From Fat to Payat - 1 (The first of a series)

I joined our office version of The Biggest Loser on February 2 2012. I weighed in at 175 lbs. A week later, on the 9th, I started taking the contest seriously not only because I didn't want to lose a thousand pesos if i didn't shape up but also because I wanted to maintain an ideal weight for a female of 45 years in age, height of 5'7 1/2 and which is between a Body Mass Index range of 19-25 - that will be any weight between 118 to 155 lbs. I just found out that my BMI is 27, more than the ideal 25, and that further convinces me to lose weight because health risks may occur. I don't want to precipitate type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. My paternal grandma, my dad and his brother - all died of cancer.

I'm making a journal of my progress from fat to payat. Even if I don't win, simply trying is enough. I know that I will be healthier, feel lighter, and as a bonus, probably look younger.

How serious am I?

I brisk-walked from my house in Project 4 to Riverbanks via P. Tuazon, thru that hairpin turn at Escopa II linking Marikina and Quezon City, then onto Major Dizon, the thoroughfare of Industrial Valley Complex and walk the few meters along FVR Road, the access road to C5 to get to Riverbanks. At the mall, I chanced upon a sale of big-sized shoes and was able to get a pair at 50% off for my daughter's prom on the 17th. I walked back home via the same route, still brisk-walking at the uphill climb of Major Dizon.

February 9 - After my walk to and from Riverbanks

February 10 - With Sherill, a friend, on her last day at work

February 11 - After getting home from a date - we love to walk when we are together - but nothing like walking from Riverbanks to Cubao in 50 minutes

Thing I've Never Done

I am sure that there are things in your life or one thing that you never thought you would do until you've done it. Right now, I can think of only one thing. My mind is still trying to recover along with the rest of my body.

I never thought I would walk home from my office in Makati to my home in Project 4 in 2 and 1/2 hours until tonight.

I guess I was tired of the same routine everyday. The daily grind then after that, packing myself in with the other human sardines into the MRT coach. So today, I gave myself a respite. And even though my feet in sturdy Mellow Yellow, were groaning from under me, I arrived home safe and sound.

Think I will be eating heartily tonight. Afterwards, blessed sleep...

Good night!

P.S. I'm preparing also for our office's version of the biggest loser. Wanna go back to running, too.

Catch Me A Dragonfly

How fast-paced my life has become. I now crave for those bygone days of getting idly by without guilt. But because I live in the age of automation when machines are slowly replacing humans in the workplace, when there is always the pressure of proving oneself superior to machine, I feel alienated and like fish out of water. Though my childhood ceased to be idyllic after I was forced to grow up at age five, the peacefulness of the first years of my life could easily be pictured in the context of where our family resided in perennially flooded Malabon.

Panghulo, Malabon, with its fishponds and swamps full of floating water spinach, was the backdrop against which my young life was painted. I can still see in my mind's eye the little garden with the grotto at the center. Goldfish shone bright under the sun almost all day while they swam in the water-filled moat around the grotto. Butterflies and dragonflies flitted about over the flower shrubs and away from my tiny hands. There in that garden, I could run free without being afraid to fall and skin my knee. I could let the hours pass without a care in the world except the grumbling of a hungry stomach and the nagging thought that probably my mom had already arrived from work and was looking for me. Swamp and pond waters submerged our house in stormy days. My father would carry me on his shoulders and we would catch fish through a makeshift rod's hook on which a wriggly worm dangled. It was a borrowed house with a borrowed garden in the middle of water and floating water spinach. But the memories are mine for as long as I live.

If I had my way then, I would never have left Malabon for the busier, mostly concrete Caloocan. For even though, we moved to another borrowed house that faced a church, heard Mass songs several hours in a day and the clanging of the bells for Angelus, I never felt I was any closer to God while I lived there.

I now live in Project 4, the house that my mother's accident insurance built. It has become a nondescript habitat that belied all the care that I put into it even before the babies came. This house now looks lived-in, worn and weary and if it ever breathed, it would have gasped and huffed and puffed from its toils. I had wanted to preserve it, even though the saddest years of my life are imprisoned in its walls and it witnessed horrors that should never visit a home. Sadly, its wooden beams and boards seem to be crumbling everyday. I had wanted it to be a living scrapbook of my children's childhood and growing years. All the firsts in their lives happened in this house. But the world as we know it will end, weather-beaten houses included, including my house on borrowed land.

I will try to walk instead of run. Running is too much to hope for now. But I need to feel the wind blowing on my face, my hair. I need to go back even once to that long-ago carefree days of my childhood and feel the innocence, the promise and hope of my early years once more. And in going back, I may return to my now taking everything with me to help me live.

LOVING...

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.


If thou must love me... (Sonnet 14)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
"I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

Glaucoma Suspect

On Nov 29 2011, I became a glaucoma suspect. There is no history of glaucoma in my family, no diabetes, no myopia, no high blood, no regular use of corticosteroids yet I am now someone with one or more risk factors that may lead to glaucoma including increasing intraocular pressure even though I may not yet have definite optic nerve damage or vision loss due to glaucoma. I have since been to see another ophthalmologist who wanted to make a more accurate diagnosis other than the applanation tonometry she gave me.

My situation now is depressing. Even though I need to see my doctor, the visit would always bring a feeling of dread of what the diagnosis would be. Last Thursday, I went through three procedures - perimetry, disc photo and pachymetry. I have to schedule my next visit to my doctor so she can see the results of the procedures.

As I write this, I am having an asthma attack. I have taken my medication. My asthma must have been caused not only by extreme weather conditions but also because of concerns about my eye. My attacks started last Thursday morning.

I have to keep myself busy or think of other things to keep from crying or wallowing in self-pity. God has his reasons for all of these.

Why Am I Here?

As a child, I used to ask God why He made me. I couldn't understand why certain bad things happened to me. Now as a grown-up, when my faith backslides, even though I know that God has a purpose for letting things happen in our lives, I question Him again.

"God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. In the fullness of time, God the Father sent his Son as the Redeemer and Savior of mankind, fallen into sin, thus calling all into his Church and, through the work of the Holy Spirit, making them adopted children and heirs of his eternal happiness." From the Catholic viewpoint, God created me, each one of us to be with Him for all eternity.

Because I am feeble, whenever I feel that things are not going the way I want them to go in my life, I ask God to take me, as a way of escape from what I perceive as my unbearable life. This is a distortion of God's beautiful plan of letting me share eternity with Him. There can be no shortcuts, for "He has made everything beautiful in its time"(New International Version).

Again and again, I give up. But God in His goodness and mercy always lifts me up.

Maybe my belief in God is shaky at best. I am not a mature Christian. And by definition by Christians, since I am Catholic, I am not a Christian. But God knows that I am wretched and loves me just the same. He loves me even if I only believe in Him because I am scared of the thought of the world turning on its own volition, of things happening with no one in control, of everything getting jumbled because no one is in charge of Operations. I am still scared - scared of falling with no one there to catch me, just like in the song. But I only have to remember that only with God can I still be like a little child, and my fears would leave me.

"He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end"(New International Version).

If God will allow me the gift of understanding, I will have full knowledge of my reason for being. If not, only in heaven will I fully understand why God created me.

At A Crossroad

I am Catholic by birth and rearing. I now feel that I have to make a decision sooner or later for a faith that I would be willing to die for after living for it. I pray that, though I am at a crossroad, if I make a wrong turn, I can always go back.



I believe that God is faithful even though oftentimes I am not. He will guide me to the right path.