I’VE FOUND the perfect diet—well, perfect, that is, for me. Eating, you see, has, to me, nothing to do with hunger; it’s a mind thing, probably generational. Being a war baby, I may have absorbed my parents’ terror of privation. I realize I eat because it’s time, because I should. It’s not unlike the primal, psychological attraction of Mount Everest for climbers: Food is there.
Take ensaymada. Oh, I do love ensaymada, especially the good, old-fashioned ones, but I also feel that the greater sin than overconsuming is letting them go bad, unconsumed. And since they come by the dozen, and my only home companion is nuts about fruits, not ensaymada, I feel morally forced to deal with them alone.
By some extenuating stroke of fortune, I happen to be a semi-vegetarian (“semi,” in yet the loosest sense, that is), preferring fish to meat most of the time, the exceptions being lechon, Peking duck, Chinese chorizo, Majestic ham, salami and Spam, among others. (My husband himself only takes meats from vegetarian animals, and won’t touch crocodiles, for example.)
My newfound perfect diet appeals precisely to my psyche. It’s called “5:2,” which means five days of normal feasting and two days of fasting that allows only a 600-calorie intake each day. Here’s a sampler: two eggs for breakfast, grilled chicken breasts and lettuce for lunch, and fish and a rice-noodle dish for dinner, but all the coffee and tea you like.
I don’t see how such a humanitarian fast can cause any feeling of deprivation—in fact, it’s promoted to prevent hunger hitting a desperate point. Two days of fasting and five of feasting are definitely not a bad deal—a dark tunnel so short you could already see the light at the end of it even before entering.
Hefty reflection
There was a time when all I had to do was look in the mirror to realize I needed to do something about the hefty reflection before me, but instantly the realization was defeated. Indeed, the very idea of dieting switched on a precisely opposite image: a tempting buffet of freshly baked, crispy French bread, dollops of whipped butter on the side, an assortment of cheeses, smoked salmon, hot sardines, patés, cold cuts—and those are just appetizers, though, again, enough to sabotage all thoughts of dieting.
I also tried keeping diets secret from my mind, which, poor thing, seems to be suffering from an old, long-running, terminal fear of starvation. I have tried tiptoeing around a diet or on impulse making momentary concessions, but the brain just can’t be fooled; it reacts with pictures of Milky Way halo-halo, luglog and puto, just the precise comfort foods I can’t resist. My mouth begins to water and I succumb, although not totally: I halve everything with my husband.
But somehow the mind seems to tolerate the 5:2 diet. Shhh, I’m already on it, more religiously on the five-day feast part, though. I’m holding a friend to her testimonial: two dress sizes down in two or three months—I’m thinking, perfectly timed with being ninang again at a wedding in December.
The hard part is remembering when to start the fast. How fast the feasting days fly! Has it been a month? Well, I guess I now owe myself eight days of fasting. At least, I can still keep tabs.
The warnings and contraindications are not serious enough to cause me the slightest anxiety, the worst being bad breath, and they don’t make it clear whether it happens within the five days of feasting or the two of fasting or after I’ve made two dress sizes down. By then, anyway, who cares?
Of course, diet alone won’t do it, not without its partner-exercise. I’m on that, too. Well, I’ve updated my exercise outfits-—that’s how serious I am this time. A smart shopper, I realize that for the kind of exercise I do, Adidas is much too costly, but Nike, on sale, is just right.
New Nikes
When my brother-in-law in West Virginia heard that I had decided to go back on track—or rather, back on the treadmill, the only machine I know—and that the Nikes he had sent five years ago had come apart from desuetude, he sent me a new pair pronto. After all, I had accumulated my extra poundage on his account, on our last visit there, and my own contribution was simply adding to it.
In fact, I’ve increased my treadmill time to three times a week, coinciding with my husband’s tennis. There’s some discomfort to put up with. It comes from working out with the corporate crowd—guys and gals already fit and who can afford to show more skin, which seems the norm in gym look these days. Also, I’m made to feel a little out of sync. Amid the flurry of activity on and off treadmills, usually set at full speed, I seem treadmilling to the beat of a separate drummer. Many times I’m shamed to speed up, pushing my heart rate to as high as 140. Once I break into a sweat and begin huffing and puffing (not a pretty sight), I slow down to avoid the ultimate shame of passing out.
Some days this older gentleman comes—he goes truant for weeks—and my pride is restored. He wears jogging clothes inside his jacket in the air-conditioned gym, plods and makes me look and feel good. Compared to him, I fly like a gazelle.
There’s this nasty greeting card with a bad-attitude warning: “My favorite exercise at the gym is probably judging.” Well, aside from that, I’m doing something good for myself.
