Writing has always been one of my coping mechanisms. Letters in the ‘80s. Newsletters in the ‘90s. Columns and lifestyle features since 2003.
My columns in 2003–2004 were daily. And I now tend to write daily again. Coping mechanism, still. Better writing than emotional eating, anyway.
Writing leads to columns like this. Emotional eating produces weight gain, diseases, and more junk food cravings. So yes, writing is the wiser option.
But how convenient it used to be to drown emotions with food. I used to eat when I was hungry, hangry, angry, happy, sad, stressed, tired. Now, food is merely fuel. I choose to eat twice or even once a day, with more time for fasting than eating.
I fasted for 72 hours last year to let my gut recover from gastroenteritis. I don’t know if I was part of the gastroenteritis scare that affected a downtown mall’s customers here in Cagayan de Oro, since my case happened later, when it wasn’t breaking news anymore. I didn’t take any meds. I stayed home and drank only water with Himalayan salt for three days.
I was planning to do the same for the Easter weekend, from Thursday to Saturday, but I decided to have salmon tinola, bangus belly tinola, and boiled eggs as my four-day pre-Easter menu instead, since my staycation goals were read, write, sleep, eat, repeat. Operative word: eat. Not fast.
Besides, I think extended fasting is easier when one is actually sick, has no appetite, and anything ingested will only be regurgitated right after. The lack of appetite is a major symptom that the body prefers to heal first without food.
But I had an appetite, although not actually craving food. Carnivore advocate Dr. Anthony Chaffee doesn’t even advise extended fasting for carnivores. His advice is to simply eat fatty meat when hungry and stop eating when the food doesn’t taste good anymore, which signals the point of satiety. That may mean TMAD (two meals a day), OMAD (one meal a day), or even skipping a day because of lack of hunger.
Good thing I wasn’t craving biko and Fat Chef’s bilo-bilo. Facebook, however, was filled with posts on binignit and biko—buying the ingredients, prepping and cooking them, and finally eating them. Others asked where to order the yummiest binignit, and my recommendation was Fat Chef’s bilo-bilo, of course.
One social media influencer asked for suggestions on the restos he could visit for his content on binignit. And there I was again with Fat Chef as my choice.
Holy Week is the Pinoy Catholic’s excuse to indulge in kakanin, especially biko and binignit, since Catholics are prohibited from eating red meat on Good Friday. Biko and binignit definitely don’t have red meat, therefore they’re safe—but not for those in the low-carb community. We were constantly cautioned about avoiding binignit, biko, and other kakanin.
By Good Friday, I stopped eating eggs to test if they were causing my rhinitis. This is the beauty of an elimination diet such as carnivore—it’s easier to pinpoint the culprit.
It was only on Easter Sunday that I had red meat again. My nephew celebrated his birthday with lunch at a shabu-shabu resto. For dinner, I had grilled beef patties and hotdogs. Yum!
