You wouldn't know it by looking at me now, but there was a time in my life not so long ago when I was seriously overweight. For most of my life before I had entered my thirties, I never really had any struggles with my weight. I stand at five feet and nine inches tall and my usual weight up until the age of 31 had always been somewhere between 130 to 135 pounds. At times, I've even been told that I was too thin. But then sometime in my early thirties, the weight did come on in a drastic and quick way. And once it did, I just couldn't shed the pounds in order to bounce back to my normal weight. Instead, I just kept the weight on for a number of years and even added more pounds gradually until I hit my heaviest, which was at 236 pounds. That was when I realized that my weight problem was really serious and that I had to do something about it.
It's really scary when I think back at just how quickly I had put on the weight. Sometime toward the end of the year 2003, after experiencing a series of personal tragedies in my life I ended up falling into a deep depression. Without getting too much into details, what had caused my depression mainly were the unexpected passings of my grandmother whom I loved dearly and a very close friend and confidante of mine, singer
Anh Tu, that both happened one right after the other. It was all too much for me to take. Unfortunately, how I chose to deal with my grief then turned out to be quite self-destructive and detrimental to my health. Like a lot of folks, I turned to the bottle. And then when that couldn't give me enough comfort, I added food to that dangerous equation. Consequentially, I put on a total of 62 pounds in a period of just three months. Once those 62 pounds were added to my weight, I just couldn't get my weight back down. From April of 2004 all the way through the first half of the year in 2008, I was fat. It got worse and worse and then ultimately I hit rock bottom weighing 236 pounds during the winter of 2007, having put on an excess total of 100 pounds. I was just miserable.
I had gained so much weight that I looked unrecognizable. But I still wasn't fully aware that I had put on that much weight. Despite how I would weigh myself on the scale and see this enormous number pop up for my weight size, I still hadn't really grasped the whole reality that I was now really a fat person. It had to take a few painful and embarrassing events of having to hear it from others to finally sink in for me. I now look back and really appreciate the individuals who were honest with me, because that was what I truly needed to hear. If it weren't for their honesty, I would still be in that same bubble today, still trying to convince myself that I didn't really look all that bad. But I really did. The first person that was honest with me was a friend of mine, singer
Diem Lien. I had run into her sometime during the winter of 2007 when I dropped by the Majestic Nightclub in Huntington Beach to show my support for
Luu Bich and
Thuy Tien on the night of their show called
White Party. It had been a while since I had been around the Vietnamese entertainment scene since I had left the singing business sometime ago. When I spotted Diem Lien at the bar counter that night, I called out her name and put my arms out expecting to get a hug from her. But she didn't respond but gave me a rather puzzled look back instead. I looked at her again and said, "Diem, it's me, Thien Phu! Don't you remember me?"
"Is it really you? You're not kidding me?" she asked. "My goodness, you've really changed. You look so different now."
"Well, it's been about ten years," I replied. "But how so do I look different? Is it because I've gotten fat?"
She couldn't give me an answer right away, and just paused while she swallowed a big gulp.
"Come on, tell me the truth. Am I really that fat?"
Again, she kept silent and proceeded to lower her head as if she was staring at the floor below. Then a moment after, she finally looked up at me and whispered in a gentle voice, "Yeah, I couldn't even recognize that it was you."
I really took Diem Lien's honesty to heart. I finally came to the realization of my weight problem and was deeply saddened. Of course, I wasn't saddened by Diem Lien in particular, because she hadn't done anything wrong. She is a really sweet girl and was only being honest, which was what I really needed. From that moment on, that's when I started to take a serious approach at trying to lose the excessive weight. I had to. I needed to look like me again rather than continue life hiding underneath this fat person I've turned into for the past several years.
That next day I went to see my doctor about getting myself on a serious diet regiment program to lose weight. He recommended the Atkins' Diet and gave me a brochure to read more about it. I wasn't completely sold on it. Given how desperate I was then, I would try anything. But just the idea of having to eat nothing but meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner each and every day didn't really appeal to me. I'm not a vegetarian nor would I try to ever become one again. Years ago, I had foolishly given into peer pressure and turned into a vegetarian just because I was trying to fit in. I was in college then and the people whom I thought were really cool all seemed to have jumped on this bandwagon which tooted the slogan, "Meat is Murder". I had grown up as a meat-eater. But I also liked eating vegetables. I ate everything, come to think of it. And meat was just part of my normal daily regiment growing up. I was also never really into animal rights or had ever thought much about the equation of how eating meat meant animal cruelty. It did take me a while back then to be recruited into vegetarianism. That whole bit about how we shouldn't eat meat because of how cruel it is to kill animals never really phased me. I've always been an avid believer in human rights above all others. To me, there are so many social injustices in the world with how humans treat one another that I'm more concerned with than the rights of animals. But one thing I definitely don't celebrate, although I'm sure I'm also guilty of, is hypocrisy. I think what had kept me for a while from giving in to vegetarianism was how so many of my friends back in college, these so-called anti-meat, animal rights crusaders while sporting the "Meat Is Murder" slogan would also have no qualms about wearing leather. Oh, but wearing fur coats was an absolute no-no. It just didn't add up for me. But when they started feeding me with how becoming a vegetarian would be a positive step towards better health, I was then sold. I was really young then. I didn't smoke, drink or even had taken a diet pill ever back then because I had been told these things were bad for you. So I tried being a vegetarian for about a year and a half and ended up in the hospital. It turns out I have O negative blood type and because of my not eating any meat during that period of being a vegetarian, my body was not getting enough iron. My blood had a level of deficiency in iron that was so poor that I was considered borderline anemic when I had fainted and was taken to the hospital. I am living proof that vegetarianism is not a healthy lifestyle for everyone. It almost killed me. Just like what they say about how we should stay away from red meat and that chicken is the healthier meat choice instead, a few years back, I had been diagnosed by an allergist physician with an intolerance to poultry. When I eat chicken, my throat swells up, I itch and my skin develops a rash. Once again, in my case whatever the general consensus might say is healthy or good for you doesn't apply to me. Everyone is different. What might work for someone, or even for the majority of people, just might not work for you. The same thing applies when it comes to dieting. I found the Atkins' Diet to be compelling, for the most part. But the whole part of just eating meat and not having to exercise in order to lose weight didn't really appeal to me all that much. I wanted to lose the weight, look better and be healthier. So I went about it my way. I combined the theories of the Atkins' Diet,
Suzanne Somers' Somersize, which I liked better, to stay away from consuming too much carbs, plus I would exercise and eat more salads versus meat and potatoes. It took a long time, but it worked.
In a matter of 14 months, I lost a total of almost 100 pounds. I was able to reach my goal of weighing less than 150 pounds on February of 2009 and have since kept the weight off. I now weigh 138 pounds, which is about the same as my weight when I was still a senior back in high school. Now I'll be honest that it was not an easy thing to do losing all that weight. There were times I had gotten so frustrated that I took drastic measures that were quite dangerous in trying to lose the weight. Yes, I had turned to diet pills, drugs and even tried starving myself. I have learned that those were not the right ways to lose weight because what happens when you do resort to taking diet pills, the use of meth amphetamine or self starvation is that you end up losing water, not necessarily fat from your body. It will give you the illusion that you've trimmed down and have shed the excessive weight the right way. But the weight just comes right back on once you stop taking the pills or using meth. That is definitely hazardous to one's health losing and gaining weight back and forth like a yo-yo. The only way I've found to lose the weight and keep it off is by watching what I eat and exercising. I know it might sound like it's easier said than done, because it truly is. You must be determined and really push yourself if you want to lose the weight. In my case, I wasn't going to be satisfied like how some people I know that are fat who go on a diet to lose 30 pounds, so happy after losing a little weight that they go around bragging to everyone about it just to get compliments on how great they look. At that point, they start to feel as if they've reached a plateau and then stop with their dieting just to gain back all the weight or even more so. The reality with many of these people is that they were still faraway from reaching what should have been their goal which is to lose altogether 100 to 200 pounds. They don't look all that great after just losing 30 pounds, because they are still fat. Frankly, whenever I hear someone who is more than 100 pounds overweight tell me how they have just lost 30 pounds, I really can't tell whether they had actually lost the weight or put on another 30 pounds. I didn't want to end up being like one of those people. That is why I made the conscious effort to successfully lose the weight. I'm myself again. I guess it is more appropriate that I now disclose why I had taken such a long hiatus from the singing profession when I did a while back. It is true that I had gone through some personal problems that I needed to straighten out during those seven years absent from performing on stage, as I've said on several television and radio interviews several years ago. But the primary reason was that I was just too fat and couldn't face my audience. Now, I just can't tell you just how wonderful it feels to be on stage and sing to audiences who are able to recognize me from before. No longer do I have to hear such remarks like, "You can't be
Thien Phu. He was never fat like you." Thank goodness, my fat days are now gone.
