Reinvent your mornings
January 14, 2006 | 12:00am
New Year’s resolutions are never carried out all the way through. We are creatures of habit, with very set ways and more often than not, have a lot of bad habits that have to be cleansed out of our systems. That’s why we have resolutions which, alas, are always broken.
I am a nocturnal person. The night is never long enough for me. No matter how late I come home from a dinner party, I have to unwind by doing some of the following activities: read my magazines, tinker through my treasure boxes (of used and unused items like loose gems waiting to be set into jewelry, evening gowns too precious to give away, favorite photos, cosmetics, costume jewelry that are not in fashion for the moment but will soon come back, etc.), switch on my laptop and do research for my articles or answer countless e-mails, watch a film, do yoga poses, make telebabad with another nocturnal friend, or worse, get wound up by getting on my treadmill. I try to avoid the last item as that gives me a second wind and will definitely keep me awake for a few hours more. It is not unusual for me to sleep at 2 or 3 in the morning but I don’t consider myself an insomniac because I fall asleep the moment I hit the sack.
My being a nocturnal person makes it difficult for me to schedule early-morning flights, attend early funeral Masses, and accept appointments before 10 a.m. The later, the better for me. For this new year, my resolution is to turn myself into a morning person. I will try to sleep at least three hours earlier and greet the new day by 7 or 8 a.m., which means that instead of eating brunch, I have to take a real breakfast and not just a cup of coffee to start my day.
What worried me about this resolution is the thought that I could gain some weight from having a real breakfast. To my surprise, I read several articles that say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day (which my father always impressed upon us, but which fell on deaf ears) and breakfast eaters are "losers" because they are successful in losing weight. In fact, the National Weight Control Registry in the USA reports that breakfast eaters not only lose weight but also manage to keep it down.
With that in mind, I embarked on my new year’s resolution with enthusiasm, starting the day with a healthy breakfast.
"People skip breakfast thinking they are cutting calories, but by mid-morning and lunch, that person is starved," says Milton Stokes, chief dietician for St. Barnabas Hospital in New York City. "Breakfast skippers replace calories during the day with mindless nibbling, bingeing at lunch and dinner. They set themselves up for weight gain."
It makes sense. Eating early in the day keeps you from "starvation eating" later on. It also jump-starts your metabolism because you are producing the digestive enzymes needed to metabolize fat to lose weight.
But, take note: one’s breakfast has to fall within the parameters of what is considered a "healthy" breakfast, meaning choosing foods that are high in fiber but low in fat and calories. For example, instead of eating one bagel with cream cheese, which is 450 calories and has little fiber, eat a nutritious breakfast of one multi-grain waffle drizzled with 3 tablespoons of light maple syrup, 1 cup of strawberries, and a cup of low-fat yogurt. Only 385 calories, this has more fiber than the bagel-and-cream combination.
This morning I took a cup of oatmeal cooked in half a cup of low-fat milk, 1 cup sliced strawberries, and 1 tablespoon of walnuts. Then I drank my usual glass of C-Lium for added fiber. My breakfast was roughly 320 calories.
Pick healthy breakfast combinations like a piece of whole-wheat bread with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and a banana, 1 cup oatmeal cooked in 1/2 cup low-fat milk, with fruits – berries, an apple or canned peaches in natural sugar, yogurt with sliced fruits or if in a hurry, make a breakfast smoothie, which is fruits blended with low-fat milk or yogurt. Stay away from bagels as one bagel has the calorie equivalent of five slices of bread! Stay away from Filipino breakfasts of fried rice, tapa and longganisa, carne norte, tsokolate eh, bibingka, etc. Loaded with fat and carbs, devoid of fiber, and calorie-filled! Translation: Bad for the health and super-fattening!
Which brings to mind my conversation with Kit Zobel when I bumped into her at the tennis courts some moons ago. Kit is an avid tennis player, which explains why she is so fit and slim even after several pregnancies. I asked her how her husband, Fernando, lost a lot of weight. She said he went on a no-carb diet for a while, then slowly started to incorporate it while still maintaining a low-carb diet. Kit does not avoid carbs because of her active lifestyle and strenuous tennis training. In fact, she needs a certain amount of carbohydrates in her diet. Lifestyle is important in choosing one’s diet.
Another way I am reinventing my mornings is doing my exercise program after my healthy breakfast. I am getting rid of one of my bad habits of jumping on my treadmill after coming home from a dinner engagement! One article I read says starting the day with exercise is the best habit one can have. "By starting the morning with physical activity, you set the day’s pace. You get your exercise done before other distractions can intrude." Don’t you sometimes postpone doing your exercise because you have to see a friend, go to the grocery, go to the doctor? Getting it done first thing in the morning is the best way to accomplish it.
A friend tells me she is too busy with work to exercise. Because of that she is a bit overweight and experiencing some high cholesterol problems. There is no other solution there but to start an exercise program no matter what time of day. There are gyms that are open till 9 p.m. Before dinner is as good a time as any to exercise. There’s no getting around it. To lose weight and keep it off, one needs to exercise. It must be part of your overall daily lifestyle. One can exercise without necessarily going to the gym. Take a walk for an hour inside the mall. Whatever you do, move that body! Do ballroom dancing after office hours, walk your dog, go two floors up or down in your office building instead of taking the elevator, or whatever. Just move, if you want to lose weight.
I started reinventing my mornings on Jan. 3 and to date, I have been successful. The key was to get rid of my bad evening habits which made me sleep so late at night. Now I don’t have to avoid early-morning flights, funerals and appointments. I also notice that I am discovering the joys of eating a healthy breakfast. I am not starving and bingeing by mid-afternoon because I ate brunch at 11 a.m. and skipped lunch, and I accomplish a lot more by starting my day early. My parents always advised us to do exactly this since time immemorial. In retrospect, I should have listened to them. They always know best!
Last week we printed the wrong telephone number for the Skin and Cancer Foundation, which does Titan procedures. The correct number is 638-7871.
I am a nocturnal person. The night is never long enough for me. No matter how late I come home from a dinner party, I have to unwind by doing some of the following activities: read my magazines, tinker through my treasure boxes (of used and unused items like loose gems waiting to be set into jewelry, evening gowns too precious to give away, favorite photos, cosmetics, costume jewelry that are not in fashion for the moment but will soon come back, etc.), switch on my laptop and do research for my articles or answer countless e-mails, watch a film, do yoga poses, make telebabad with another nocturnal friend, or worse, get wound up by getting on my treadmill. I try to avoid the last item as that gives me a second wind and will definitely keep me awake for a few hours more. It is not unusual for me to sleep at 2 or 3 in the morning but I don’t consider myself an insomniac because I fall asleep the moment I hit the sack.
My being a nocturnal person makes it difficult for me to schedule early-morning flights, attend early funeral Masses, and accept appointments before 10 a.m. The later, the better for me. For this new year, my resolution is to turn myself into a morning person. I will try to sleep at least three hours earlier and greet the new day by 7 or 8 a.m., which means that instead of eating brunch, I have to take a real breakfast and not just a cup of coffee to start my day.
What worried me about this resolution is the thought that I could gain some weight from having a real breakfast. To my surprise, I read several articles that say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day (which my father always impressed upon us, but which fell on deaf ears) and breakfast eaters are "losers" because they are successful in losing weight. In fact, the National Weight Control Registry in the USA reports that breakfast eaters not only lose weight but also manage to keep it down.
With that in mind, I embarked on my new year’s resolution with enthusiasm, starting the day with a healthy breakfast.
"People skip breakfast thinking they are cutting calories, but by mid-morning and lunch, that person is starved," says Milton Stokes, chief dietician for St. Barnabas Hospital in New York City. "Breakfast skippers replace calories during the day with mindless nibbling, bingeing at lunch and dinner. They set themselves up for weight gain."
It makes sense. Eating early in the day keeps you from "starvation eating" later on. It also jump-starts your metabolism because you are producing the digestive enzymes needed to metabolize fat to lose weight.
But, take note: one’s breakfast has to fall within the parameters of what is considered a "healthy" breakfast, meaning choosing foods that are high in fiber but low in fat and calories. For example, instead of eating one bagel with cream cheese, which is 450 calories and has little fiber, eat a nutritious breakfast of one multi-grain waffle drizzled with 3 tablespoons of light maple syrup, 1 cup of strawberries, and a cup of low-fat yogurt. Only 385 calories, this has more fiber than the bagel-and-cream combination.
This morning I took a cup of oatmeal cooked in half a cup of low-fat milk, 1 cup sliced strawberries, and 1 tablespoon of walnuts. Then I drank my usual glass of C-Lium for added fiber. My breakfast was roughly 320 calories.
Pick healthy breakfast combinations like a piece of whole-wheat bread with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and a banana, 1 cup oatmeal cooked in 1/2 cup low-fat milk, with fruits – berries, an apple or canned peaches in natural sugar, yogurt with sliced fruits or if in a hurry, make a breakfast smoothie, which is fruits blended with low-fat milk or yogurt. Stay away from bagels as one bagel has the calorie equivalent of five slices of bread! Stay away from Filipino breakfasts of fried rice, tapa and longganisa, carne norte, tsokolate eh, bibingka, etc. Loaded with fat and carbs, devoid of fiber, and calorie-filled! Translation: Bad for the health and super-fattening!
Which brings to mind my conversation with Kit Zobel when I bumped into her at the tennis courts some moons ago. Kit is an avid tennis player, which explains why she is so fit and slim even after several pregnancies. I asked her how her husband, Fernando, lost a lot of weight. She said he went on a no-carb diet for a while, then slowly started to incorporate it while still maintaining a low-carb diet. Kit does not avoid carbs because of her active lifestyle and strenuous tennis training. In fact, she needs a certain amount of carbohydrates in her diet. Lifestyle is important in choosing one’s diet.
Another way I am reinventing my mornings is doing my exercise program after my healthy breakfast. I am getting rid of one of my bad habits of jumping on my treadmill after coming home from a dinner engagement! One article I read says starting the day with exercise is the best habit one can have. "By starting the morning with physical activity, you set the day’s pace. You get your exercise done before other distractions can intrude." Don’t you sometimes postpone doing your exercise because you have to see a friend, go to the grocery, go to the doctor? Getting it done first thing in the morning is the best way to accomplish it.
A friend tells me she is too busy with work to exercise. Because of that she is a bit overweight and experiencing some high cholesterol problems. There is no other solution there but to start an exercise program no matter what time of day. There are gyms that are open till 9 p.m. Before dinner is as good a time as any to exercise. There’s no getting around it. To lose weight and keep it off, one needs to exercise. It must be part of your overall daily lifestyle. One can exercise without necessarily going to the gym. Take a walk for an hour inside the mall. Whatever you do, move that body! Do ballroom dancing after office hours, walk your dog, go two floors up or down in your office building instead of taking the elevator, or whatever. Just move, if you want to lose weight.
I started reinventing my mornings on Jan. 3 and to date, I have been successful. The key was to get rid of my bad evening habits which made me sleep so late at night. Now I don’t have to avoid early-morning flights, funerals and appointments. I also notice that I am discovering the joys of eating a healthy breakfast. I am not starving and bingeing by mid-afternoon because I ate brunch at 11 a.m. and skipped lunch, and I accomplish a lot more by starting my day early. My parents always advised us to do exactly this since time immemorial. In retrospect, I should have listened to them. They always know best!
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