My sister Lisa and I are writing a book about our weight-loss adventures. Sometimes we're less able to lose it than find it.... Nevertheless here is an excerpt adapted especially because I have Kung Fu grading on Thursday 29 July and Tuesday 2 August 2010.
Find out how I lost 30Kgs in less than a year right now.
(Caption: Tové midway through 30 KG weight loss)
Okay, I agree, I still have another 10 – 15 Kg’s to go but with a 30 Kg head start – I’m keen to continue…
Ever tried to lift a dog food bag off the shelf? That’s 10Kgs of heavy right there. Imagine 3 x that load. My scale would shriek and run screaming when I approached. Once I had bumbled over 100kgs I just stopped weighing myself. It took a while before my scale returned home still terrified and doubtful I wouldn’t flatten it under my heaving bulk.
Thanks to Kung Fu I lost 30Kgs in less than a year.
Radio used to be an invisible world where you’d be known for your voice and not expected to look like much. On that point, how many hot models do you know with gorgeous voices? Why are voices always expected to be beautiful? Anyhoo – I digress before we’ve even started….Radio personalities are regarded as multi-media content providers now and we upload material on all sorts of platforms including photos and videos that are viewed by millions worldwide.
(Caption Tové 10 years at 94.7)
Soon after I started in radio – I was head hunted for TV. I was still in shape but gradually over the years I Iet myself go and let too many waffles in.
I slumped into a depression and into an even heavier state at the horror of being asked to host listeners on the Love Boat for a cruise from Durban to the Portuguese Island. I worried there’d be a fatal harpooning incident or perhaps I’d sink the whole darn ship the moment my tricksy toe took a turn off the gangplank. I concluded that being mistaken for a beached whale might have been preferable to the shame of wearing triple extra large branded clothing and having fans foul with me for being so fat. Alas the whalers were off somewhere else and I had to squeeze into big clothes that looked more likely to fit Tinkerbelle than Thunderball Kane.
(Caption: Tové wearing leggings on a mega hot day, deft ball use to conceal tummy)
No woman wants to wear leggings on the beach. Nobody likes fighting heavy T-shirts that cling to your hips once you finally brave the wet. It’s no fun burning beetroot because you’re too ashamed to ask someone to actually spread sun block across the horizon-challenging sprawl of your back. You know it’s bad when you don’t get looked up and down but rather side to side – and it takes a while.
It didn’t inspire me to lose weight for the next cruise the following year, instead I got depressed and loaded on more lard.
(Caption: Tové Introducing the jocks on The Love Boat)
You learn to glare back at people who scold you with squints and snarling faces at your packhorse pounds. You have to ask for extender belts when you fly so that you can clip yourself in and hope the aircraft can actually lift off the ground. You step back from a partially full lift of panicked faces.
I knew there was a sultry, sexy fabulous me just waiting to be revealed but I did my best to stuff that skinny wench down with chocolate coated nuts and extra garlic double cheese pizza, covering her up with size 22 clothing that felt tight and uncomfortable.
Who knows how much further I’d have gone before thankfully being introduced to Kung Fu. Growing up, Bruce Lee was an icon. Those bleeding scratch marks on his perfect torso fascinated me. His speed, agility, control, discipline, core strength, the balance of physical and spiritual form seemed like impossible attributes I didn’t deserve.
Fat people are not only treated disrespectfully by the world, they are hated by themselves. I was miserable and unhealthy. I presented most of my radio shows and live MC’ing work through the ache of excruciating headaches. I was in bad shape. Arthritis in my hands made functions on the mixing desk painful and holding a microphone was just agonizing.
(Caption: Tové trying to hide behind Dana Winer)
The first time I met SiFu Frank Sebregts was at a boxing ceremony at the Randburg Shaolin Martial Arts School. He looked terribly regal like the Chinese Emperor himself. All I heard was “SiFu! SiFu!” from everyone all the time. Why did they keep hollering at him? The man couldn’t enter a room without a thunderous rapture of greetings.
I was there briefly before MC’ing an outdoor event with live bands and loud activities. The greetings had warmed my ears up. It was winter and it was cold sitting on the floor but I forgot the bum numbing as I enjoyed watching the people compete.
At that stage I had no idea how utterly exhausting even First Form could be. Heck I was still trying to recover from the peels of laughter I had at watching grown men do “frog” for five minutes.
In the past year, I’ve sweated on that very floor and I’d love to be able to do frog for that long without the searing pain building in my thighs.
If you picture bending over, holding your ankles, bending your knees, shifting your weight to the back of your heels, legs 90 degrees – that’s Frog – a thigh warming position that most martial arts exponents know only too well.
The woman who introduced me to Kung Fu had arranged a private lesson with SiFu himself. I was so grateful for the opportunity but so desperately uncomfortable in myself. I spiraled into a self-loathing rage and nearly didn’t go upstairs. I was dressed from top to toe in 72 layers of dark concealments – believing as fat folk do – that black is slimming. A sweater the size of a tarpaulin stretched around a broad butt is never going to be slimming no matter what the colour.
I felt like one of those hippos in the Disney movie, “Fantasia” only they at least seem joyful. I was utterly ashamed of my hefty hugeness. I felt humiliated, frustrated and even SiFu was shocked when he started counting for my fist abs exercise and discovered that’d be my last of that session. I got to 3 crunchies. Even they were cumbersome wobbly affairs with much panting and straining and groaning.
I went home, showered and passed out for the whole day. I could not move. I was completely shattered. I’d been battling to sleep but not that night – I just conked out for the day and the night and woke up as stiff as hell in the morning becoming progressively more stiff as the week went on.
My next lesson I brought my son Jesse. It was school holidays and I figured Kung Fu would be good for him and a great way for mum and son to bond. SiFu swiftly saw to my maternal flapping and soon Jesse was at his mercy doing a gazillion push ups whilst I continued to moan and groan with the effort of simply getting my fat ass up those stairs to the top floor.
My first class was a neurotic moment for me. First of all, trying to find black tracksuit pants bold enough to heave their way over my bulging hips was a shopping nightmare. Eventually I found some double extra large men’s satin numbers with that awful net lining around the crotch. Chaps – you have my sympathies!
Jesse insisted my shirt looked better out than in and so I spent the first lesson trying to pull its creased sweatiness away from my kettledrum curvature.
(Caption Suze Orman and Tové with extra chins)
I couldn’t even do one push up. I faked keeping my head off the ground for leg raises. I kept coming up out of stretches. I’d pretend my lace suddenly needed my urgent attention. I was all resistance at first. It seemed an insurmountable task. I wanted to give up. It was too hard. I had let myself go too far. It felt like Kung Phew to me.
I dragged myself back and in my next private lesson I was hanging off the end of my water bottle like dehydration would be the death of me. The only thing light about me was my head. I kept nearly fainting. SiFu was relentless. Not cruel but determined. Not harsh but focused. He was completely immune to my sighing and stopping. He refused to accept my inadequacies.
I presented injured knees and he worked around them – actually creating a rehab programme. I clenched arthritic hands after weight lifting – he simply returned the weights to the ground and handed me a long staff to swoosh up and down as I did lunges the length of the class. A long staff is a wooden poll twice the length of a broomstick. You learn to do strikes and spins with this weapon but try holding it parallel to you shoulder for 3 minutes and gradually you begin to know the relativity of weight.
And that was how it started. 3 sit-ups and not a single push up. I couldn’t even stay in Buddha Sit for 20 seconds. I battled to get the co-ordination right on my basic guard with thumbs tucked in. The friend who introduced me had to remind me to keep my tongue in and not do animated sound effects. Even simple things like front Wing Chun punches were a mess of popping shoulders and hyperextensions.
Perseverance, changing my eating habits and SiFu’s abiding encouragement with his steadfast resolve that I would complete lunges to his count, get some swing and elevation in my sky kicks and survive zigzag stepping with ever increasing combinations have transformed my life.
Even if I am MC’ing a function, I’m at Kung Fu on Tuesday and Thursday nights as well as my private lesson with SiFu on Wednesday morning. The positioning of my classes means I can’t exactly bunk any one of them. Aside from SiFu keeping a watchful eye on me, I wouldn’t choose to skip class anyway because I’ve at last stretched out into full sideways splits and I’m not losing that flexibility for a lazy evening anywhere.
Jesse was so inspired by Kung Fu even his friends wanted to join and one of them got as far as grading with us. I’ve never in my life experienced anything quite so grueling or rewarding as grading. To measure yourself against your previous limitations and exceed your wildest expectations is a deeply satisfying experience that only grading can provide. It gets tougher and tougher as you advance up the hierarchy. Kung Fu is a representation of challenge, growth and persistence.
(Caption Kung Fu graders Jesse, Tové, Greg)
Kung Fu has revolutionized my life. I am fitter, leaner, stronger, calmer, happier. My reflexes are sharply improved. I even land those paper shots in dustbins every time without fail. Just yesterday I was hanging clothes on the line. I dropped a peg and caught it even before it fell half way to the ground. At the shops, I’d have twisted my ankle over the uneven cobbles. I was able to correct my balance and stride into the Mall ready to spend more money than ever of us ever intend. Kung Fu has enhanced my awareness, speed of thought and action. If I needed to, I’d be able to defend myself. That’s what I love about this Martial Art. It doesn’t seek conflict – but it sure knows how to neutralize it. Kung Fu is an art form with highly disciplined physical, mental, spiritual and emotional expression. It is as intuitive as it is active.
Kung Fu is intense, immense and continually asks questions of its practitioners. I love it. I respect it. I appreciate it. Kung Fu has helped me to lose 30Kg in less than a year. I’d say I have between 10 and 15kgs still to go. Actually I’m not at all concerned with the number on the scale anymore. It’s about how I look and how I feel. My scale greets me happily on Monday mornings when I weigh. Rather than avoiding the number, I’m actually quite excited to see what it is and it is a great feeling to step off with a fist in the air after another week and another KG down. It’s an awesome feeling. I used to try and lift my toes up like that would miraculously make me weigh less.
I’ve gone from a tight-sized 22 to wearing either 12 or 14. No longer do I have to shop in the men’s section, battling to find XXL or XXXL in my colour. Now I wear M ladies and I can buy things that fit without even trying them on. I wear belts with my jeans instead of concealing the undone top button beneath a billowing shirt or a jersey tied round my waist.
(Caption: Come on Tové - lift some real weights sistah!)
I’ve gone from 3 crunchies to being able to do hundreds of sit-ups, as anyone in a physical class will testify. I’m still not that hot at jack knives but that’s why I’ll be in class on Tuesday to push myself a little harder, go a little further.
I used to tease and say, “Kung Phew!” pretending to waft the air around my chest and grimace with the effort. Now it’s Kung Fu and I breathe purposefully and consciously, with my tongue on the top of my palate. I greet SiFu as loudly as I recall that first Saturday at the ceremony. It is a sign of respect. Every time SiFu crosses a threshold, “SiFu!”. If you walk passed him, “SiFu!” If you’re in class and he sets you a form to do “SiFu!”.
I’m only at the beginning of my weight loss and Kung Fu journey. I know what lies ahead of me and I know what I’ve achieved thus far. The next few days will be incredibly taxing since our class is grading again. There is no way I can possibly describe how grueling it is to grade. I feel like reaching for chocolate to comfort me through it. Boot camp is like tiddlywinks compared with grading. You never quite feel like you’re ready. Still, the moment is here and I embrace it. It’s an opportunity few of us ever get – the chance to meet yourself. Who are you? How far will you go? What limits are you prepared to break through, to reach beyond in order to push yourself? How much does it matter to you?
(Caption Jesse and Tové July 2010)
I didn't need Kung Fu to bond with my son - but it sure has established a mutual respect. He still can't believe I'm not the chunky mom I used to be or that I can do as many sits ups as he can. I can visualize myself in those future purple rinse days still doing sky kicks without hip replacements or knee reconstructions, being the Granny who cart wheels with Jesse’s children and teaching them to do Tiger Rolls forwards forward and backwards back with a scale that’s still prepared to meet me on a Monday.