WHAT’S your deep why?
That has always been the question that our low-carb doctors and coaches ask.
I tend to forget my answer to that while checking out the buffet at parties, or the menu at restos and cafes. It’s only when I’m home that I can behave in the diet department. Or maybe not. Tsk tsk.
November was the worst as I was craving for high-carb goodies again. High-carb goodies that didn’t even taste as good as the grilled liempo, pork sinigang, lauyang baka, paksiw na pompano, paksiw na salmon, paksiw na bangus belly, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and boiled eggs which have become my most reliable home-cooked meals.
I don’t like veggies anymore and that’s both for home-cooked meals and when I eat out. It’s the other kinds of carbs that I was struggling to avoid. And I knew the reason behind the cravings: stress.
November was particularly stressful. And the result was stress eating. Plus stress-posting on Facebook. No, I didn’t post about stress but I posted about the many ways I was trying to deal with it, without telling you that’s how I was coping with it.
Staying home to read books, write, doing spring cleaning, and only going out to exercise at the gym, or to watch movies, can be the best therapy. They enable one to focus on the I-me-myself.
The pandemic lockdowns, for example, which forced everyone to stay home, may have given me a higher level of stress and anxiety, but they also helped me discover life’s essentials.
To each their own when it comes to essentials. There was a time when rice was an essential in my diet. But even at the height of my high-carb cravings in November, I didn’t crave for rice at all.
The lyrics of k.d. lang’s “Constant Craving”—“And constant craving/Has always been”—come to mind.
My constant craving was always for books. Note the past tense: was. I don’t buy books anymore, since I still have many books to read and re-read.
I’m currently reading two books and I’ve been reading them since forever. Upon learning that the Big Bad Wolf Books (BBW) will be coming soon to SM CDO Downtown Premier again, instead of being excited on its return, my initial reaction was, Whaaaaat?! I’ve barely read the books I bought when they were here in February! And some of those books that I did manage to read are not as good as I thought they would be.
BBW doesn’t allow potential buyers to remove the book’s plastic cover. So, I couldn’t read its first sentence, first paragraph, and some other pages, which is the major way of gauging if the book is worth reading or not. Therefore, buying books at BBW is kind of at your own risk.
But there’s this book whose first sentence and first paragraph and some other pages I was able to read since the bookstore where I bought it would even allow a bookworm to sit there and read one whole book if he wants to. The two books I’m currently reading were that kind of purchase. Still, I now find them boring. Perhaps because the state I was in at the time I bought them, has already changed into some other whatever. So, read the book immediately after buying it. But how is that possible?
