112 Pounds and a Sword

Back in January I published the full story. 401 pounds. Fourteen medications. A pharmacist telling me I had three to four years before a heart attack or stroke. If you have not read “The Day I Stopped Running Aimlessly,” start there. This post picks up where that one left off.

The January numbers were already a different person. Under 300. A1C at 5.1. Down to one medication. Forty-two inch pants instead of fifty-eight.

Today the scale says 289. That is 112 pounds gone. And the story I want to tell is not about the loss. It is about what I can do now that I could not do before.

What 112 Pounds Buys You

At 401 I could not tie my shoes without holding my breath. I planned routes through parking lots around where I could stop and lean on something. Stairs were an event. Kneeling was something I avoided because getting back up required a piece of furniture and both hands.

At 289, none of those things are problems anymore. They are just things I do. The absence of struggle is invisible to everyone around me. Nobody notices when a man ties his shoes normally. But I notice. Every time.

The physical capacity is one thing. The mental shift is another. At 401 I made decisions around my limitations. Can I fit in that chair. Can I walk that far. Will I be the biggest person in the room. That filter ran constantly and it shaped everything. Where I went. What I did. Whether I showed up at all.

At 289 that filter is quieter. Not gone. Quieter. I still scan a room. I still think about it. But it no longer makes the decision for me.

The Dojo

In December 2025, our family started training Toyama Ryu Iai-Battodo at Florida Budokan’s Kashimon Dojo in Eustis. My wife Noelia, our daughter, and me. Three of us on the mat together learning Japanese sword arts.

Iaido is not sparring. It is forms. You draw the sword, execute a series of cuts, and resheathe. Every movement is prescribed. Every angle matters. The goal is not speed. The goal is precision repeated until the body does it correctly without thinking.

We are about three months in now. We train twice a week at the dojo and run two mini sessions at home to work on form. The early lessons were about surviving the mechanics. Can you draw without fumbling. Can you cut on a straight line. Can you transition between stances without losing balance. At my weight in December, some of those answers were no. I modified. I adapted. Sensei worked with me.

Now the modifications are fewer. The stance is deeper. The cuts are starting to travel a cleaner path. Three months of progress that would be invisible to an outsider but I can feel in my core and my grip.

We had a break this month. The whole family got sick and we had to step away. That is the kind of thing that used to end a habit for me. Miss a week, miss two, never go back. Not this time. We are ready to get back into it.

Recently we started tameshigiri on Friday nights. Test cutting. Real blade on a real target. Everything before that is form work in the air. Tameshigiri tells you if the form actually works. The mat does not lie. If the angle is off or the edge alignment is wrong, you feel it immediately. There is no faking a clean cut.

Our first major goal is earning the dojo patch when we reach our first rank. That requires two batto and four Toyama kata. All standing routines. Our style does not use kneeling forms. Everything is on your feet, which is its own kind of demanding because there is nowhere to rest between movements.

After the patch, the next goals are financial. We want to get our official iaito when the budget allows, and then our first real blades a few months after that. Right now we train with what we have. The gear upgrade is earned, not rushed.

Our target is Shodan within five years. First-degree black belt. That timeline is honest, not ambitious. The art demands precision and we are starting from zero. But showing up at the dojo twice a week, running form sessions at home, putting on the hakama, picking up the iaito we ordered from Tozando, and doing the work with my family beside me is already more than I ever thought I would have.

Training Structure

Monday mornings are with Tommy. In person. No excuses, no rescheduling. That session is in the calendar like a meeting with a client. My wife works out with Ciara on Saturdays. Tommy gave me a program to run three times a week on my own between sessions.

I have not been hitting three times a week. I need to be honest about that.

The structure is there. The plan is written. The excuses are what show up instead. Too tired. Too busy. I will make it up tomorrow. The same negotiation patterns I thought I left behind with the PS5.

Then the last two weeks hit. The whole family got sick. No gym. No dojo. No momentum. Two full weeks of nothing. This Saturday is a conference where my wife and I are doing safety for the event all day, so even her session with Ciara is off the table this week.

We start back Monday with Tommy. Dojo picks back up next Tuesday. The restart is planned. But I am putting this in writing because I need accountability beyond my own head. If you are reading this and you see me posting about code but not about training, call it out. My family will. I need readers to do the same.

The system that took me from 401 to 289 is not sophisticated. It is consistent. Calorie target. Movement. Sleep. Repeat. When the consistency slips, the system does not work. I am in a slip right now. This post is part of getting out of it.

The first fifty pounds came off fast. Water weight, inflammation reduction, the body responding to finally being asked to do something. The next fifty took twice as long. The last twelve, from 301 down through 300 and to 289, were the slowest and the most meaningful. Three hundred was the number I always bounced back to in every previous attempt. Getting below it and staying below it was crossing a line I had never held.

The Next Target

275 is next. At 275 the Iaido movements get meaningfully easier. Less load on the knees in stance transitions. Deeper stances. Cleaner rotation through the hips on lateral cuts. The sword does not get lighter but the body carrying it does.

After 275, the target is 250. I have not seen that number since my twenties. I do not know exactly what it looks like yet. But I know the process that gets there because it is the same process that got me here. Show up. Track it. Do not negotiate.

The Connection

This is not just a fitness blog and Tyrminal is not just a tech blog. The same discipline that is supposed to get me to the gym three times a week is the same discipline that puts me at the keyboard working through K&R exercises every night. The same precision that Sensei corrects in my grip is the same precision I am learning in C when a signed char and an unsigned char produce different results from the same source code.

The difference is I have not missed a single day of writing. Fifteen straight. But I have missed gym days. That tells me where the discipline is strong and where it is weak. DPE does not let me hide one behind the other.

Paul said it directly. “I discipline my body and keep it under control.” He was not writing a training plan. He was saying that a body left undisciplined will take you somewhere you do not want to go. I let mine take me to 401 pounds and a three-year countdown.

Now it takes me to the dojo. To the gym. To the trail. To the desk. All the same fight. All the same framework.

DPE. Discipline. Precision. Execution.

112 down. The sword does not care what you weighed yesterday. It only cares whether you showed up today.