SOME people believe they can stop dieting and exercising once they’ve reached their goal weight.
That was my belief, too, once upon a time. That’s how I lost weight and gained weight, and lost weight again and gained weight again, and…
Yo-yo dieting pa more. Whew.
Other mistaken beliefs: dieting and exercising for a certain event. And then, stopping the diet and exercise after the event. Dieting and exercising for, ahem, someone. Stopping the diet and exercise once that someone has fled to Siberia.
Most people think a diet is temporary. But a diet is a lifestyle change. Discover first what works best for you and stick with it.
And then, there are people who eat carbs to gain weight. But the best option is to gain muscles to gain weight.
Talk of carbs, SM City CDO Uptown had a weekend sale and I was the 100th raffle claimer on the first day, which meant winning the perks for the first 100: a box of six donuts. A low-carb dieter a.k.a. me receiving free donuts. I could almost hear Alanis Morissette: “And isn’t it ironic?/Don’t you think?”
But the song that has been occupying my minute brain lately is the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love,” but with the lyrics morphing into how deep is my why. My deep why in practicing the low-carb diet, that is.
Each time I eat out, I always have to remember my deep why: to banish my hypertension meds to Siberia. On Saturday after the gym, my how-deep-is-my-why song was playing in my mind again while looking at Koufuku’s menu.
Koufuku is a Japanese resto where we decided to have coffee after brunch at the House of Yang, a Chinese resto. That day could have ended up as an Asian cuisine tour had we transferred to a Korean resto for dinner.
Since the only coffee allowed for me now is Americano, and my favorite is Spanish latte, I made a drastic decision a few weeks ago to simplify matters by saying goodbye to coffee.
So, while they were ordering coffee, I said I’d have the California maki. But the friend seated beside me said That’s carbs. Oh, I have a keto police now. I ordered the cheesecake without asking the wait staff if it was low-carb.
My worst regret in this low-carb journey: why did I not know this when I was a newborn? I could have started this lifestyle then, eating lechon right after being weaned from breastmilk.
But it’s never too late.
Old age can be an excuse to stop dieting: life is short, better to eat anything and everything.
Old age can also be an excuse to stop exercising: too old to Zumba, to join group workouts, to lift weights.
But old age makes muscles a basic necessity, enabling the senior to climb stairs, reach the coin that rolled under the cabinet, and lift bags of groceries and even a sack of ten-kilogram rice. These are easy for the young ones but can be challenges for the young once.
When I was 180 pounds, I’d almost trip on unseen obstacle courses. Meaning, on nothing. While walking. Just walking. While wearing a pair of FitFlop sandals. So, I switched to sneakers, which have become my preferred footwear since then. Good thing sneakers have become acceptable as shoes for dresses long formal gowns and even wedding dresses.
