I believe I’ve said it in one of my preceding blogs that I wasn’t really a big fan of cardio workouts but as ironic as it may sound, I’ve been doing it for more than a year now – a year and two months to be exact.

No, it’s neither that my facts don’t hold up at all nor am I messing with anyone’s head here. Think about it, “Whoever said that you cannot talk yourself into doing some things that you really don’t wanna do?” There is such a thing we call “doing what we NEED to do”.

You and I know very well that most often than not we get to do something that we really don’t want but we do it anyway at the end of the day. Why? Because basically in the face of all our objections, we also know that we need to DO it for a greater cause.

My aversion towards cardio is, well, the entire grueling act – you get your heart pounding like nuts (should at least get to monitor and keep yours in an average rate, just saying for your own good), an uncomfortably dry mouth, foreboding shin pain (which extremely becomes the case in the next morning), exaggerating downpour of sweat, catching up with your own far-flung breath, enduring battle of the mind and body, and the physical exhaustion itself.

Logically some may say, “Who in the right mind would want to go through such torment?” A masochist, some humorists might say. However, for someone like me who had that same judgment a few years ago, I started to think otherwise; I knew I NEEDED to reconsider.

Having to deal with more than the average body weight that a regular 10-year-old kid ought to have, I can say that I had a pretty tough time dealing with a lot of things during my late childhood. As far as I can remember, I was in Elementary when I started to notice my bizarre bodily metamorphosis. From what used to be a lean light-skinned toddler with lustrous uncurled hair, I suddenly became the opposite of what I was come Grade 4. I neither had nothing against dark complexion (black is as beautiful as any other color; grew up with the fact that one of my sister has a complexion which is a few tones darker than mine and she’s a charmer) nor curly hair (plan to have mine digi-permed this Christmas, yey!); my problem was the extra weight which was really becoming a drag – physically and emotionally.

If I would recall it, my weight played around 110 to 130 lbs and became at my heaviest in Grade 5. I had to wear big shirts and men’s shorts while my hair was cut short and kinky like a man’s. I would frequently receive unsolicited remarks from relatives and friends saying, “Anong nangyari sa’yo? Ang cute cute mo nung maliit ka pa!” I may have been laughing with them all the while but not quite on the inside. I remember eating to suppress the sadness inside me. It had me to love cooking and invent odd recipes which I’m sure my parents can attest to. Not a smart diversion but it kept me sane – and then again stouter.

(Left) me in Grade 5 and (right) me today

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