"The runner's greatest asset, apart from essential fitness of body, is a cool and calculating brain allied to confidence and courage."     -Franz Stampfl

It has been a long, strange 2 months since I have posted in this space ladies and gentlemen, so allow me to explain myself.  In my last posting I described the frustration I felt with my ability to become healthy.  I had reached a melting point, and I needed to do something fairly drastic to kickstart some drive and momentum within me.  Well, I may have taken drastic to a whole new level, because I packed my bags and left to THAILAND to train as a Thai boxer!!!!  It was an incredible experience, and I really needed this life altering training regime.  I left as a part of the Siam Muay Thai and Kickboxing team here in Regina, and ten of us lead by Instructor Craig Moser trained for a full 25 days.  We trained at the prestigious Fairtex Muay Thai and fitness camp in Bangplee, noted as being the top Thai boxing camp in the country.

Within those 25 days I was able to melt some serious body fat, and condition my body in ways it has never seen.  We trained two hours in the morning beginning at 6 am, and then another 2 hours again at 3 pm.  The training was extremely vigorous, as we trained 5 to 6 rounds each with our own personal instructors.  Each round was 4 minutes in duration, and afterwards we trained on heavy bags with an assortment of kicks, knees, elbows and boxing.  What made my training special and unique was that in the mornings, instead of training in boxing, my trainers had me running.  Each morning I mixed walking with running for a full hour and a half, and then the last half hour I would complete situps, pushups, and knees on the heavy bags with the rest of the camp.  The heat in Thailand was just about unbearable, at a balmy 47 degrees Celsius!  To make matters worse for me, I was forced to run in a sauna suit, which if you were to picture it, would remind you of running with garbage bags over your body like an outfit.  The idea was that my body was going to flush out the toxins, burn the calories, and clean myself out completely.  That it did. 

In the afternoons it was business as usual in the ring, and I got the privilege of training with the top Muay Thai instructors in the world.  This is something that I will cherish my whole life.  The food was interesting and different, and we were fed twice a day, so nutrition was the only option for me.  I had a team with me that wouldnt let me stray from my goals and fought along side me to keep me clean, and I will never forget that.  The fact that not 10 months ago I was a dying 314 pound behemoth with about as much mobility as a 3 toed sloth makes it an incredible achievement.  I am able to hang with the rest of my thai boxing troop back in Canada, and for the first time since I started this sport, I feel like I belong.  All in all, it was the kick in the ass that I truly needed to keep this project alive.

3 weeks later, back in Canada I am seeing exactly were I struggled before and decided to keep that extremist mentality.  I realize now that obesity is a disease that never goes away, much like alcoholism.  If I do not remain clean my whole life, it has the potential to overtake me completely, no matter what goals I have accomplished in the past.  Keeping with this ideal, I have officially signed myself up for a full 42 kilometer marathon in September!  I know what you are thinking.... From the searing frying pan of Thailand's horrific humid heat wave to the fire of a task that is seen by many as a lifetime achievement!  I am one of those people that cannot settle with the status quo.  I get bored easily with things that are mediocre, and I live for the excitement of something really out of this world.  So here I go, one step at a time toward a new goal, a new experience that will rock my body and change me forever!

It is funny though, with all this excitement around camp Heavy Jay, not once did I mention dropping weight....... Isn't that something?  More on that next week.... ;) 

"I'm gonna break the cycle

I'm gonna shake up the system

I'm gonna destroy my ego

I'm gonna close my body now

I'm going to die another day" - Madonna

My fellow comrades, it is time to come clean with my situation and give you a really deep insight into my current situation.  I have been away for many moons, struggling internally with this project.  The mental has been weak, the will, the self esteem, suffering like a stray dog walking a cold alley way in the dead of winter.  My body has been up and down, fluxuating worse than Oprah Winfrey herself.  I lose weight, and then I gain weight, but the status stays the same.  While I train extremely hard, my eating habits get the better of me, and it all comes down to a push.  I ask myself if I am really behind this project.  I ask myself whether or not it really matters in the long run; whether I can really honestly make the changes I need to make.  Defeated and weakened, I am afraid the answer is simply "no".  No, I cannot do what I set out to do.

What seemed simple at first has become difficult and unmanagable.  I have become closed up again, and cannot bring myself to string together consecutive weight losses.  Because of this, my mind has become clouded and I am again embarrassed with how I look and feel.  I neglect my photo updates out of shame and a false sense of how I truly look.  I have alienated my fans, my friends and family like Amy McClain and Melissa March, and especially my web-designer and one of my best friends Colin DeRooy.  These people have put their faith in me, and worked really hard to help me get where I need to be.  It is a sad day to have to say that I am not strong enough to complete my goals and change my mentality and poor habits.  In the end, where other people have beaten the odds and done it themselves, I need to do something drastic and extreme.  Kru Craig Moser, my Muay Thai Instructor and really close friend has provided me with just that avenue.

On April 1st, 2009 I am leaving the country for a month and taking my training to Bangplee Thailand.  I have decided that if I cannot commit to this project on a simple day to day basis, then I am going to shut it down and reboot. I am going to leave my job, my family, my friends, and my deplorable lifestyle behind for a month and focus completely on my training.  Through Siam Muay Thai and kickboxing in Regina, I have been given an opportunity to attend a Muay Thai training camp called Fairtex for the month of April, located in Bangplee.  This camp is a dedicated Thai boxing school with professional Champion caliber trainers, and it runs twice a day 6 days a week.  I will be there for all of April, and so I will get the opportunity to seperate myself from anything distracting and get a running start on my 2009 goals.

This is an extreme measure.  Thailand will be a humid 45 degrees, and I will be running twice a day and Thai boxing twice a day in that sweltering sauna of a country.  The elements themselves will help me break and crush mental barriers and keep me driven.  The training is intense and will add flexibility, cardio, and physical speed and strength to my arsenal.  This whole experience will arm me with the tools and mindset I need to come back and launch yet another assault on my broken down lifestyle.  Failure has become all too familiar lately, and I have flooded this website with broken promises and a lot of empty talk.  This is unacceptable and I cannot think of anything else I can do to be successful.  You wanted to see the realism of a guy struggling with weight loss, here I am and here it is.

Sadly enough I wont be able to post much on here from Thailand, however I will jump on at an internet cafe and put up some really quick updates and possibly some photos of training.  I pushed my video channel launch date back yet again, but I may be able to post some videos of training while Im there as well.  Thank you to those who are STILL here, and STILL support me through the rough times, especially the times where it seems like nothing is happening at HJ.com.  It is so incredible to know that 7 months later with minimal results I still have people behind me pushing me to keep making changes.

Before I sign off and take flight this coming Wednesday, a very special thanks goes out to my uncle Gene Jakatar, for giving me a small but highly effective dose of inspiration.  From his lips to this web page, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change".  Wish me luck, and my love goes out to everybody reading this right now, because it shows that we are all one big family of people trying to change, lead, and inspire eachother.