When life-style diseases threaten...Will power prevails
Lahui Ako
Lahui Ako is an author and a blogger. He fully supports the promotion of healthy living, while preserving the legacy of all the Nameless Warriors of the PIB and the PIR who have fought to defend our freedom, LEST WE FORGET!
THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2018
By 2015, I was already over 120kg (to be exact, 126kg). I had “retired” from competitive rugby at 105kg in 2009 commenced enjoying my retirement with such a very carefree attitude towards life; enjoying life and its very many delightful eats, to the very fullest.
My wakeup call came during APEC SOM3 in Cebu, Philippines in early September 2015. While waiting in the hotel corridors for a bilateral meeting, I decided to dart into the delegates clinic for a free BP test. Lo and behold! 190/90 was the reading. The doctor instructed me to lie down on the bed for 30 minutes and put a very tiny tablet under my tongue, while I rested.
So from September to November, 2015, I visited the PIH on a weekly basis (a very expensive exercise indeed), and with their technology and numerous tests, still my BP remained in the high vicinity, leaving the Filipino doctor to scratch his head with much confusing; the only useful exercise he gave me was to bar me from doing strenuous activities – exercising, etc, as if I was going to do any such thing. This was to remain so until he could give me the all-clear sign.
By November, they were already planning to perform an angiogram on me, to determine the cause of my continuous HBP, etc. But my wife, and the love of my life, Daera Ako, thought otherwise. She bundled me off, cap in hand, to see Prof Isi Kevau at the Heart Foundation. After a tongue lashing from him “for not coming to see him in the first place and going and spending all that money with PIH without any form of response to their continuous checks,” he sat me down and laid down the rules.
A few minutes previously, he had made me stand on the specially-made scale, which was colour-coded with different colours for “normal”, “over-weight”, and “obese”. The colour beyond “obese” was black. My reading was in the black. Prof Kevau gave a short laugh when he saw the needle hovering in the vicinity of the “black”, and told me, “Lahui, the next time you come and visit me, which should be in 5 months time (May, 2016), the scale must point to “normal”.
“Its a deal, Prof,” I promised him.
So, in December, 2015, I commenced my training regime with the late champ, Kato Ottio (See my blog on him). And five months down the line, I went back and it was me who gave that short smile, as the prof looked at me with surprise all over his face.
Since then, I have continued to work hard to keep myself fit and healthy purposely to avoid going down that road again; a road which can only lead to the “black” on the scale and, the infinity of the dark.
Today, I exercise regularly, much too regularly, for someone my age (says my loving wife). But I do so with the “fear of the black” hovering above me. Oh, and I have gotten used to not eating certain categories of food stuff, and always shy away from the good ole SP. I have also become the best of mates with Mr. Keto and his diet plan and it sure has worked wonders for me – mostly in the health side of things.
My advice to those experiencing what I have gone through in 2015 is simple: Its in the mind. You are the master of your own destiny. PEACE!!!