PROFESSIONAL sports have come up with a term when they want to rest their stars and preserve them for the more important battles. They call it “load management” where they either limit the minutes of their important players while playing or they don’t see any action at all.
The move will be beneficial to the superstars but it deprives the fans that spend time and resources in going to game venues to see their sports heroes in action only to be disappointed. To think that these athletes are paid precisely just to play. But this won’t be our issue today.
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We are again at the time of the year when parties seem to get endless, from Christmas to New Year celebrations until the Sinulog comes to Cebu, the Ati-atihan in Kalibo and the Dinagyang in Iloilo. There will be an avalanche of all the holiday food and delicacies accompanied by a tidal wave of booze. This over indulgence simply calls for another kind of load management.
Since the time I and wife Denise migrated 14,000 kilometers away, I had managed to lose at least 20 pounds. Yup, it was a bit of a struggle considering that I was so used to eating the good but not exactly good stuff. The first few months had me on a bi-monthly visit to my healthcare provider that monitored my elevated blood sugar and hypertension.
I was put on a low carb, low salt, almost no sugar, high fiber diet which my wife strictly followed. My food intake was daw sa kanding na gid, with all the vegetables and fruits on my meals. Yes, it comes with exercise that making 10,000 steps a day, which became routine. Along the way and from the literatures given to me, I became aware of the importance and need of proper diet.
I’m two years removed from getting 20 percent discounts in almost everything purchased and from what I learned, thin is not actually in for people above 40 years old. The most important thing is how active we are and our ability to complete everyday tasks. Maintaining a healthy weight is a must which means that muscle weight should be higher in proportion to fat.
I admit it’s hard to keep our weights steady if we’re above 50 but it can be done and getting older is not synonymous to weight gain. I was 187 pounds when we left; the last time I stepped on a scale, it read 162 pounds.
There will be days that we eat what we liked and my wife allows Saturdays and Sundays as my cheat days, but still with the stern look if I attempt to reach for seconds. Our bodies change, metabolism slows down and we work double time to keep lean. Exercise, even 30 minutes of brisk walking, helps. It did to me.
I miss the Filipino holiday fares – the lechon centerpiece, the inubaran and binakol, the goat kaldereta, Cebu’s version of humba and the torta and ube ensaimada from Titay’s. It would be a waste of all the hard work if I give in to culinary temptations and pack in the pounds again. At least from where we are now, we can easily say no to invitations. This is my version of load management./PN
