Trip to the hula hoop

Netnet Camomot

THE health coaches hosted a Christmas dance marathon, with “Hula Hoop” as one of the songs again. The only food items on the buffet table were apples and peanuts. The bananas were for the shakes. That is, if you still had time to ingest food in between the dances and parlor games.

The games were not the usual Trip to Jerusalem. OK, it was a trip–the equivalent of walking from Cagayan de Oro to Jerusalem. Haha!

For one game, the participants had to do squats, jumping jacks, high knee jumps, and that’s at a fast speed since, well, it’s a game–the fastest wins. No Slowpoke Rodriguez allowed. The whole time, I was seated at the back due to some, uh, injury, couldn’t participate at all. But my jaws were forever on the floor, amazed. Imagine 20 jumping jacks at fast forward.

If Christmas parties were all like this–more dancing, less food–then, no need to have weight loss as your New Year’s resolution. But Christmas was the time to indulge, to surrender to your appetite’s cravings, to go to as many parties as possible where the mantra was, Sweet tooth rules!

Yema cake, barrel cake, cupcakes, Royce choco, Roca toffee, and if ever you did have a banana or carrot, it was mashed into the banana cake or carrot cake. And that barrel was in the form of Kit Kat choco bars.

Guess what this family of health coaches had for noche buena? Sushi. And of course absolutely no lechon. Not even a lechon manok. If you’re asking how that is possible, it’s probably mind over matter–don’t mind it so it won’t matter. Hehe.

But if the tummy now complains each time you’re feeding it with lechon, better think twice before sinking your teeth into its crispy skin.

Weight loss must be the most popular New Year’s resolution, with almost every Miss Piggy and Fred Flintstone vowing to go to the gym on the first working day of the year to lose the extra pounds. Pair that with a diet that can be as harsh as the seafood diet–I see food, I eat it, hehe–and sure na, you’ll lose weight.

A friend lost 20 pounds last year. Only the last two and a half months of that year were serious in dieting and exercising, thus, helping her get rid of eight pounds. The first 12 pounds were lost in the first seven and a half months through hits and misses and trials and tribulations which did not necessarily include diet and exercise although she did try an on-and-off noice diet. OK, more off than on, for how could she enjoy dinuguan without heaping it on a plateful of rice? Then, mix it all up, pair that with lechon and Fablues’ potato salad and–voila!

But once you’re used to a certain diet and the tummy complains whenever you veer away from that, you have no choice but to become more careful with your food choices. If grabbing a humongous bag of chips was the norm each time you dropped by the supermarket or convenience store, now you scan that same aisle for chips and can’t find anything friendly to the tummy.

Even the nuts section is now unfriendly after you tried some peanuts and there was your tummy again, growling, as if angry at you for misbehaving at the food department.

Thus, you have no choice but to stick to the meal plan designed for you. The acronym NC doesn’t mean No Choice though, but that was the joke among some health coaches when most of them–except for one who was manning the sound system–were encouraged by their boss to be the instructors at the dance marathon. If you’re used to only two of them alternately instructing at the gym, and you suddenly see the rest of them onstage, with each having his/her own choreography in leading one part of the marathon, you can’t help but be amazed again.

Finally, a health club that has discovered the secret to weight loss? Where you’re taught what to eat and what not to, where you’re encouraged to exercise, where you’re aware of your fats and muscle mass and water level, where the usual topic among its members is body weight, thus, you’re constantly reminded of your own weight. These are people who have been there, done that with health and body issues and you can definitely relate.

But the secret is still to be careful with your choices in how to reach your ideal weight for there’s no such thing as a perfect way to get there. To be in a program that you can sustain and you’re comfortable with. To adopt a daily exercise routine that you can enjoy.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Hehe. OK, today is the first working day of the year. The first thought that comes to mind, after that long weekend, is work. But if you notice you’re now huffing and puffing as you climb the stairs, and your back aches each time you’re transferring a pile of files from one corner to the other, and there’s the ringing of the office’s landline making your skin crawl, it’s time to think of adopting a health program that can help you hibernate in Siberia for at least an hour or two daily.

You don’t have to fast forward jumping jacks. You may even choose walking as your daily exercise if that’s what makes you happy–strolling in the park, communing with nature, avoiding snakes along the way. That last one is literally, with the hiking trail spitting out a snake or two.

You may go vegetarian or go for protein or forget about carbs.

Or you can dance again and again to “hula, hula hoop” until you’ve memorized the choreography, then drinking lots of water to rehydrate. You learn to breathe, when to inhale and exhale, you’re now aware of what to eat so that a mere sneak peek of a buffet table can already help you decide on the dishes that won’t make the tummy morph to Incredible Hulk: “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

The important thing is to choose a health program that you can live with, and not the one that you will abandon the morning after. Much like a marriage? Hmmm. Kind of. Commitment is the ultimate secret.