Even running just once a week, can change your body

Conserve your personal energy

I’m subscribed to a lot of those newsletters and there’s one that I particularly like because it’s short and to the point and more importantly, resonates with me. Darius Foroux in Wise & Wealthy (yup!) talks about how ‘December can be a hectic month. And every time things get hectic, our personal energy often suffers’.

I know right, so true! He further says:

Personal energy plays such an important role in our overall well-being. In The Power of Full Engagement, psychologist Jim Loehr and journalist Tony Schwartz talk about the best way to spend and recover energy:

When we expend energy, we draw down our reservoir. When we recover energy, we fill it back up. Too much energy expenditure without sufficient recovery eventually leads to burnout and breakdown. (Overuse it and lose it.) Too much recovery without sufficient stress leads to atrophy and weakness. (Use it or lose it.)

As with so many things in life: Balance matters!

And we know that the hecticness is subscribing to an expectation of what the holidays should be instead of how it should be on our own terms, our own set of realities.

If you can’t afford to buy that gift, then DON’T. If you can’t eat too much of that because of diet and health reasons, then DON’T. If you feel that this person is shit and awful, tell it to them NOW and don’t wait until the New Year lol.

Save your energy, save your resources; you owe yourself first.

Shoulder-day

When you eat or have sex or buy a pair of new shoes, the pleasure is immediate; it’s a shame that when you exercise, it’s not. You have to wait afterwards, and only if you’ve done it right.

I never liked exercise, but it’s all a matter of conditioning your mind. There are days when I give in, but that’s rare now and are usually the days when I need to rest anyway and recover.

I don’t have a six-pack yet, or a 25-inch bicep (that would make me look way asymmetrical so NO), or big legs (I’m short at 5’8 and I don’t want to look like I came from a farming family- and not the one who owns the hacienda- not that there’s anything wrong with that 😅), but I actually feel good, and that’s all you’d ever need.

Keep using it until it's manky. Don't.

Nothing makes you feel older than losing your teeth.

You can regenerate your skin (to a certain extent), you can start building even better muscles at way past your 40s, you can be slim forever (well, I am), but if your teeth are fucked, that’s it. Having fake teeth put in don’t count. I realised this yesterday when the dentist told me I needed to get an impacted wisdom tooth removed. I’ve been putting off going to the dentist for the longest time because I just couldn’t get over the cost of care in this country- and yet, here I am mulling whether to get a new pair of Yeezy’s.

So take heed, stop drinking coke with real sugar, quit smoking and book a dental clean ASAP. You can’t keep using your teeth until they’re manky like my bakeware which I threw out today (all of them save for a few, still good, far from manky spring-form pans) when a whole new set arrived today, bought from the Labour Weekend sale at Briscoes.

Monday: 62nd (?) day in Covid-19 lockdown

I hope it doesn't sound genuine, but I have to say- and this is important that I say this- that I’m fortunate. So I feel less guilty (not that I’m doing anything wrong to be guilty about) that I’m spending it taking care of myself no matter how selfish and self-centred that sounds. What use would I be too anyone if I was sick (all it takes is a KFC meal two days in a row) and depressed? I could be sick but depressed, I don’t think so. I think I’m wired for enthusiasm and good cheer 24/7.

I’m not suddenly like The Rock lol- I don’t even want to be that huge, gross (no offence to The Rock). But my body has stabilised. I don’t get the aches and pains on the 2nd day after a work-out, which sort of sabotaged whatever gains I’ve made because it would make me stop, then resume a couple of days later.

Because of the extended lockdown, I was able to weather the pain and lethargy of those days and plowed on, increasing the intensity of my work-outs and the frequency to the point where I do two rest days in seven days- not going to be stupid and not rest.

I’ve bought some weights, but knowing how quickly the body gets bored by the same work-outs, I’ve thrown in a huge variety of work-outs- decreasing push-ups; yoga and dumbbell circuits. I’m still very much house-bound by choice, and really haven’t done much cardio outdoors. Haven’t really been doing targeted ab-work, but…it’s definitely been 201% better than the last time. The whole point is NOT being comfortable- comfort is complacency .

My goal is that when it’s finally safe to go out there, I can transition easily to going to a gym and getting professional advice- yeah, I can afford personal trainers now! (you pay a little bit to eliminate the guesswork that comes from figuring out things by yourself).

Start of the day & you're already (possibly) f_cked

On some days, I would have hot water with the juice of a whole lemon in it. But most of the time, I'd rather have coffee- black, no sugar. And instant, I'm not picky. On occasion I would indulge in half a teaspoon of raw sugar and a splash of cream. But coffee creamers are the best like Coffee Mate. It dissolves better than real cream and complements coffee like a true soul-mate would- which is why in the real world, it's too good to be true. 

Apparently it's mostly sugar and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil which contains trans fats; you can read the entire rap sheet here if you're concerned that the half-teaspoon bit you had this morning has put you on the path to certain death.

And as for coffee itself, the latest news from the grapevine is that it cuts suicide risk in half. On one hand, having it hotter than 149 degrees puts you at risk for cancer of the esophagus. 

Eggs are the best. Easy and versatile; fried, scrambled, boiled, baked with avocado, in an Eggs Benedict, in a pie with bacon. And raw- when I started working out in my early 30s I swallowed the whites mixed with milk and used the yolks for omelettes. 

If you find yourself asking the question if eggs are bad for you, don't Google for the answers. Don't rely on the opinions of self-proclaimed diet/lifestyle gurus who end up cherry-picking second-hand sources to suit their arguments. 

Go to your doctor and get tests for your cholesterol and triglyceride levels; it's the only way to get a definitive answer as to how the food you eat actually affects your body.

Growing up, if we ran out of kitchen staples such as vinegar or cooking oil, we could buy some in doled out smaller quantities at the barrio sari-sari store. Kept in jars, it would be an unlucky day if you discovered too late that the oil had gone off. I was surprised that de facto Philippine national cooking oil, Baguio oil is still a booming business after 84 years. We grew up on this oil and if your family had it good, you always had a full can.

It was around the new millennium that we started getting canola oil in plastic bottles and my mom's perennial complaint was that someone was probably drinking it because the two-litre jug would be empty in the blink of an eye. But since my dad's death, the days of fried fish, fried pork chop and fried chicken have become fewer and far in between and suddenly, the 'no cholesterol', 'high in Omega 3' claims that made fried food seem safe felt like lies.

Here in New Zealand, we still use canola oil though in a given week, it's more for sautéing rather than actual frying. I would gladly switch to something like olive oil (which I have now that I flat) but if you were a family of more than four, the economics of using olive oil exclusively would be daunting. So what to do when canola is masquerading as a good oil; that coconut oil is not the miracle substance it's made out to be; and that ALL vegetable oils may have contributed to increasingly high rates of diabetes, heart disease and cancer?

“Consider that at the turn of the 20th century the amount of vegetable oils consumed was practically zero. Today the average consumption is 70 lbs a year per person.”

Ahhh, processed meats. I wonder if Rodics is still around, that bastion of comforting and nourishing (!) processed-meat meals inside the University of the Philippines' Diliman campus. After pork belly, my next favourite go-to meat would have to be a 2 kilogram pack of Purefoods German Franks which harks back to those student meals. It wasn't just fitting for breakfast (with fried eggs and fried rice), it was also lunch, an afternoon snack, dinner, and on a sizzling plate with mushrooms, a ton of white onions and birds-eye chilies, a perfect accompaniment to a night's worth of gin and brandy with the guys.

While I like the occasional sausage, I just don't get Kiwis love of butchery sausages- pale, flaccid things with no flavour, more fillers than meat, saved only at your neighbourhood sizzle by caramelised onions and tomato sauce (far better than ketchup actually).

It ranks last in a short list that's topped by bacon (the Signature Range is THE BEST), seconded by sinfully juicy Kranskys, and chorizo, the best one of which I've found at Farro Fresh.

But alas, we knew deep in our hearts that something so wickedly good must be bad. When the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared last year that red meat and processed meats were definitely carcinogenic, we all felt like jilted lovers.

Sure, we've been deceived- but it's so good, we know we're still going to be up for some every so often.