2011 is supposed to be my healthy year. In addition to "Reading 24 new books" and some other resolutions, I intend on improving my lifestyle and living healthily. The people who know me know that I eat fattening junk without thinking twice, and know that I cannot be bothered with exercise.
I blame my mother’s genes – she gave me her metabolism. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really not complaining! This inherited attribute is actually one of the very few that I am thankful for. Otherwise, I’ve got all the wrong genes from my parents – I have my father’s nose, my mother’s height, my mother’s skin colour, and so on. Not that all these things are dreadful in any way, it’s just that my mother has a better nose and my father is taller and fair with rosy cheeks, and so on. But at least my mother gave me her metabolism, preventing me from becoming the way I would have eventually if I didn’t have this one advantage. I love it! I never have to worry about what I’m eating and how many calories I’m taking in, and I don’t exercise or hit the gym or anything of that sort. But if I didn’t have that metabolism, I wouldn’t burn as fast as I eat, and I’d be forced to watch what I eat and think about exercise, and not have to write this piece. Which is why I blame my mother’s genes. For all other intents and purposes, yay my mother’s metabolism!
Then one day, in conversation over dinner at Boat Club, a friend who shares this quality of mine pointed out that we may never put on weight, but we could very possibly die of early heart attacks. It may surprise a lot of you that this possibility had never occurred to me. And if it hadn’t been for that friend, I’d have continued living in my bubble and eating utter junk all the time. But then that got me thinking, and I have genuinely started believing that one day, when I’m not much older, my heart is going to start pumping saturated fat instead of blood and I’m going to have my first heart attack at the age of 30 or something.
If you’re laughing, then don’t!
This is where my New Year resolution came to play. To live healthy, and eat sensibly. Again, people who know me know that I cannot resist eating chocolates or any other food that tastes as good as it is unhealthy, and that small quantities do not in any way satisfy my enormous appetite. So it all boils down to making the right choices, I realized that’s the only way I can do it. I choose to wake up early and exercise rather than hitting snooze on that wretched alarm clock, to have a good breakfast so I don’t feel hungry at odd hours even though I’m not really a breakfast person, to eat fruit instead of chips if I feel hungry around teatime, to sleep on time so I can wake up feeling well-rested, and so on.
I feel so much better now, never even realizing that I wasn’t feeling up to the mark. This shift in lifestyle has worked well for me this past one month, and I intend on continuing it. There’s no doubt about that. But this joke always comes to mind when I think about New Year resolutions:
Q. What is a New Year resolution?
A. It’s a to-do list for the first week of January.
Mine has lasted more than just the first week of January; it’s lasted me the whole month. I hope that it lasts me the entire year, so that I can renew it again next year. And that’s the only reason I’m blogging about it – now it’s all outside of me, out on paper. Well, metaphorically anyway. It isn’t just a thing on my mental to-do list, a thing that I can ignore if I want. I now have witnesses, and more than that I have something to come back to if ever I intend on letting go of routine. 2011 is supposed to be my healthy year.
And it will be. You bet your ass it will! Although, I still eat quite a bit of junk.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Things I love: Part one.
“Things I love” is a concept that is inspired from a green inked blog I stumbled upon recently. Originally called “Things I love Thursday”, the basic concept is to write about the things that made you happy over the week. It helps you appreciate the good in your life, the things that make it better than most; and to make you forget, however momentarily, the things that have been pulling you down. As soon as I read hers, I knew it was going to be my first post in 2011.
My version of it however, is not going to be weekly, considering how erratic I am as a blogger. Instead, I’m going to write about the things that make me happy over ALL the weeks. I think I’m going to write monthly or fortnightly, that seems like an achievable target. So yes, say hello to “Things I love” on Musings.
Erich Segal’s Love Story
The first time I read this book I was 15 years old, which I think is the ideal age for anyone to read this book. The age when interest in the opposite sex is only beginning to awaken, when the fascinating hope of a forever has been freshly set in motion, when the search for “the One” has been embarked upon, when loves are new, and when the seed of belief in true selfless love can be planted.
I first read it in a hotel room in Amritsar, while my parents enjoyed an afternoon nap, and finished it in just an hour. I picked it up from a quaint little bookstore in the market named “The Booklover’s Retreat”, when Dad promised he’d buy me a book, whichever one I wanted. I can’t remember why I picked this one up, I wish I could. I think it had to do with the aforementioned fascination with a forever. But I’m glad I did. It went on to becoming my favourite book, the one I read whenever I felt a little down and a little out of it all, the one I read after every failed relationship, the one I recommended to all my friends – male, female alike.
Love Story (spoiler alert!) is a book I fell in love with instantly. I fell in love with Jenny, I fell in love with Ollie, and I fell in love with Jenny&Ollie. I fell in love with the simplicity of its story, I fell in love with the fact that Jenny and Ollie called each other bitch and bastard rather than honey and dear, and that they started a life together against the will of his parents. I guess I related to that at some level. I even fell in love with the philosophy of “Love means never having to say sorry…” and believed in it for a long while. Now of course, as I grow older (not necessarily wiser) I realize that Segal may have used a little creative and artistic liberty that a younger me did not recognize.
The novel may not be considered the best piece in English literature, but it is home. It is what I think of when the going gets tough, it is what I read on days when things just aren’t sitting straight. It is the one thing that is constant; I feel when I read it now what I did on that November afternoon – a strange whoosh in my tummy, along with a sense of calm in the depths of my heart, mingled with just a few teardrops.
They’ve revamped the cover of the novel recently, and made it prettier with hearts. I personally like it much better than the photograph accompanying the post. But this is the cover of the book I read as a 15 year old. It is not the same book however; that one made a torn, dog-eared way to the box of books for donation my mother keeps. So did two copies after that. I blame it on the unusually high number of really bad days that create a need to reread the book. But I keep going back and buying myself a fresh copy to keep. There is no way I’m letting it out of my life that easily.
My version of it however, is not going to be weekly, considering how erratic I am as a blogger. Instead, I’m going to write about the things that make me happy over ALL the weeks. I think I’m going to write monthly or fortnightly, that seems like an achievable target. So yes, say hello to “Things I love” on Musings.
Erich Segal’s Love Story
The first time I read this book I was 15 years old, which I think is the ideal age for anyone to read this book. The age when interest in the opposite sex is only beginning to awaken, when the fascinating hope of a forever has been freshly set in motion, when the search for “the One” has been embarked upon, when loves are new, and when the seed of belief in true selfless love can be planted.
I first read it in a hotel room in Amritsar, while my parents enjoyed an afternoon nap, and finished it in just an hour. I picked it up from a quaint little bookstore in the market named “The Booklover’s Retreat”, when Dad promised he’d buy me a book, whichever one I wanted. I can’t remember why I picked this one up, I wish I could. I think it had to do with the aforementioned fascination with a forever. But I’m glad I did. It went on to becoming my favourite book, the one I read whenever I felt a little down and a little out of it all, the one I read after every failed relationship, the one I recommended to all my friends – male, female alike.
Love Story (spoiler alert!) is a book I fell in love with instantly. I fell in love with Jenny, I fell in love with Ollie, and I fell in love with Jenny&Ollie. I fell in love with the simplicity of its story, I fell in love with the fact that Jenny and Ollie called each other bitch and bastard rather than honey and dear, and that they started a life together against the will of his parents. I guess I related to that at some level. I even fell in love with the philosophy of “Love means never having to say sorry…” and believed in it for a long while. Now of course, as I grow older (not necessarily wiser) I realize that Segal may have used a little creative and artistic liberty that a younger me did not recognize.
The novel may not be considered the best piece in English literature, but it is home. It is what I think of when the going gets tough, it is what I read on days when things just aren’t sitting straight. It is the one thing that is constant; I feel when I read it now what I did on that November afternoon – a strange whoosh in my tummy, along with a sense of calm in the depths of my heart, mingled with just a few teardrops.
They’ve revamped the cover of the novel recently, and made it prettier with hearts. I personally like it much better than the photograph accompanying the post. But this is the cover of the book I read as a 15 year old. It is not the same book however; that one made a torn, dog-eared way to the box of books for donation my mother keeps. So did two copies after that. I blame it on the unusually high number of really bad days that create a need to reread the book. But I keep going back and buying myself a fresh copy to keep. There is no way I’m letting it out of my life that easily.
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