Ugh. I spoke too soon. I am now eating my words. And a lot of bread with truffle butter. And more than a few doughnuts. Doh!

Nicolas had some business in Manila yesterday and stayed the night – and I started out so well. I stared my first hotel* buffet straight in the eye and didn’t blink. I had some steak, salmon, uni sashimi (with a squeeze of lemon), a pork chop… I gave in to some cheese for dessert but that was fine. Then Nicolas started talking about the house in Siargao and kept talking and talking and talking… So that my thoughts turned to the dessert table.

I thought I’d take a quick peek.

HELLO! That’s like waving a pipe in front of a crackhead!!! Geezoos! What was I thinking??!

Well, I did struggle. Those glossy, perfect desserts don’t really appeal to me and I breezed past them. And then I found myself standing face to face with a tub of bread pudding, sitting by itself in a corner with a lonely bowl of vanilla sauce… I steeled myself away. I got a dessert plate, piled it high with fruit and a few shiny desserts and placed it in front of Nicolas, who was talking and talking – as if I hadn’t left! He ate the fruit, didn’t touch the plastic-looking carrot cake and kept right on talking.

My eyes wandered back to the bread pudding. Maybe just a taste…

I approached it shyly. I found myself one of those tiny dipping bowls for sauces and a dainty, delicate teaspoon. I put a sliver of bread pudding on it and a dollop of vanilla sauce…

Ohmygodthatwasgooooood! Maybe one more nibble…

I returned to the table and found Nicolas still talking about the house but, this time, on the phone with one of his workers. I did a U-turn back to the buffet table, got myself a big-ass soup bowl, a massive spoon and carved out a chunk of bread pudding, poured on the vanilla sauce and grabbed two shiny brownies on my way back to the table. Nicolas kept talking while I shoveled the whole lot of it down my throat. And, while I thought he wasn’t looking, I also polished off the fake-looking desserts he hadn’t touched.

By the time he turned back to me, I had turned green. “I shouldn’t have done that,” I whispered. “No, you shouldn’t have,” he agreed. Apparently, he had noticed that I had just consumed my weight in bread pudding. I felt the first spasms go off in my stomach and my eyes widened in panic. “I need to run,” I announced, and he, wisely, stayed behind. (And sampled the apple pie, as I found out, when he declared it the best in Manila. He could have told me that when I still had the chance to nip back down for a bite! Or five… Gaah!)

Later that evening, full of resolve not to repeat the same mistake, I picked at the canapes at an art exhibit opening and hid the slices of bread in paper napkins.

We decided to have dinner at Opus, before the Rogue anniversary party at Republiq, and I ordered the beef carpaccio to start and the pork belly for my main course. Paleo perfection, it would seem. And then the truffle butter arrived. I was going to ignore it until Nicolas shoved it towards me and said, “You have to try it.”

Three more requests for truffle butter later… !!!

Hi. My name is Gai Olivares and I’m a food addict. I’m a glutton. Nobody should shove anything at me and say, “you should try it” if they don’t mean that I shouldn’t have all of it and more! And, of course one couldn’t possibly have truffle butter without any bread! And I loooooooooooove bread!!!

I don’t understand appetite suppressants because appetite, for me, plays almost no role in my lust for food. I don’t have to be hungry to eat. I eat because I LOVE FOOD.

When I was living in Nigeria, I suspected I was sick because I wasn’t getting hungry. That didn’t stop me from eating anyway. In fact, later on, when I tested positive for malaria, because I knew the disease wanted to starve me, I ate even more. I am probably the only person in the world who gained weight while sick with malaria.

I wish I could be reasonable, like everyone else. But I can’t. That’s why I need clear cut rules. I need boundaries. And try to bloody well stick to them. Easier said than done, when you have the willpower of a sack of potatoes. Only negative reinforcement with a cattle prod could possibly do the trick.

This morning, I woke up at six, as is my custom. At seven, I decided to stop tossing and turning and announced (to a sleeping Nicolas) that I was going to breakfast. I threw on something scary and took one look at the buffet table and knew that it was crap but today was the day when I knew I wasn’t going to put up a fight. And I didn’t.

Liberated, I had a HUUUUUUUUUUGE Filipino breakfast. Er, among a lot of other things. I even had a glass of goat’s milk. (While I no longer suffer the violent reactions that the hot chocolate evoked in me last week, my belly still likes to rumble its discontent over having to share space with lactic acid.)

Before he returned to Cebu, Nicolas and I had an excellent lunch at the Tivoli Grill at the Mandarin Oriental. Their panna cotta was a revelation. Flavored with sweet basil and topped with mango and passion fruit, it was absolutely divine. We were only going to split one, but ended up ordering another.

After Nicolas left for the airport, I ran some last minute errands before heading home, and made sure those errands ran me by Krispy Kreme (where I had three doughnuts) and back to the Mandarin Deli (for a chocolate chip cookie). I would have wanted to get some ice cream but the sky had darkened and it looked like a storm was upon the city so I had to try to get home before the metropolis turned into one big clogged canal.

Back at home, I heard the maid pondering what to cook for my dinner. I told her I’d eat anything. “Adobo?” she asked. “Yes, please” I nodded. “With rice.” I think she was shocked. (I haven’t had rice in almost a month.) She did much better though. She found me some leftover spaghetti bolognese. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmy…

As I write this, I’m feeling slightly ill. I’m sluggish, my eyes and nose are runny and there’s a dull ache in my belly. I’ve rummaged through the refrigerator for chocolates squirreled away and ate them all. And I think a doughnut has applied for residency on my thigh. I’m not too happy about any of that but…

I’ll go back to my cave tomorrow.

Thank the gods for tomorrows.

*For this trip, we stayed at the Midas Hotel along Roxas Blvd., which used to be the Hyatt Hotel. While the lobby looks sleek and modern, the rooms are an altogether different matter. Let’s just say it’s the old Hyatt with a bit a bit of a facelift. It’s still an old hotel.