A Happy Discovery

Two things first:
1. I hope everyone's all right, after the storm.
2. Please do welcome Tanya to the BelleToday team, and check out her blog. She deserves a better introduction, but I've sadly been procrastinating on it.

I've mentioned my arm injuries last year, which have had the unfortunate setback of making me hang up my boxing gloves and badminton racket. When I just started to pick up playing basketball a few weeks ago, I worried that the required stance would aggravate my injuries:

My favorite NBA player, Paul Pierce, demonstrates correct shooting form

Notice, it requires me to keep my arms up high, a position that I thought I couldn't sustain with my injury. I did suffer a few days of muscle soreness when I started playing, but not related to my old ailment.

I would play outside in our garage whenever the weather would allow me, and I would only be too happy to be spared from jump rope or Jillian Michaels.

I then realized—I was barely feeling my injury, despite playing basketball almost every day! For some reason, this particular activity was helping out my condition instead of hurting it.

I'm not completely pain-free; I still suffer slight bouts of numbness when I sit at a computer for a long period of time while I play Plants vs. Zombies.

Still, I'm relieved that I've found a fun new activity that actually does me good—except for incidental injuries. During one week, my brother rammed his shoulder into my arm during a charge that left my upper arm sore for days, and now, I'm nursing a thumb strain from when the ball was tapped out of my hands. Well, that's life.

* * *

Over the weekend, my family tried Max's Chicken-All-You-Can promo on the last day. The damage? A total of 20 chicken quarters by my family, and of those, I could only manage 3. It was the grease-induced headache that did me in, rather than the feeling of fullness. Still, it wasn't the worst act of gluttony I've committed, and I'm confident that I can manage this big cheat day, because I look after myself for most of the week.

Carnage!

And my mom made a magnificent ube chiffon cake with queso de bola icing. Again, it's a miracle I can stay slim, when I have a mom who bakes as well as she does.

Have a great week!

Friday's meals
Breakfast: Old-fashioned oatmeal with peanut butter, coffee with low-fat milk
Lunch: Chicken tocino, ginisang sitaw at togue, brown rice
Snack: Chef Tony's Dark Chocolate popcorn with almonds (half a large tub! ARGH!)
Dinner: Nilagang baka, brown rice
Dessert: Fresh white peach

Saturday's meals
Breakfast: Bacon, fried egg, whole-grain bread, coffee with low-fat milk
Lunch: Spaghetti
Dessert: Homemade ube cake with queso de bola icing, vanilla macadamia nut coffee with low-fat milk
Dinner: (at Max's) 3 fried chicken quarters, rolls, chop suey
Nightcap: (at Starbucks) Coffee with low-fat milk

Sunday's meals
Breakfast: Homemade ube cake with queso de bola icing, coffee with low-fat milk
Lunch: (from Pizza Hut) Cheeseburger supreme pizza, sausage roll
Snack: Chef Tony's Dark Chocolate popcorn with almonds, Fox's mint, a few Sun Chips
Dinner: (at Pancake House) Southern fried chicken strips, olive salad, rye waffle with butter and syrup, banana split