Chow King Halo-halo + Fruits in Ice Cream + Yellow Cab NY Classic + Icebergs Halo-halo + Starbucks Iced Grande Mocha + Tater's white cheddar-coated potato chips + Razon's Halo-halo + etc. + etc. + etc.

This insufferable heat is making me fat.

I've been a good enough girl.

For the past several days, I've been feasting on greens (with Caesar as my preferred dressing)



and whole wheat bread.


(I don't eat it by itself, of course. Yesterday, I had Italian sausage on whole wheat bread and earlier, beef pastrami on whole wheat bread. But, yeah, it's all on whole wheat bread. Ano ba, ang kulit.)

So, maybe, I do deserve to have this right now.


Just one small bag. Promise.

(I think dieting is ok as long as people don't identify the word "dieting" with "starving oneself". It's all just about eating the right kinds of food and the right quantity (or lack thereof, hahaha). And one other thing it's got going against it is that people are generally crankier when they're on a diet. Though I was a grouch only during the first two, maybe three days. Now, I'm back to normal--or almost normal.)

Potato chips!!!

Food

I have just come fresh from blog-hopping and all these people writing about food really get to my nerves--or, my stomach! I don't like apple pie but reading about how (supposedly) yummy it is makes me wonder whether I've been too hasty in judging it. I'm suddenly craving for oyster cake and baked lasagna and stuffed portobello mushrooms and it's only been an hour since I had breakfast! Incidentally, the Tuguegarao longganisa I ate was yummy and along with spicy vinegar generously sprinkled with salt, it's hi-blood special, but what the heck, it was darn good, anyway. Yesterday, Ate K-- gave me Royce chocolates for Mother's Day. It's in the fridge right now...maybe time for a bite?

Food, food, food. But wait, there's more.

For most of last week, in the office, I've been having Hungarian sausage with buttered toast for lunch. Thirty minutes before that hour, I'd be almost giddy with excitement for said fare and then, thirty minutes into that hour, I'd be pushing my plate away, half of the meal still on the plate. My friend K-- would mutter how I never finish my food and then would dig into my left-overs and S-- would prod me, "finish your food, Shan, You need to eat." Yesterday, while I was out with the kids, I ordered sizzling tenderloin tips and ended up eating only a fourth of the Java rice and almost choking from trying to force myself to finish the ulam. During dinner, I merely picked on the roast beef and fish fillet I had on my plate. The host kept asking me to go for seconds and I had a hard time trying to smile and say "yes, later, thank you," knowing there weren't to be any seconds or thirds for me.

I have that takaw-tingin syndrome that is on its way to becoming worse. A few days ago, a colleague told me I was losing too much weight, which surprised me because every look in the mirror would leave me extremely dissatisfied about my arms (and I was wearing a sleeveless top that day). Anyway, I said "thank you" and he was, like, "what's there to thank me for? You look unhealthy and stressed. Eat!" And I just chuckled and told him that I liked being skinny and he just shook his head and muttered something about not understanding girls and their obsession with skinniness.

But seriously, now, I think I want those chocolates.

Weight Woes

At least one week per month, I go through what I call a "hungry phase."

During these periods and if I happen to be in the office, I then become a much too frequent visitor of the 2/F pantry's vendo machine, from where I usually snag three items: a can of soda, a bag of chips and a chocolate bar. This, mostly after lunch--which is an entirely different feast: a half cup of rice, beef tapa or chicken flakes and orange juice in a plastic cup. On "extra-hungry" days, there will almost always be sprints to McDonald's or Hen-Lin, which stand so conveniently near to my workplace. And, an hour into my shift, I would already have finished off a medium-sized frappucino--an appetizer of sorts before lunch.

Tsk, tsk. Bad, bad, bad.

It's a good thing this happens only 7 days (give or take a few days, I can never really be sure), or else it wouldn't take that long for me to double my present size, which isn't something I'm proud of, in the first place. Like a number of, if not most, women, I have a never-ending preoccupation with my weight. Reed-thin is beautiful, and any pound of flesh (or fat, for that matter) that goes beyond that, is something to be alarmed about.

I am aware that this will sound superficial to some, but the fact remains that this subject goes far, far deeper than most of us would be willing to take it to be. The compulsion to be "un-fat" may be traced back to any number of things, like: a problematic childhood, a deeply-rooted insecurity brought about by an extremely low self-esteem, severe depression, some long-forgotten trauma that surfaces again and again, pressure from the mass media, etc., in the same way that it could subsequently lead to any number of things, like: (again) severe depression, a continuously deteriorating self-esteem, anorexia or bulimia (I had the latter when I was in second-year college), numerous sicknesses (like hyperacidity, ulcers and hypertension), and many other results with scary-sounding names, I'm sure.

The cure?

I wish I knew.