WEEKENDS are for sleeping, eating, reading books, repeat.
WEEKENDS are for sleeping, eating, reading books, repeat.
There I was at Fully Booked at Limketkai, Cagayan de Oro, browsing despite the vow to stop buying books since I still have lots of books to read or re-read.
There’s this one book that had intrigued me since it was released — “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life” by Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia. The authors’ names should have given me a hint already of one reason not to buy the book. They’re obviously non-Japanese, so, why did they write about ikigai?
I had high expectations for “Ikigai,” only to learn that it teaches about eating plants — grains, veggies, fruits — which I now try to avoid. To each his own when it comes to diets. What works for Japan’s centenarians may not work for everyone else. Plants give me all kinds of side effects — bloating, skin allergies, rhinitis, body pain, brain fog, hypertension.
There are many kinds of diets, starting with the most common low-fat and calorie-deficit — good luck with that. Yeah, been there, done that, they didn’t work. FYI: Sugar is added to low-fat products to make them yummy.
Everything-in-moderation is another popular diet. A little of everything. Which doesn’t work once sugar cravings kick in. A bite of ice cream can lead to a whole pint of ice cream. You don’t stop at one slice of pizza. Pasta, potato salad, and macaroni salad can be as unli as unli-rice.
People think a food item has sugar only if it’s sweet. Therefore, only sweet food items can cause diabetes. Whenever I hear people say that, I have to stop myself from commenting because I also have a difficult time avoiding carbs. Carbs are addictive. My current dilemmas are bilo-bilo or binignit, halo-halo, and nilupak na saging. Whenever I see any of these three, the first thought that comes to mind is, Is it worth the carbs?
I congratulate my diet if I don’t eat carbs when I’m stressed. Because stressed if spelled backward is desserts. The more stressed, the more desserts required.
As I wrote in a previous column, I’ve already lost count of the number of times I’ve started a carnivore reboot. I’m back to Day One again today after having a bite of pancake which led to three pieces of asado siopao on Sunday. See? That’s how carb cravings start. A bite can escalate into three pieces of that same carb or another carb. Have you tried eating mangoes? A mango can easily increase to three mangoes especially if paired with puto maya or suman and sikwate.
Kakanin is obviously the Pinoy’s favorite snack. Malls have food stalls that sell kakanin. Lugait and Manticao in Misamis Oriental have food stalls along the highway that sell bibingka. There used to be a food stall near Pearlmont Hotel in CDO that sold bibingka.
Carbs are here, there, and everywhere, and the pandesal’s price and size don’t even matter as it still remains as the Pinoy’s favorite pre-breakfast carb with 3 in 1 coffee. That’s the first for the day’s seven meals: pre-breakfast, breakfast, morning snacks, lunch, afternoon snacks, dinner, midnight snacks. And more on weekends? Hmmm.
