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Netnet Camomot

HEALTH could sometimes take a back seat when you’re too busy to bother with counting calories, exercise, the hot compress, the cold compress, and lotion for the dry hands. The pampering for hair and nails has to wait, too, for weeks, even with the white roots visible in selfies and toes thickened with dry skin. All these have reached the level of desperation, but there are priorities that can’t be downgraded to second, third or the point-of-noeturn level, thus, the need to tackle them until they’re all finished, emailed, and snail-mailed.

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The newspapers are again piling up on the center table in the bedroom. That’s the table from the ancestral house’s living room, its design not appropriate anymore for the present living room’s floor plan, thus, the necessity to morph into a catch-all in the bedroom. Others have catch-all trays, drawers, cabinets; you have the catch-all table, where you dump magazines, newspaper clippings, new purchases, files, tote bags, minutes of shareholder meetings, and size 34 to 38 jeans that are now too wide for your, ahem, slimmer hips. Add to that the USBs–unsung scraps of bullsh*t.

But on Sunday morning, your conscience began to bother you with this: Gotta heed the advice of the orthopedic surgeon. Thus, the hot compress to the injured left knee. While thinking of how to use the laptop with that hot compress wrapped around the knee. Health first, work later. Health first, breakfast later. Health first… Wait, breakfast is essential, too, to the health.

That breakfast nowadays has been reduced to the shake. Shake with banana. Shake with apple. Tried one cheek of a mango for that shake but the result was blah. So, back to the tried-and-tested banana.

This is the kind of diet that was once unthinkable only several months ago at the height of all the logs–tocilog, longsilog, cornsilog–and, op chors, the best combination ever, bacon and eggs, with all that oil sliding down your throat. Yum!

Nowadays, though, you cringe at the sight of a crispy pata for another table at Choobi Choobi while desperately trying to tempt your taste buds with substitutes for salted egg shrimps. The waiter says that nearby supermarkets have run out of salted eggs, thus, your favorite Choobi Choobi dish is–gasp!–not available. This is one of the seemingly sinful dishes you now allow to gatecrash into this newly found, hmmm, healthy diet, and learning it’s not there is comparable to realizing that Brad Pitt’s role in “The Big Short” is that of this bespectacled former trader who doesn’t resemble his Achilles in “Troy.” You have to search for Brad behind those specs. And to think he’s the only reason you’ve given to friends who asked, Why “Big Short,” why not “5th Wave”? Your reply: Ah, haler, Brad Pitt!

Touted to be one of the best movies of 2015 with chances of Oscars galore, only to find out “Big Short” is short of your shallow expectations. Brad looks blah, the characters are talking about stocks and funds and banks which are topics you highly dislike, making the dialogue too complicated for your minute brain. But two of your friends are laughing, so you turn to them to ask, Why?! They’re laughing, you’re not. And all along you thought you have a sense of humor. Good thing another friend bought a bag of popcorn which keeps you awake while trying to think of rebuttals once you’re out of the cinema and these three friends would say, Maayo pa nag-“5th Wave” na lang ta.

But you’re grateful–no one complained after the movie. You all went home peacefully, the friendship still intact.

These are the sensible ones, by the way, who have learned to rise above differences and difficulties. At least 25 years since the day you all met. You have learned and graduated through life’s highs and lows, including situations that tested the friendship. But there you are, still laughing like hyenas at Choobi Choobi while exchanging Christmas gifts. You’re all nearing or already enjoying double citizenship, there’s no more excuse to fight like sixteen-year-olds who could be as young as your grandchild.

Old age can bring the worst or the best in you. You pick which you prefer–worst, best, somewhere in-between. Kind of the salted egg, simple egg, live egg, with that last one deserving two winks, as in: Live egg, wink wink. The one you can taste and spit out, no need to swallow.

The simple egg is the one you can pair with tocino, longganisa, corned beef, and bacon. Choobi Choobi has proven that salted egg is yummiest when paired with shrimps. As for the live one, well…

At the NC–No Choice?–you’re informed but not encouraged about the cheat day, that one day in the week when you can indulge in food outside of your meal plan. A co-dieter at the NC suggested Sunday would be a good cheat day, to which you replied: For me, everyday is a cheat day.

Having a healthy lifestyle is a conscious choice. You’re able to enter the doors to that lifestyle only when you’re ready to escape from the box where processed food, red meat, sugar, flour, simple carbs, soda, alcohol, etc. were the norm, and you’re now willing to embrace a diet of fish.

Who knew you would learn to love paksiw fish? No, that’s not f*ck you, fish, although at the start of the diet, it feels like it. You’ll hyperventilate while working late at night, as brain work drives you crazy with hunger pangs, and there’s a hesitance in texting your wellness coach to ask about what to eat now that all the meals in the meal plan have been ingested and digested.

If there’s one thing you should remember, it is this: don’t buy any other food outside of that meal plan, otherwise there’s always the temptation to munch on peanuts, potato chips, hopia, chocolates, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, and so on and so forth. And if all these food groups are in the small fridge in the bedroom, ayay, good luck na lang!

The one who said “Health is wealth” should be wealthy by now had he followed his own wisdom tooth, er, thoughts. But if it was the sweet tooth that ruled his diet, hmmm, “Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey/Your first sweet kiss thrilled me so/Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey/I’ll never ever let you go.” Emotional eating pa more!

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