September roundup

In this roundup I’ll be talking a great deal about fitness, diet, and wellness, so let’s call this the health edition.

Evening walkies

Late last month, I was chatting with Steve and shared with him my exercise regimen: 45 minutes to an hour of strength training, thrice a week.

‘Harvard Health suggests at least 2.5 hours of aerobic activity a week,’ I had said.

After briefly contemplating my regimen, he said carefully, ‘It’s better than nothing.’

I was unimpressed that he was unimpressed with what I perceived to be an active lifestyle.

Nonetheless, it did make me think on my activity level—I miss what little cardio I used to do at the gym. This is coming from someone who absolutely hates jogging or running. I would groan whenever my trainer would mention ‘burpees’ alongside ‘timed set’. But I enjoyed the ellipticals, and I didn’t mind when Christian prescribed me 15 minutes on an inclined treadmill prior to our workouts.

Pre-pandemic, I used to log a decent amount of steps on Google Fit just by my necessary walking—to the bus stop, to my lunch haunts and the Starbucks nearest the office. All of this was gone, and I carelessly shrugged off all that walking like it was negligible.

Therefore, I decided to make time for walkies now. At five-twenty my laptop would chime to remind me to drop what I’m doing, put on shoes, and get out the door. I’ve carved a modest route in our neighborhood that lasts about half an hour and gives me between 3,400 and 3,800 steps. It’s not much, but I can feel the difference.

For one, it gives me a change of pace and an opportunity to clear my mind. For the most part I don’t look at my phone or listen to music while I walk. I find it refreshing. It can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be as long as I don’t hold on to the stress. Once, I came home fuming because I had nearly run into people one too many times (twilight seems to be the best hour for jogging, and even a three-metre sidewalk can get crowded), or nearly had a motorist run me over in their attempt to race me to the ‘right of way’, never mind that I was on a crosswalk.

Overall, my evening walks barely burn 100 kcal each time, but cumulatively it goes a long way. I actually feel a bit tired at bedtime and find sleep easier to come by, and my weight has been decreasing more reliably. (Last month was frustrating because I gained and plateaued from simple missteps in an otherwise stringent CICO diet.)

Bought a body composition scale

Going back to my conversation with Steve, he had mentioned that you could measure your body fat percentage using a scale. I was incredulous. He found it amusing and told me I lived in the 1960s, if I thought that measuring body fat at home was a pseudo-science.

I was still not sold on it. I’ve frequented reddit long enough to know that any discussion on body fat percentage seemed to boil down to ‘DEXA scans’ to accurately measure your body fat. Nonetheless I looked up discussions on scale accuracy and how it measures body fat (via bioelectrical impedance analysis). Still, the caliper test sounded more ridiculous.

I was warming up to the science of it all when I found myself watching Ria’s weight loss video again.

‘While my weight was okay, my body fat percentage was really high,’ she went on to preface, ‘and that increased my risk of things like hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and that is why I decided to tackle the excess body fat in my early thirties, because to me it’s not just about aesthetics. It’s also about your long-term health.’

After hearing that, something clicked in my head and I went and bought the Mi Body Composition Scale 2 on Lazada. It’s remarkably inexpensive, and arrived three days later.

It’s a beautiful, sleek, white scale, and the Mi Fit app is relatively easy to use, if not completely seamless in its integration with other apps… I recently found out that Chad and Jeph also had the exact same scale.

Seeing my body fat percentage at the ‘obese’ or ‘dangerous’ end of the scale—I’ve looked at multiple sources on what’s healthy for women my age [1] [2]—something in me felt vindicated. So there is a reason I was never happy with my weight and appearance, despite multiple people in my life telling me I ‘look okay’ or the BMI chart telling me I’m ‘healthy’. I do not mean to conflate my self-image with my ‘health’—I know these are two different things—but I cannot tell you how much more I’m motivated to keep on towards my goal weight, now that I know it’s not just for vanity or aesthetics (which, when you think about it, people should stop feeling superficial for).

What I’ve been eating

I’ll probably do a proper ‘what I eat in a day’ post much later, if just a chronicle for my future self if I fall off the wagon. I just don’t feel like I’ve proved a lot to do it, if that makes sense? Like, who is this woman telling me what she eats in a day when she hasn’t made a lot of progress? Aha.

Nonetheless, at the time of writing, my Instagram grid captures some of my breakfast, lunch, and dinner mainstays:

Obviously, I don’t eat my cats.

The big plate of salad you might see is my lunch mainstay. It anchors my diet and is probably the most important aspect of it. Also, believe it or not it’s only 400 kcals. When Canada published its updated food guide a year or so back it somewhat resonated with me, and serves as a constant reminder that I probably am not eating as much fruits and vegetables as I should. Watching Ria’s videos as well as documentaries like In Defense of Food strengthened this point.

I do not wish to get in too deep, but a whole-food plant-based diet (not to be confused with veganism, wherein Oreos technically count) has also been shown to reverse cardiovascular diseases. It might sound wild, but you can google it and explore the studies yourself, see if the methodology or findings seem to line up. I have mentioned before that I am neither vegetarian nor vegan, and my only takeaways here is that I should make an effort to eat more fruits and veggies and in varieties.

Keeping active

I wanted to take this time to say that keeping active is something I want to teach my future kids. I grew up in a household that was largely sedentary, even among my relatives.* Few pursued sports, and I thought jogging was a Millennial thing people got into at work for lack of better hobbies.

* My father’s side is an exception. My grandfather is a small Chinese man who probably weighs less than I do. My grandmother was also a small Chinese woman. My father’s side are all of slight built, naturally active people who do not have a habit of lounging or sitting down for long periods. They didn’t do fitness as a hobby as much as it was a necessity of their work and circumstances.

In my twenties I was very dismissive of people going to the gym. I thought it was for vanity. Financial gurus keep telling you to be frugal by cancelling your gym membership. When I was younger I remember telling a friend that I could never see myself going to the gym. ‘I don’t want to bulk up and look like that’ I had said, whilst pointing to an image of a female athlete with 15% body fat.

I know. Classic excuse for the lazy.

My point is, I grew up in an environment that never prioritised any form of exercise, glorified food and sedentary lifestyles, and associated ‘healthy’ with ‘not getting the flu during flu season’. It was very narrow and would lead to the kind of obesity and comorbidities I’ve seen in so many people in their middle ages. I want to veer away from that.

In the recent weeks I’ve come to surprise myself. I’m already doing strength training thrice a week, and walking perhaps five times a week, yet I was looking into more. Am I stretching enough? I discovered Yoga with Adriene and did her 20-minute beginner routine. It felt refreshing. I’m listening to Lilly Sabri talk about active recovery, and am looking into fitting yoga into my week. I might also look into tai chi as another form of active recovery.

The other day I found myself browsing r/xxfitness and laughing along the comments [1] [2]. I’ve been watching Lilly Sabri and Romee Straijd eat nearly the same breakfasts I’ve been eating for weeks (oats with protein or an egg on toast). And it dawned on me—I completely, never expected this of myself. Who is this girl who’s turning into some fitness buff, and eating clean? When did working out feel normal, and not a ceremony? How did I manage to go several weeks keeping my added sugar below 50 grams a day?

Ben’s on board with me. He’s resumed training as well. We’re both eating decent food at home for the most part. Last Sunday we went shopping and spent a good several minutes comparing the nutritional information across different muesli / granola brands. Which had more protein and added sugar and so on. Here are our picks:

Curiously, they’re both Australian brands.

I welcome this change, and I hope I keep like this. Perhaps not all the time, but it feels good, and I want to keep it up.

Been a little too into tea as of late

It was fuelled by my desire to reduce stress in my life.

After having another bad palpitation attack with no obvious trigger, as well as nights of restless sleep, I looked into, well… reducing my stress and trying to ‘relax’ a bit harder.

It started with chamomile tea, which I learned to appreciate just earlier this year. Then it became lavender and chamomile. Then I added a ‘stress ease’ tea. Then I realised tea fit very nicely into my diet—tea sweetened with honey costs next to nothing in terms of calories, and curbs my sweet tooth throughout the day.

Then I realised I didn’t have a ‘normal’ tea. So I bought green tea and didn’t realise green tea has caffeine. That’s all right. Jasmine green tea with maple syrup has a nice flavour profile, and is a great after-lunch drink.

Of course I will also always have ginger tea, which I have come to associate with relief from sore throat, nausea, as well as an aid in digestion.

So those are all my teas. I feel like I’m slowly weaning myself off of coffee. I have one cup in the morning and no more. Lately my sleep has been unbroken. I don’t wake in the middle of the night. I do remember dreaming each night, though.

I know drinking tea will not magically remove stress from my life, but I believe a little goes a long way. Also…

Meditation

I have an on-and-off relationship with my phone. Screentime, to be more accurate. There are weeks when I’m really good and on top of my chores and there are weeks when my day just degenerates into browsing my phone when I wake up in the morning, and a blur of YouTube videos throughout the day.

Once my attention hits a saturation point, I fall back into my good habits by meditating. Sometimes, this is as straightforward as opening Calm.com and doing a guided meditation. But what I wanted to underscore are the ways you might be meditating without realising it.

First, I want to clarify that my understanding of meditation is this: letting your thoughts unfold on their own without external stimuli. Cal Newport writes about the best definition of solitude he’d come across: the state in which you’re isolated from input from other minds. We need regular doses of this solitude in our day.

Here is another explanation, which I found on reddit that resonated with me so much I remember it four years later. It was in response to the question, ‘how to avoid having a midlife crisis every time I try to go to bed’:

My interpretation of this is that your brain is like a drive. It stores memory in its cache and sometimes you need to clear it, defrag it, or otherwise free up some memory so that files can move around.

Keeping this in mind, here are the ways you might find yourself meditating:

Walking or running

I’ve mentioned earlier that my evening walkies help clear my mind, when I don’t find them upsetting. Matt Inman, of The Oatmeal fame, similarly described his reasons for running in this web comic from a few years back. It’s a worthwhile read, even if you might find the style a bit informal. One line stands out, which he attributes to Haruki Murakami:

In the moment

When I wait for the elevator in our building I resist the urge to take my phone out, especially when I’m only doing it out of habit—I didn’t have anything to check or look at.

I usually watch YouTube videos while I tidy and wash the dishes, but when I find myself no longer interested I turn the TV off and resume what I’m doing in silence, or with my own thoughts for company.

I know people who take their phones with them in the shower, either to listen to music or to watch videos. I have episodes of this once in a while, but I notice that just showering with my thoughts for company is exceptionally relaxing, especially before bed.

Moving along, a big highlight this month was…

Ben’s birthday

Last Sunday, 20th September was Ben’s birthday. Now, he is a difficult person to give gifts to, as he is incredibly efficient with his belongings and mostly knows exactly what he wants. A month before, I resolved to give him the one thing he can’t reliably get in Manila: Eggs Benedict.

Now, I have a tendency to… overdo things. In my head it was going to served perfectly plated, in a breakfast in bed tray, cloth napkins, napkin ring, possibly a doily, and so on. I bought new dinnerware from Crate & Barrel (Ben admits our dinnerware was ugly and besides both dinner plates were chipped), bought the tray, bought the napkin, bought the immersion blender for the ‘no-fail’ hollandaise sauce… I even found English muffins in the metro! Can you believe it? I was thisclose to making them at home!

Funny thing about the English muffins—Ben took one look at them and said, ‘that’s not an English muffin’. The muffins lacked the characteristic dusting on the outer surface. So you know what I did? I bought cornmeal from Healthy Options and dusted the muffins after toasting them, and Ben found them passable, but not quite true.

Anyway, back to the Eggs Ben. I’ve seen the no-fail poached egg recipes online, and was so sure I could do it.

I couldn’t.

The first Sunday I practiced, I ended up serving Ben a perfectly poached… egg yolk. The white had completely separated from the yolk.

The second Sunday, the eggs were in various states of separation, but all cooked through. My no-fail hollandaise emulsified like it should, except that it was very viscous. At this point Ben could see my distress. I was tearing up. Naiiyak na ako sa sobrang inis. He pointedly told me to please not attempt poached eggs on his birthday, as he wanted us both to have a nice, easy morning. He did, however, enjoy the muffins and the hollandaise.

See, those YouTubers lie! I think you can’t teach someone to poach eggs in the same way you can’t teach someone to cook rice on the stovetop. It’s largely intuitive. You can’t just say ‘turn off the heat after ten minutes’ for the rice, and apparently neither Kenji Lopez-Alt nor the woman from Downshiftology can tell you what temperature the water has to be with poached eggs. I’ve dropped the eggs when the water was ‘quivering, but not boiling’ and the entire pot turned murky from the whites spreading completely. I’ve dropped the eggs when the water was ‘bubbling at the bottom, but not breaking the surface’ and got cooked-through yolks after three minutes.

So… yeah, I did not serve my husband the beloved Eggs Benedict for his birthday.

I did, however, treat him to one of our favourite restaurants: Blackbird at the Nielson Tower.

It was a lovely change of pace. We hadn’t gone out on a fancy date since the pandemic started. I didn’t take many photos as the garden and terrace were surprisingly full (at half capacity) before seven in the evening. We didn’t get good seating (i.e., the tables under the foliage with Instagrammable bokeh backgrounds). So here are the two photos I took instead:

We treated ourselves to the full house: cocktails, appetisers, main courses, dessert, wine, and a couple hard drinks for Ben (whisky and cognac). Blackbird changed up its menu slightly, but overall it was a lovely treat as usual. I know that I will always have room for their burnt butter sundae.

What I’ve been reading / watching

I wanted to insert a section to share with you what I’ve been reading, watching, etc.

Romee Strijd

No shame. I looked into how models eat and exercise to maintain their physique. I think that’s how YouTube ended up suggesting Romee’s videos to me.

She is so delightfully cute and down-to-earth and makes you realise that pop culture was so bent on body positivity in the late 2000s that you thought all models were were toxic and anorexic and had their hair falling out while their mascaras ran down their cheeks because they hate themselves.

Give any of her videos a shot. Chances are you’ll find her bantering with her partner of ten years, talking about her life, or telling you in plain words why she likes certain food and not others.

Emily Ratajkowski—’Buying Myself Back: When does a model own her own image?’

I found out about Emily Ratajkowski the same way you might have. I googled ‘robin thicke blurred lines brunette’ or something along those lines, because she was so exceedingly hot that her companions in the video simply paled in comparison. I now know that that video launched her to fame.

Earlier this month I saw her essay pop up in my NY Times morning briefing, I was curious to see what ‘this pretty face’ had to say about her so-called ‘image’.

She wrote an eye-opening account of her life as a model, and how the men in her life, fuelled by greed, exploit her image for their gain. I was honestly not ready for the clear and poignant way she wrote about her experiences. It’s worth a read.

Citigroup’s Fraser to Be First Woman to Lead a Big Wall Street Bank

Now, I was never the type to pick up the business section of the newspaper. But when I saw this headline, I figured I wanted to read about this Jane Fraser, and what she had to say about her career.

This passage was my takeaway:

But as Ms. Fraser contemplated returning to Goldman after Harvard, she noticed that the women who had succeeded there — and in investment banking generally — looked “rather scary” and had to dress “almost like a man,” she recalled in a 2016 speech at a financial industry conference in Miami. “None of them were that happy,” she said.

Instead, Ms. Fraser sought a more measured routine that would allow her to start a family while pursuing a career. She joined the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, but it was always a balancing act. In her speech in Miami, Ms. Fraser recalled receiving a phone call from her boss telling her she had made partner two weeks after she’d had a child, and rushing through the conversation thinking, “I have to feed the baby.”

I find this comforting. When I younger, I was heavily influenced by people I looked up to that I need to be ‘strong’, ‘tough’, less kind, or otherwise shake off everything that made me soft, in order to succeed in life. Don’t get me wrong—everyone can always improve their soft skills. But I take comfort in the fact that, eight years into my working life, I have not felt like I had to change who I am, and yet I’m satisfied with where I am.

NY Times take on the coronavirus in Manila

This photo essay by the NY Times shows the pandemic in Manila in a new light. For someone who lives here, I’ve forgotten how abnormal our circumstances are.

Catch-22

Still reading Catch-22. Progress is a bit slow, but the book is definitely interesting, if just to show the unabated shenanigans men get into to keep themselves entertained between missions, or to cope with the fact that they can’t go home.

Reading through it I can see the layer of humour thinly veiled into nearly every sentence. Everyone seems insane. Heller’s writing, to me, feels like a taut vein waiting to burst. I wonder what happens in the middle parts.

For Ninong Dado

I lost an uncle to COVID-19 earlier this month. I heard the updates from my mother. He got admitted to the hospital in San Francisco due to difficulty in breathing. I nonchalantly followed the news of him being transferred out of the ICU, then back in, then being sedated so that he could be intubated. And then, he didn’t make it.

We didn’t exactly have a relationship (Growing up, I found him scary because he was a quiet man.) But I recall one conversation we had, as we sat together outside the ICU visiting my grandmother. I had blogged about it way back in 2013:

It’s odd how time works. That was seven years ago. The first and last meaningful conversation I had with him. He and Ninang had been at my wedding, but we probably didn’t even exchange words.

Like with my late grandfather, Papa Tony, I think of Ninong Dado and wonder if I could have gotten to know him better, and learned a bit more about his life, and what more he could have taught me. But life doesn’t work that way. When I found out he died I opened Facebook to look up photos of him, then realised we weren’t even friends.

Eternal rest grant onto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Mooncake Festival

(Updated 2 October) Last night was the Mid-Autumn Festival, predominantly celebrated in the Sinosphere. In the Philippines, we simply know it as the Mooncake Festival. I don’t think I’d ever eaten mooncake before, but this year I bought some from the beloved Eng Bee Tin deli.

They’re really heavy, and are meant for sharing. Ben tried a bit and admitted he didn’t like it much.

Modern society tends to forget its agrarian roots, and the turn of the seasons and the harvests they bring tend to remain important only among farmers, gardeners, and possibly fishermen. The mid-autumn festival was meant to celebrate these things.

~ A bright moon and stars twinkle and shine. Wishing you a merry Mid-Autumn Festival, bliss, and happiness. ~
~ 皓月闪烁，星光闪耀，中秋佳节，美满快乐！~

That’s all for now. See you next month.