As some of you might have known, I’ve been on a diet program under a nutritionist /dietitian friend of mine. It was a quest to lose 10kgs. I also made a request to her, I want to lose these 10kgs without exercise, can it be done? She looked at me and assessed my fats, then she said, Yes. Ok, I thought to myself, no harm trying, and so I signed up for her program in Feb this year.
Some of you might ask why do I want to lose weight? I look perfectly fine. However, what a lot of people don’t know is that my BMI was 25. (I’ve always attributed it to heavy bones)
The truth is, I have never really been of normal weight for the last 20 years. Having been called names all the way till Secondary school, “Fatso, Ah Pui, Fat Fat, pang zi, pang mei, fatugly ….” It was terrible. Alongside with names, I had to endure my form teacher calling my name up year after year to single me out for a check up at the dreaded Ministry of Health. When the teacher called my name, I can hear the hurried whispers of my classmates in the background, “They are calling up all the fat people.”
Do you know what happens at Ministry of Health? They make you go through a urine test, weight test, height test and a fat test. I hated the fat test, where the nurse will take a pair of calipers and pinch the fats on your arms, thighs, stomach like really hard to measure the amount of fats you have on you. After the tests, you’ll be sent to a room with a doctor who will counsel you and tell you that you’ve been putting on weight. Somehow the counselling sessions never made me feel any better, in fact, I never felt worse each time I went through each session.
Of course there was the one story where I met an IRC friend in 1996. Something like a blind date. The moment he saw me, he turned around and started walking away. The naive me thought that he didn’t see me, so I walked quickly towards him. Guess what happened? He broke into a run.
Heh, I’ve so many fat traumas that I can write a book on them. Perhaps one day I would. I gradually put on weight all the way until JC year one where I peaked at 75kgs. Then one day during the start of my December holidays, I had an epiphany. I woke up out of the blue, put on my running shoes and ran 2.4km around the track beside my home. I continued the exercise 3 times a week for 4 weeks and I lost 2kgs. Then my weight started to drop gradually over the course of year and I hit 65kgs. And I stopped there.
I entered Uni and I ballooned up till 67kgs but I kept it under 70kg. It was only when I went to the US that I lost weight till 62kgs. It got really creepy when I graduated from varsity and I saw my weight slowly move upwards.
My last straw came when a friend and mentor of mine kept teasing me about my weight. I wasn’t offended, cause he’s like twice my size and I’m way past those traumas. But I was very present to how I wanted to experience what it is like to be slim once again. Or at least a normal size where I can buy clothes in a shop without the fear of spoiling them. What would that kind of feeling be like? It helped that a friend of mine, EY lost 30kgs under my dietitian friend.
The stars were aligned. Right after my mentor teased me, my dietitian friend happened to be in the room, and so I asked her to help me. That was how I got started.
The diet was interesting, I had enough food to keep me from going hungry, but not overly full. I could eat what I love, just that the portions are regulated. It’s great. I’ve only lost around 5kgs since I started, but I’ve become very aware of how much food my body really needs and I am sensitive to how my body reacts to certain foods.
I was supposed to lose 10kgs in 3 months but my progress is slow because while I am disciplined most of the times, there are bouts of time where my diet gets disrupted. Like going on an overseas trip where I had to eat to entertain my clients. Or going out for dinners with my friends and over-indulging a little. Ok more than little.
However, I’ve survived and managed to lose the 5kg. (5 more to go) I held back on blogging about this as I didn’t want to jinx the progress. But I was inspired to do this entry after I watched the movie, “To be fat like me.”
After many years of struggling with my weight issue, I think I’ve found a way to regulate it via my diet. It is very possible, and not very difficult at all if you can be disciplined about what you put into your mouth.
5 more kgs to go! Please wish me luck and discipline!

Finally can wear a tee that I bought when I was studying at Penn, 4 years ago