This is the season to be jolly–and Filipinos have taken this joy quite too seriously on the dining table. Since the onset of the Yuletide festivities in the Metro, I have been invited to many get-togethers, parties, and dine-outs. Yet, I held onto a self-maintained principle of prudent calorie intake. Food intake should be in healthy proportions–no excess should turn into body fat.

Yet food abound: Fried, boiled, sauced, or grilled; chilled or heated; fresh and raw. Food to stuff one’s gut has abundantly filled buffet tables and parties too much to soothe the palate.

One time I attended a party of a client and cautiously monitored my food calorie intake [which I have completely lost track], and I still unluckily ended up hours after being nominated for hospital confinement at the hospital due to uncontrollable bowel movement, nausea, body pains, fever, and unexplainable weakness. No amoeba, no flu, no dengue. Just food in the gut. I have my suspicions, but they remain suspicions. Let them remain that way [I secretly thanked the illness for losing much body fat; yes, an ill logic].

Nevertheless, I am losing this battle to be healthy. The jollity of the season has been turning into a sad upheaval as I see the tape measure hug more and more of my tummy. I have spent the past days at the gym. However, since I arrived just at the nick of time for Fitness First to close, I burned pathetically minimal calories. Worse, I ended up getting invited into parties of gym mates. Sigh.

I am now declaring this season–again–a time of food restraint. I will burn these calories! Down with those sin food. Burn! Burn! Burn!