Make me lose my anxiety

“MAKE me sweat, make me hotter/Make me lose my breath, make me water.”

Tyla’s “Water” could be the theme song for exercise since exercisers sweat as their body temperature becomes hotter. They may lose their breath if they don’t inhale and exhale while exercising. And they need water in between workout sets.

The song could also be for the heat index that soared to 46 degrees Celsius in Pinas, which made the Pinoy sweat like he was crossing the Sahara Desert and made him hotter than Brad Pitt.

Oops! Constantly choosing Pitt as my ideal man is one way to reveal my age, so, let’s switch that to Timothée Chalamet.

The high heat index dehydrated the Pinoy who lost his breath plus a significant percentage of body water.

But as the song continues, I suspect it’s not about exercise and the heat index: “Talk is cheap, so show me/That you understand how I like it/Can you blow my mind?/Set off my whole body (yeah)/If I give you my time (ooh).”

Hmmm.

Songs can evoke an “Inside Out” list of emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust.

And “Inside Out 2” has added more: Anxiety, Embarrassment, Ennui, and Nostalgia.

How about Sleepy? Because I fell asleep while watching “Inside Out 2.” And I fell asleep while writing that last sentence before this. That’s how the universe says I’m sleep-deprived. Or perhaps “Inside Out 2” was boring, which could mean this column is boring, too. Talk of ennui. Ho-hum.

But Sleepy is already one of the Seven Dwarfs. And sleepy is not an emotion.

It’s with Anxiety, though, that I’m more relate na relate. That’s one reason I go to the gym where I can focus on exercising instead of over-thinking.

I gotta feeling Fomo—Fear of Missing Out—is an emotion because that’s what I had for the World Food Expo (Wofex). It was the last day, and the only emotion, er, thought running through my fats was, What if Wofex has yummy low-carb items?

I didn’t want to sing Kenny Rankin’s “Regrets”—“I have regrets, regrets”—so, on Sunday I and a friend went to The Atrium at Limketkai Mall, the venue for Wofex.

Yes, Sunday. Which happens to be the only day when I can wake up late nowadays since Mondays to Saturdays are for “Mag-exercise tayo tuwing umaga.”

But there I was, carbo-loading at Wofex, thanks to the high-carb freebies that the booths offered: coffee, chocolate drinks, fruit juice, dried fruits, mashed potatoes, cakes, ube cheese tarts, ube milk tea, other flavors of milk tea.

But the items I bought were low-carb: butter and meat products.

After Wofex, we dropped by a resto at the mall where I behaved and stayed in the low-carb department by ordering a ham-and-cheese omelette and beef tapa. But I had halo-halo for dessert. Oops.

Staying low-carb has become a constant struggle for me in the last few months. When I told a low-carb doctor about why I was stress-eating he said, “Okay lang mag-stress eating.” I heaved a deep sigh of relief. Whew. I have a valid excuse and even the low-carb doc says it’s okay. But then, he added, “Basta low-carb lang.” Oh.