to totaly health and fitness took a major detour the end of this month. i had met a friend of a friend of a friend that was taking this supplement called hydroxycut. from what he was saying, it seemed too good to be true. blinded by the promise of quicker results, i ignored all the warnings and probably got close to doing some serious and permanent damage to my body.



september. this was a dark month for me. all the health gains i made went out the window as i was taking hydroxycut. ephedra works well for some people. and it can be fatal for some. blood pressure rose from the first day i started taking it. and i was foolish enough to increase my dosage as the bottle recommended without taking note the side affects i was having. i realize now how foolish i was taking hydroxycut. i'm glad i had chosen to come off of it before anything bad happened. i'm pretty sure people were a little bit concerned at the time because i had not been acting like myself. this month was also a test of my dedication to the gym. when the quarter started, trying to work out monday evenings after work proved to be damn near impossible. some days of the week, i would get to the gym. warm up, then go home because i couldn't find a bench. this meant i had to come back late in the evening stripping me away from any free time i had during the week days. still i was able to tough it out till it became acceptable to work out at reasonable hours.



october. during my trip on to vegas, my body was at its capacity with the abuse i was putting onto it with the supplements. wellness class started and that marked the end of my hydroxycut/ephedra experience. from my experience, i would not recommend it for anyone. the risks are not worth it. being so exhausted from supplements, i decided to ditch all supplements this month except the glutamine in my protein shake, which i knew to be safe. i learned a lot from the wellness class this month, but a lot of the information was all the information i had gained since march, so i was expecting just a little bit more from the class. but i still managed to learn a lot in the class. and got the ball rolling on getting me to try different exercises, cardio machines, and routines on a regular basis. because of this class, i have been successful in making changing up my routine every 6-8 weeks.



november. with the wellness class in progress, all my focus was on health this month and trying to get back on track with what i had lost the month before as a result of hydroxycut. i was at the gym 6 times a week. and really got a taste of what overtraining feels like. the more harder you try, the more it works against you. i also realized that working out 6 times a week and only eating ~2000 calories a day meant i was eating far too few calories day...probably burning 1000 more calories a day than i was consuming. this lead to a lot of my muscle being burned off for energy along with the fat. oops. i never really wanted to be skinny. but i got to experience it for a short while this month. i didn't like what i saw.



december. i had gone from a size 36 waist to 29 this year, and lost 25lbs. even though people say i changed over night, as you can see, it was a gradual process with a lot of dedication and endurance of everything physical and psychological.



if i had followed the basic principal, "everything in moderation" from the beginning, i would have not made so many mistakes along the way. that applies to eating for enjoyment and eating for health. and it also applies to finding time to rest and relax, to going to the gym on a regular basis.



the two things that i have to give most credit to in making such a big improvement this year is DDR and the information that travis patiently shared about health, fitness, and nutrition. take one of those two variables out, and it could have been just another year without much progress in life. i could still be smoking. and i could still be just wishing i was something different rather than knowing how and actually making it happen. i had accepted who i was a long time ago and found peace with that, but i had not realized that it doesn't mean you should not work hard to improve who you are. as you can see, a change in health and fitness for me has been a psychological change as much as it has been a physical one. so once again, endless thanks to travis emmel. and konami for making a game that has been a bridge to a better life.



i had an epiphanie writing the last blog engry for 2002. the way i have been living my life all this time.....do everything excessively....is what has gotten me into all the negative things that has happened this year. but it has lead me to a lot of things i thought i would never be capable of. this is a big part of who i am and how i function. i not saying everything should be done in moderation. it is trying to find balance in doing something excessive (if driven by passion, motivation, dedication, devotion, etc.) and having self control to do it in moderation. this way i think i can be as dedicated, but do it in moderation to where i can do something for a long term, and find more long term joy and rewards in every thing i want to do. i don't know how to balance the two, but this will be the starting theme going into 2003. the goal will be to find the formula that works for me.



i have a few new years resolutions. rather it being specific goals, it they are more realistic and general ones.

1. be open to trying new things or retry things i have given up on in the past as long as it is not bad for the mind or body, and in moderation.

2. put more focus into my job.

3. find a regular sleeping schedule. with this one change, i can benefit on just about everything that i'm trying to accomplish



along with that, i hope to continue what i'm doing and started to do right, and correct what i'm doing wrong. and in this process i hope to further knowledge of how i function, learn, and experience things the way i wish to see myself doing them.



This new years eve looks like it's gonna be a good one compared to the one i had last year. i'll be sleeping over to watch the rose parade on new years day.



I wish everyone including myself a Happy New Year! Let's make it another great one.