Tiny Tummy Dispatch Day 112: On Food Obsessions and Strip Clubs

Photo credit: Food Heaven Made Easy | www.foodheavenmadeeasy.com

I forgot to eat yesterday. 

I had a protein shake for breakfast and a little bit of hummus and raw, red bell pepper two hours later and then suddenly it was 5:00 and I realized that my 2:00 and 4:00 "meals" were still in my lunch bag, rapidly thawing and lonely.

Da fuck? I can't remember a time when I ever forgot to eat.

There have been days, pre-Tiny Tummy, that I was too busy to eat - but that doesn't happen anymore. I pack small meals to eat every two hours throughout the work day and drag my lunch bag with me everywhere around the office. I haven't attended a meeting in three months that didn't have me chowing down on a half cup of low-fat cottage cheese with my infant sized spoon or nibbling on a 2% cheese stick (each being the totality of a "meal" for me) in front of my colleagues.

I don't experience hunger anymore - ever. Like, it's not physically possible. The portion of the stomach that produces the hunger hormone has been removed. That doesn't stop me from craving food, however. But yesterday, apparently, I didn't even have a craving. 

For as long as I can remember, one of the first thoughts that would pop into my head when I woke up (after, "What life-altering meme did I miss on Facebook while I slept?!") was, "What am I going to eat for breakfast?" And the thought stayed in my head all day long. "What's for lunch? Dinner? Snacks? Where are we going to eat tonight? Wonder if there is anything in the cafeteria to munch on? What am I going to order when we go out to dinner? Where should I go for lunch?" It was non-stop - a very unhealthy obsession. 

So, to go five hours yesterday without the slightest consideration of what I could shove in my gullet was just downright fucking bizarre to me.

The food obsession was back today but, even so, different. 


On Sunday I bought a few ingredients to cook three new, healthy, recipes this week. Doing so is part of a Learning Plan I recently created. And today, all day, I obsessed about which recipe I was going to try out first and and when. So, at 9:00 I whipped up a batch of spaghetti squash pasta with thai peanut sauce from Food Heaven Made Easy... and then I portioned it out and put it in the fridge for future meals. I wasn't hungry and, even more than that, I hadn't yet figured out the nutritional values. Putting food in my mouth that I can't track nutritionally on MyFitnessPal is like going to a strip club - fun at the time, but meaningless, expensive and regrettable in the long run.

This feels like a healthy food obsession... normal, if you will. And the two words "normal" and "food" have never been an in-tandem part of my vocabulary.  

I feel like a grown up tonight. Phew, that only took 45 years.