MOBILE phone conversation overheard while roaming around a mall: “Nightlife ta ba. Chill lang gud.”
I wanted to say, Uban ko! But I was there to watch a movie. Besides, late nights can now give me hangovers and that’s without alcohol. How much more if with alcohol. Hic.
Anyway, the movie, “It Ends with Us,” made me cry and I left the cinema looking like I cried. I don’t know if I felt sorry for the characters. Or I felt sorry for myself because I couldn’t eat the Director’s Club’s free popcorn anymore. It’s carbs. With my low-carb doctor’s commitment and determination to stop my sugar addiction, I have to do my part in achieving that.
And then, I went to my favorite Chinese resto to pour out my woes on hakaw (sans the flour wrapper) and spareribs tausi. That’s the Chinese resto where I used to order my favorites: sweet and sour pork, and shrimps with scrambled eggs. This time I asked the wait staff what oil they use and he proudly said, “Soya oil.” But that’s not the cooking oil I was looking for.
The best oils are coconut oil, butter/ghee, palm oil, and animal fats. But once you’re carnivore, you can use only butter/ghee and animal fats.
To be used with caution: sesame oil, peanut oil, flaxseed oil, olive oil, and avocado oil.
All other cooking oils are inflammatory: vegetable oil/shortening, corn oil, canola oil, and seed oils (walnut, soybean, safflower, sunflower, and grape seed).
Yeah, who knew? Not me. It was only when I began researching on the low-carb diet that I learned about cooking oils.
Yes, health tips can be confusing. Eat carbs. Avoid carbs. Eat fats. Avoid fats. Veggies and fruits are nutritious. Veggies and fruits are poison. Whew.
This is Pinas where rice is life, and pandesal is a complete breakfast. An hour or two later, the Pinoy is hungry again and ends up with seven meals a day: pandesal and coffee early in the morning, breakfast, morning snacks, lunch, afternoon snacks, dinner, and midnight snacks.
The most effective diet is the one that your body loves. No, not what you love. If you love ice cream but your body doesn’t, it will somehow find a way to show you it doesn’t love ice cream. But the journey required to achieve that realization is difficult and can take years.
Realizations never happen overnight. Even in “It Ends with Us,” it took years for Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) to realize that—spoiler alert—she doesn’t have to be part of an abusive relationship. When Lily was a teenager, her mom was the battered wife. Now that she’s married, she’s also a battered wife. Vicious cycle. To stay or or not to stay? That’s the question.
And for the low-carb dieter, the question can be, To carnivore or to lion? Lion diet, that is. Which means ruminant meats, salt, water—the most restrictive.
Health is wealth. Wealth is not wealth. No matter how much money you have, doctors will eventually give up and surrender to God’s will.
