ILANG araw na lang, pasko na.
The way stores have been promoting Christmas makes one believe that the noche buena and media noche should feature the most expensive food fare, the most luxurious gifts, and the best clothes and accessories.
There’s a video that says, “Someone once asked me, What is your favorite place? I said, I don’t have a favorite place. I have my favorite people. And whenever I’m with them, it becomes my favorite place.”
So true.
The same goes for Christmas celebrations. If I’m with my favorite people, it becomes my favorite celebration. It’s not the food, not the gift, not the clothes or accessories.
Favorite people may come and go, though. Your favorite people yesterday are not necessarily your favorite people today. And your favorites today may not be your favorites tomorrow. Life goes on.
Facebook brings back memories through photos posted in the past. Some of the people in those pictures may not be your friends anymore, making you wonder if it’s time to delete the post or at least change its privacy setting to “Only me.”
Since December is the last month of the year, this can be the best time to make muni-muni on where your money went — er, on where you are now and where you want to go.
Yes, it’s time to write another list of New Year’s resolutions that will be immediately forgotten by the second of January.
In December 2020, I didn’t even prepare that list. But high blood pressure in January 2021 required a daily novena for complete healing, which led me to a no-red-meat diet. This helped me lose 25 pounds that year.
In October 2021, I saw Dr. Josephine Grace Rojo-Tan’s video about the low-carb diet on Facebook, and curiosity led me to more low-carb videos on YouTube.
By February 2022, after studying the diet for four months and even enrolling in Doc Grace’s Masterclass, I finally started following the low-carb lifestyle, which helped me lose an additional 25 pounds.
In October 2024, I tried to level up to the carnivore diet, and that’s what I’ve been doing since then. Operative word: tried.
Try and try until you succeed, indeed. “Succeed” has not been the operative word yet in this carnivore journey.
I’m writing this on a weekend where salmon is my TMAD—two meals a day. That’s the beauty of the carnivore diet — I now know how to adjust my food intake to help my body heal amidst the Christmas indulgence. Fasting for 72 hours would have been the better option, but I’m not in the mood for that. I tried that three-day fast before and have no plan to go through it again, especially in this season of eating, drinking, and merry-ing.
At one Christmas party, I was behaving like a good carnivore girl at first, eating only beef and tuna. But after dancing the night away, I went back to the buffet table and grabbed all the carbs I could find: ube leche flan, rolls, pasta, and cream of mushroom soup. Burp. Did the butter I splattered on the rolls mitigate the latter’s carbo-loading side effects? Hmmm. Wishful thinking.
Speaking of drinking, my only beverage nowadays — even at Christmas parties and gatherings — is water. No tequila. No vodka. No Smirnoff Mule. No San Mig Apple. No Coke Zero. Ho-hum.
