Issues of Weight

I was a 90-lb. teenager who grew into a 104-lb. twenty-something who grew into a 108-lb. married woman who grew into a 150-lb. mommy-to-be. I was 132 lbs. or thereabouts the day I officially became a mother. I did manage to weigh 5 lbs. less within a year which was pathetic really. But a few months after my baby's first birthday, I was losing at an astonishing rate of 3 lbs. per week. No pills. No diets. No exercise.

No cause for celebration though. Turned out I was sick with hyperthyroidism. And the sad part? I had developed a mound at the base of my throat that required me to take steroids for quite some time. And the sadder part? Steroids withdrawal gave me back all the weight I lost and much, much more.

And so continues the story of my 3-year-and-still-going battle against the bulge. I'm afraid this is going to be lengthy for my bring-me-back-to size-2 attempts were anything but successful and therefore numerous and varied.

No effect from Time Works FX. Don't get me wrong. I'm not putting the blame on the helpless machine. As you'll find out as you read on, the blame is always on who else but... me. I discovered Time Works FX on home TV shopping and was immediately drawn to it not by the six-pack abs of the persons paid to make a testimonial for it but by the seeming ease with which they worked the bike-like contraption. No sweat, I told myself only to find out after buying it, of course, that it was much more difficult than I imagined. I couldn't work out on it for longer than 4 minutes, one more minute and I'd die. So the killer machine was soon neglected then abandoned then finally moved out of sight, currently a worthless heap in the storeroom being eaten away by God-knows-what. A complete waste of hard-earned cash with no returns whatsoever.

No to no-carbs-no-sugar diet. I tried this years back when I was a lot thinner but still couldn't afford an ounce of extra fat on a trip to Bora. Why didn't I think of it sooner? Hoping to duplicate the positive outcome of that first try, I gave it another shot and totally forgot about the downside. The complete absence of carbohydrates could make you dizzy for the whole 2-week duration of the diet. By the second day, I gave up. You could hardly take care of the little baby when your head was reeling, right? Bummer.

(Beer)Bellydancing. This, I believe, was my cheapest endeavor, my only expense being a VCD, no make that 2 that cost me only a couple of hundreds. Coming from a financial standpoint, I thought it was perfect, considering that it was also a good fun way to do something about my sagging abs and disappearing waist. The result? Hilarious as I never was a good dancer. I suffered from sore muscles. And oh what an eyesore I made! A sorry attempt really. Thank goodness I had enough sense not to buy the silly costume.

Cynical about Xenical. I figured this could be the easiest way out of my overweight state. Just part with some cash, around 40 pesos after every meal and part with some lbs. But it wasn't that simple. Taking Xenical was like guzzling a shot of cooking oil mixed with taba ng talangka that went straight out of your you-know without announcing itself. I had no choice but to wear my ever reliable Modess overnights day in and day out to make sure that there were no tell-tale fatty orange deposits on my, well, behind. By month's end, I had what I decided to be Xenical-induced palpitations which meant saying goodbye to the famous pill. Talk about blessings in disguise! Actually, I was getting tired of my day to day efforts at saving my ass, I mean literally.

The treadmill dread. I was over the Time Works blunder and was raring for a new exercise tool. My husband Nubs was hesitant at first. The treadmill after all was pricier than its killer-machine-turned-storeroom-occupant predecessor. However, the offer at 0% interest for 12 months was irresistible so in no time, we were back home setting up our new fitness baby. In six months, it was pretty obvious it was going to share the same fate as Time Works. To make sure our precious money won't go down the drain a second time, I quickly sold the idle machine to a friend at three quarters of its original price. Not bad I'd say. Not much financial loss. But zero weight loss. Not bad? Yeah right.

No too to no-rice diet. No rice was not so different from no carbs, with the same dizzying effect. Thus, attempt dropped as soon as it was started.

Half-hearted half-rice diet. Since I failed at the former, might as well try the more viable version. No pain. And yes, no gain. Or should I say no loss.

Death by lemon juice diet. This was by far my boldest and most ambitious project. A series of aborted ventures called for drastic measures. Strictly no food, just limitless intakes of water and tea plus 6 to 12 servings of lemon juice made from 2 tablespoons organic lemon juice, 2 tablespoons maple syrup, 1/10 teaspoon cayenne and 10 ounces distilled water. I found that the more I took of the foul-colored liquid, the more disgusting it became. What was worse, within just twelve hours of the supposed 10-day period, my eyes turned hot and watery, my legs felt weak and my head pounded like hell. I heard enough horror stories—about obsessed girls who forced alien diets on their bodies then ended up dead—not to get, well, scared. A picture of a motherless Indie came to mind so I rushed to the nearest restaurant and stuffed myself with two whopping corned beef pandesals. Pounding gone, strength restored, I knew I was never in any serious danger of death. It was just my alibi.

These days I have been experimenting on a self-invented diet specially designed for hopeless weight-loss fanatics like moi. I call it the no-rice-when-I-can-but-yes-rice-when-ulam-is-hard-to-resist diet. Given my lack of willpower in the face of gastronomic threats, I'm proud to say I'm doing quite well. I'm not sure though if this is bringing me any closer to my goal. I promised myself this is a temporary thing... Until a more practicable diet comes along... Or perhaps a friendlier machine to work on... Sigh.

And so I ask myself, will I ever be slim again?

Honestly?

Fat chance.

Oh Brother!

We were a family of four daughters and you could say I was the only son. You see, my parents were unable to produce a boy so that boy became me. Pie, the eldest, was a frou-frou kind of girl and though she could play rough most times, she was simply too girly to be a boy. Odie, the third, was the tomboy—playing in the street, climbing trees, getting herself muddy. But underneath the boy cut and the dirty face was a softie; she never had it her heart to be a boy. Gert, the youngest, was too young at the time to take on any role other than the bully's victim. I was the bully.

I had always been a tough kid, I played guns and gangs with my male cousins and some basketball too. No boy could ever make me cry. I grew tougher as a teenager. With my super cropped hair and don't-fuck-with-me-air, I assumed the role of brother and son with the utmost dedication and pride. At church when most pews were taken, my mother and the girls would take the remaining seats while my father and I stood by the wall. All our New Years, I was in charge of the firecrakers, setting them off while my sisters looked on, sparklers in hand. When there were loads of bags to be carried, I got the heaviest ones. When we took trikes, I rode next to the driver to give way to the girls.

My sisters were very pretty and I was extremely protective of them. When Odie went to college, I took it upon myself to bodyguard her every enrollment day to keep her safe with her tuition money. When walking together, I would stay behind the girls as if to protect them from some sort of danger, imaginary or otherwise. On two separate occasions, two strange men tried to grab my sisters by the hand. Without any hesitation, I came to their rescue. I was like their hero and I fell in love with the idea.

Once I was walking all by myself from school to my cousins' townhouse when along came a pickup full of fratmen, whistling and hooting. I faced them and gave them the dirty finger. They left me alone. I was totally unafraid of what disaster my toughie stance could bring me. I got in trouble with the bus driver, the waiter, the man crossing the street, a whole lot of bothersome males I didn't even know. My middle finger was my weapon; my teenage angst, my source of courage.

Yes, I was a bad boy—I cussed way too loud, lifted my middle finger way too often. I was always looking for a fight, with anyone, about anything. It was like I was waiting for someone to kill me.

Thank God, nobody did. I'm no bad boy anymore. No longer a son. Not even a brother. For somewhere between then and now, I became a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother.

A Scar Is Born

It's bikini season once again and to be honest, I'm not so thrilled. Well, to be very honest, it's because there just below my navel is a scar between 2 and 3 inches long, an ugly horrible mark where Indie came from.

Hell, who would have thought that in this day and age one could still get scars like this from C-section! When I woke up from my drugged stupor that day, the first thing that entered my mind—well, of course next to the baby—was the wound. I remember slowly reaching down to feel it with my hand and finding out to my horror that the bandage protecting it was not horizontal. It was, Oh God, vertical. I remember closing my eyes and praying it was just another one of those drug-induced dreams.

The silent anger over a bikini cut that didn't happen quickly dissipated the minute I saw the baby, baby Indie with the darkest eyes and the loveliest cheeks. She was definitely worth the... how did they call that cut anyway?

I was so into my baby and the excitement of motherhood that thoughts of the soon-to-be scar were somehow pushed down the bottom of my brain, albeit temporarily. But then exactly fourteen days after my giving birth, the moment of truth came, rather too early actually. It was time to take the bandage off, time for me to lay my eyes for the first time on the dreaded scar. It was still a bit fresh. Unsightly no doubt. No, hideous. That I was not ready for it was an understatement.

After that day, everything just seemed to sag. My face. My neck. My boobs. My stomach. Plus, of course there was my ego.

For a self-confessed manic-depressive, I'd say I got over it pretty fast. Like a week, two weeks. All right, a month maybe. Still! Postpartum depression could be a lot worse than that. It could only be Indie. She was so adorable she could make me forget about a lot of things. Like scar serums. Plastic surgeons. And oh yes, even bikinis.

Not completely though. But over the years I have learned to accept that looking for the right bikini would be a persistent problem, a problem which I believe will not go away until I near perhaps my mid-50s. Thank God for the return of the maillot. But then again I have yet to find the right maillot for me. But that I suppose is another story.

I'm proud to say I have learned to live with my scar. The love-hate relationship is to be expected. I can be a vain woman after all. That it will be with me till the day I die does not give me cause for hyperventilation, not anymore. Of course, I still find it ugly. But what scar is pretty? It is no beauty mark but a mark nonetheless, the single indelible mark of my humble contribution to the circle of life.

UP and down memory lane

The world was still safe and good when I was in UP. My student number was 87-xxxxx, fyi. I remember riding the bus from Quezon Av-Edsa all the way to Paranaque around 11 pm, reeking of the then popular Tia Maria Zombie, maybe even snoring loudly in my drunken slumber. This was a scene that happened many times before and always I got home unscathed. Ours was a UP when cellphones were totally unheard of and there was of course zero probability of getting killed for having one. Ours was a time when climate was still a blessing. Between January and February, the Sunken Garden would be enveloped by mist and a good number of us students would jump at the chance to don those knitted cardigans that were so in fashion at the time.

It is sad that one can no longer take a walk within campus grounds at night without fear of being mugged, a far cry from our UP days when my friends and I would walk from AS to Philcoa way past 9 pm. Trip lang. I even went moon bathing with other friends at the Sunken Garden, slept there and didn't get stabbed or robbed during my sleep.

Once I flunked an activity in production class, thanks to my classmate. Peeved, I walked from Mass Comm to AS to cool down. It was then that I discovered that if I needed a breather, all I had to do was stand somewhere along the length of the Academic Oval and look up and there! a canopy of leaves and branches hanging from the magnificent acacias that lined the whole oval. It was breathtaking.

A couple of weeks ago my husband Nubs and I had this craving for Rodic's silogs so off we went to UP, baby in tow. The trees were still standing proud. But was that smog I saw? Poor acacias. They didn't live up to a hundred just to be smoke-belched to death.

My UP is still there. But not quite.

Weddings, arrgh!

Never in my wildest grown-up dreams did I see myself walking down the aisle in a flowing white gown to be tied up for the rest of my life. But guess what? It did happen to me. Well, save for the gown—I made sure it was ecru, not white.

So what happened?

For one, I wasn't into the marriage bandwagon. It was nothing I was totally opposed to but something I wasn't hot about either. If it came my way, maybe, why not? If it didn't, it wouldn't have killed me for sure.

Second, my idea of a wedding involving myself should I decide to make a go for it was nothing fancy—a quiet civil ceremony with family, a select group from first degree relatives and not just close but the closest of friends.

So what happened?

My wedding, far from what I wanted it to be, was the result of a compromise. It was something that I could have done without but did for reasons my daughter Indie should hear someday.

I did go through the motions of playing the bride-to-be. The dress. The entourage. The invitations. The giveaways. The cake. The guest list. This last part was really taxing. Imagine a wedding for 200 guests! That was too much for me already, considering that more than three-fourths of the invitees were people I did not know or particularly care about.

So what happened?

The day turned out to be beautiful, a show actually, but beautiful still. I did not need to psyche myself to look happy. For I was happy, really. Hell, I thought, why fret? A wedding was just what it was—a wedding. Just a day in the life I vowed to share with the person I married. And it was only the first day!

Bond Girls

Girl bonding—whether a long lunch, several hours of shopping, a night out or a weekend out of town—is a sure way to recharge oneself, a way to re-connect not just with the girls but also with the inner woman in you.

Married for six years and with a two-and-a-half year old toddler, I have always found comfort in every reunion with my girlfriends. I met them many years ago, when my sense of feminine power was at its strongest, when together we all felt we could take on the world and conquer, well, all men.

Time has changed all that. Indeed, I married one of them. So did most of my girlfriends. We found that men could actually be good for us. But no matter how great our men were, we always maintained that extra space, that extra time to be among us girls, all by ourselves.

When I look at my little girl, my mini-me, I can already see her forming her own bonding set in the not-so-distant future. And like the mother that I am, I see myself sharing with her my tips for the next generation of bond girls.

1. Count out friends who are too busy getting rich. They probably won't have time.

2. Find friends with good memory. It's always fun to reminisce.

3. Pick friends with a great sense of humor. Laughter, as they say, is still the best medicine.

4. Stick to friends who have a strong sense of self. It will rub off on you.

5. Surround yourself with friends who don't stop at getting more out of life. They will inspire you.

6. Choose husbands who appreciate and respect your womanhood. They surely won't mind the time you spend with the girls.

7. Keep husband bashing at a moderate level but never drop it altogether. It is healthy, really.

8. Don't turn girl bonding into an opportunity to bitch. That's negative energy.

9. Make sure that bonding time is never too often. You'll value it more.

10. Maintain life-long friendships with girls who also love themselves. That's where girl power comes from.

Take a break from married like. Bond with the girls. Come to think of it, it will actually keep your marriage intact.