By Vernon Velasco | Millennial Universe
THE hardest thing about losing weight is it’s not easy.
Make no mistake about it—time and again I have tried to wrap my head around it. One day I’d promise myself I’d be out for a jog; the next day I’d be on my feet in the wee hours of the morning only to end up being snug in bed because it was too early to jog.
There is always some excuse or another, like I have decided to get rid of so much negativity in my life and started thinking that my beer belly isn’t a slab of awkward fat, but rather just a massive amount of “stored energy” I had hoarded for future use.
Every time it has nothing to do with being lazy. It has everything to do with being fat.
Fat proportion
BECAUSE laziness is directly proportional to weight—and unless you get a chance to wear me sisig guts and all, you’ll never understand that it is a tall order to stand up and curl, especially if what stands in the way is a 35-inch waistline.
So while it is already a feat to stand at all, I have learned to do a lot of things lying down. Things like rolling on and off every now and then on the living-room floor when my mother is cleaning so that she could pass by with the vacuum.
Another thing I accomplished lying down is my six-session Laser Fit and Acutrimweight-loss program at Contours, where I practically just had to be supinely on my back all the time while laser did its work on my flabs.
At Contours, laser—at least in the procedures I tried—does two things: melt fat (Laser Fit) and reduce appetite (Acutrim). I tell people this and their first impulse is to ask whether it has a downside.
I said none. If it ever had, a side effect is far from my mind.
Getting naked
WHAT I was really rather concerned of in this procedure, or in any medical procedure for that matter, is having to take off my clothes.
I imagine my attendant telling me to do just that, she assuming a hilarious look on her face while I was at it and trying hard to suppress a burst as she instructs me to just go on. I would ask her a few questions to extinguish the excruciating awkwardness of pauses and silence.
“You must have the most challenging job in the world,” I would say, “trying hard not to laugh when there are definitely a lot of things to laugh about.”
At Contours, they leave you to your own devices, so that you can take off your clothes in front of the mirror and they would come back only when you’re ready. I surmise the mirror in question is there to guilt-trip you, with a sense of neglect and being there alone in the room, is meant to give you all the time in the world to think about it.
20 minutes
IT is supposed to have an effect, an encouraging one, at least that was what I felt when I took off my clothes and realized for the first time in my life that my tummy is something that most closely resembles a koala.
“You can do it,” it seemed to say.
My attendant came in at my beck and call, groping to turn off the lights before entering. She then trained the cold Zerona Laser Fit machine on my tummy, making sure the beams touched on regions that have the most stubborn swells.
What the beams do is dissolve it so that it’s easier to convert. The attendant left me for a good 20 minutes to “marinate.” When that’s done I heard an imaginary “ding” before she came back to instruct me to move over so that she could shine the laser on the other side. It’s like being in an oven.
From there, I was herded toward another room to undergo the second phase of the procedure, where I burned the melted fats by standing, keening and bucking on a vibrating machine for measly 20 minutes.
It was extraneous, except that I didn’t have to do anything at all. I was just cooped on the machine, my fats vibrating the way a rattlesnake’s tail might, perhaps maracas sans the sound.
Touch and go
WITH Acutrim, one gets a holistic weight-loss program.
The procedure makes you simply lie flat on your back with your clothes on, while an attendant shines a laser with a hand-held apparatus on to different body nerve points.
The goal is to cut your appetite to the bare minimum, so that you’re weaned away from pigging out. Unlike the Laser Fit, which was totally painless, Acutrim doesn’t puncture but stung a little, the takeaway being that I felt I could go through an entire day on an empty stomach after I took it.
Upon having my sessions, I was advised to take the routine to heart and religiously adhere to living a healthy lifestyle. I have shed a massive portion of my belly, I could say not by the numbers, but because, since Contours, tying my shoes is not anymore my idea of struggle, or that my abdomen is less angular now compared to when you could actually put a pencil between my chest and my tummy, and it would remain there. But for the most part, I think more than helping you lose weight, what Contours do is make the daunting task look so easy, thus exhausting all the commensurate excuses and motivating you to start somewhere.
Contours Advanced Face and Body Sculpting Institute is on the Fifth Floor, Building A, SM Megamall; Second Floor of the South Park Plaza, Paseo de Roxas, Magallanes in Makati City; Fifth Level, The Block, SM North Edsa, North Avenue, Quezon City; and third level, SM BF, Dr. A Santos Avenue, Sucat, Parañaque City.
