Day 12: 2025.7.12 (토요일)
Slept a lot yesterday afternoon and went to bed in time to get a solid 5.5 hours of sleep before waking to start these final 100 days of the Transformation Challenge.
I planned to take photos of each activity, but I can’t find the tripod I need and didn’t want to spend much time looking, as I’ve got to move quickly between activities.
One trap I ALWAYS fall into is spending too much time planning and making lists and then lose motivation to actually do anything on the lists, so this time I’m trying to transition into just doing instead of planning to do, though as you can probably tell, I’ve still done some amount of planning.
In this blog, I need to be vulnerable and let you see some sides of me that really struggle. Losing belly fat and weight has been a life-long struggle. The last time I weighed in the ‘healthy’ weight range was for one day in 2024, right before Sohyun came to America and we did some workshops in Arizona and California. That came after huge amounts of fasting and so much walking it wore out my shoes. And it only lasted a day because when I started eating again, I quickly regained a few pounds. Plus I was pretty weak and I think it deterriorated some muscle to do so much fasting.
Prior to that, the last time I was in the “Health” weight range, which for me is under 94 kg (174 lbs), was in high school. And even in high school, that only lasted a couple of years when I was very involved in daily sports. Prior to that, I was outside of the healthy weight range since the beginning of middle school. So, most of my life I’ve spend trying to lose weight and get rid of excess fat.
For a long time, I told myself I didn’t care and that I could love myself however I am, fat and all. And that is true, but the problem is it provided and excuse not to try. I used to make a (terrible) joke that I couldn’t figure out why I was putting on so much weight, as I stuffed myself full of chips, cookies, soda, and sub sandwiches. I mistreated my body for so long and justified it by saying the world’s vision of beauty is pretty messed up and I don’t care about it.
But the problem is, some things get impacted by excess weight/fat besides just how we look, and how we look can also be an important representation of the care we take of our bodies. I don’t want to get to psychological, but perhaps I was hiding behind all that fat, protecting myself from the scary world in some ways. But somewhere along the way, my lifestyle started to suffer. It was hard to bend, move, climb, and other things that ‘normal’ people are able to do without too much effort. And then my blood markers started to show signs of too many years of being overweight. High cholesterol, triglycerides, blood glucose, and other markers of insulin resistance. Blood pressure went too high. And then came the medications, which I had taken consistently until a few months ago.
Over the past 3 years, I’ve lost more weight, but it has been a big journey and I’ve never properly finished up the work to get it the best condition I can be in or to get rid of some of the unwanted side effects and health risks that come from having too much body fat.
So this challenge, which is long overdue, is partly about finally conquering that lingering struggle and being able to be medication free with readings in the healthy zone. I do realize some people genetically have high cholesterol or blood pressure and that a doctor may say that even getting in the best physical condition may result in still needing to take some medications. However, I at least want to try to naturally lower them to healthy levels and I don’t want to take medication I don’t need, so that is my goal: doing it as much as possible without medication.
Yesterday, we went to a hospital (‘doctor’s office/clinic’ to much of the rest of the world) and I got a basic blood panel for the first time in many years in Korea. I wanted to do that at the start and end of this challenge so that we could see if there is any impact on things like cholesterol, blood glucose and triglycerides. I’ll share what I find out and I’ll also take some ‘beginning’ photos and measurements as we get started.
But I also don’t want to lose track of the activities I need to do and spend all the time documenting it all, so it will have to be done in balance.
At 3:30 AM this morning, I headed out for the morning walk/jog and my first thought was “why jog, when you can have a lovely walk?” So, I immediately pushed that thought away and started jogging. And then I came to a fork in the road where one way led up a steep hill and the other was flatter and less aggressive. I chose the hill. But those are the kinds of things that are easy to do on a first day, and today feels a bit like a first day even though it is also a 12th day. The real test will be doing them when I feel far less motivation, where I feel deflated or frustrated, misunderstood, like I’m not making progress, or some other thing like that. On those days, will I still choose to run instead of walk and to climb instead of the flat path? That is the kind of change I need to make, because far too often, I take the easy path.
Physical Transformation is only one area of the transformation challenge, and I’ll talk about the others in future posts. They are all daunting to some degree and feel like they are taking on a part of me, like the belly fat and excess weight, that doesn’t want to let go. Like wrestling some demon out of my soul that is hanging on for dear life.
But the truth is, these areas are all ones that have interfered with the work we are doing and that have slowed me down and kept me from being at my best, so it is time to do something about that and to do it no matter what.
But maybe that kind of talk isn’t well suited for the start of a challenge. Maybe I should be reserved and describe it with a more moderate and ‘we’ll see what happens’ approach. That’s not my style, though, so I am taking on what I feel like I need to do and battling myself to allow it to happen.
I’m reminded of the lyrics to a song by They Might Be Giants, because it helps me realize that the only enemy I have in any of this is myself, which is another way of saying “We all are our own worst enemies.”
It's your own worst enemy
Ringing the bell on the door
And the person inside says nobody's home
So your own worst enemy peeks inside
And sees you softly weeping as some music fills the room
And the song they play
Is that guy with the messed up face
Going, "Precious and few are the moments that you
And your own worst enemy share."
Full bottle in front of me
Time to roll up my sleeves
And get to work
And after many glasses of work
I get paid in the brain
And the song they play
Is that guy with the messed up face
Going, "Precious and few are the moments that you
And your own worst enemy share."
And the song they play
Is that guy with the messed up face
Going, "Precious and few are the moments that you
And your own worst enemy share."
It's your own worst enemy
