THIS STORY NECESSITATES A WARNING.
Content includes: Eating disorders, Fatphobia.
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A Recipe for Avoiding Hunger
Introduction
Here is how to avoid hunger because hunger is something to fear. Eating will make you fat. One thousand five hundred calories are needed daily to live; try to get under that. It’s amazing how many calories are in a cake pop; regret accepting when a classmate offered because your last meal was six hours ago at 7:00am but you had snacked on a bag of peanuts from Costco because you made the mistake of bringing food with you thinking you could exercise self-control. There’s a poem for how to clear your hunger and it works as a recipe.
Ingredients
1 dried lime peel
held in the back pants pocket. Crunchy and dry and acidic. Take a triangle-shaped snap from the body like a rib cracked from a tight-skinned heartcage and hold it in the mouth until it’s rehydrated like all the water you drink before you eat so your stomach thinks you’re fuller than you are.
2 lumps of ginger
one of them half-rotten from the time it’s lived in your pocket and the other grown in a bowl so you can give more back than you took from the fridge without asking.
16 hours daily of discomfort thinking about food
because it’s a pink elephant you’re going to think about it when you least desire to and because you’re thinking about it you’re checking on whether you’re hungry and when you do that often enough your body thinks you’re starving whether you are or not so now you don’t even know what hunger means.
15 minutes urge surfing
because hunger is a hormone and that is how long it takes for an impulse to pass, be it suicide or cutting or binging or purging or sending an email you shouldn’t or quitting the job you love because you don’t deserve good things or going back to bed or getting out of bed or doing anything with your life beyond staring at the wall feeling the world rumble towards you like a train.
3 bags of walnuts
because that was a safe food but now you’re eating handfuls of them instead of meals.
2 eggs stolen from housemates
but you’re scared to cook now because the smoke alarm went off because you were too afraid to use oil to make the pan nonstick. High protein keeps hunger at bay and at first you made omelettes but then the smoke alarm thing happened and now you’ve started hard-boiling them but that takes too long for you to do that regularly so now you have eggshells on the floor that you still haven’t picked up and you’re still hungry because you had two eggs for dinner and tried to trick yourself into thinking it was a meal.
one 8:00pm alarm
because eating too much before going to bed will under calorie burn of fat while you sleep and you hate waking up feeling full because full is heavy and heavy is bad so you decided you can’t eat after 8:00pm but you keep being asked to go to events and parties that go long after 8:00pm and you ruin the vibe when you don’t eat because other people see eating as a social activity but you just want to stay in your room and be hungry.
3 boxes of soy milk
because fiber keeps hunger at bay.
and 1 canister of Metamuscil
dumped dry straight into the mouth and be careful not to inhale even through the nose because the dust is so dry it’ll get into your lungs and make you cough, so wet it with your saliva or a mouthful of water with the dust and swish it about until it’s solid gel and chew and swallow because fiber keeps hunger at bay and this artificial sweetness is the only dessert you can bring yourself to stomach without too much guilt.
Cooking instructions:
Mix in 1 rice bowl (the inside is the size of a tightly clenched fist) because small dishes make people think there’s more food and hunger is psychological so you’ll feel fuller from a smaller meal. Add texture with more crushed walnuts on top because different food types together add satiety to a meal. Realize that if you feel comfortable with food, looking for satiety instead of hunger, then you’ll feel full longer. Make look for the hunger within yourself and enjoy the feeling of being hungry into mantras in yourself. Realize simultaneously that you have a problem and you aren’t going to change without doing something about it. Realize, helplessly, again: eating when you are hungry will give you the best results. Realize, helplessly, again: you’ve not changed much in body weight over the last six months and you’ve been on-and-off with your abusive relationship with your Eddie Distraught — E.D. for short — for the whole time.
Realize that your habits are only hurting you and become afraid, terribly afraid, that you are raising your biological setpoint. Download a fitness app. Delete it. Install another. Realize that your eating habits already align with what it recommends. Read bodybuilding forums, but just the parts for cutting down. Realize that that’s already what you do and dislike that you can’t get more out of being healthy when you are already borderline underweight and yet athletic. Want to become lean. See yourself as fat in the mirror. See yourself in the mirror in the morning and see ribs showing, barely; feel progress coming. Pinch the belly fat and all progress crumbles. There was no progress. Your ribs were showing six months ago. Do you have anything at all? Anorexia Nervosa requires that you be below 115 lbs. You aren’t. You also aren’t overweight by BMI metrics. Acknowledge that BMI isn’t a good metric for fitness.
And in class: Feel so guilty and hateful, how dare they eat around me, when seeing classmates eating in front of you — Doritos, Smartfood popcorn whose back of the bag shows it has the exact same caloric count of fats and carbs and sugars as the giant bag of Cheetos that the third classmate in your row is eating. Notice that the classmates with the biggest fat rolls sit near each other. Become afraid of being near them in case it’s contagious. Identify this as irrational. Identify this as fatphobia. Fear that becoming body-positive will make you lenient about your own health. Know that this is the opposite of what the research has shown. Research societal influences on obesity. Research the bliss point in fast food and supposed snack foods. Join a research study on mindfulness so you can get $10 to buy another head of lettuce and broccoli for all that will be lunch in three days’ time. Feel that your behaviours over time have kept your weight in check. Remember that you have never been overweight in your life. Blame it on stimulants even though you stopped taking Focalin when you were 12 and now you’re 21. Realize you have a problem. Plan to eat ramen tonight and that is all. Hate that it has so many calories. You’ve had two protein shakes, supplements, today and a third will make your urine cloudy with potassium.
Realize, at last: writing about things helps. It’s what you do with everything. There are still documents on your computer you might never share and are the most beautifully written bundle of knives you’ve ever clutched. But putting them together helps. Putting it on paper helps. And it means that there are others.
Extra Notes
If serving to guests, swap recipe for salad and top with flaked smoked salmon. Garnish with slice of lemon, to be eaten whole at the completion of the meal to signal the end of hunger.
I am a firm believer in the ability of writing to be therapy. Journaling is a thing, after all. However, I do acknowledge that I have a serious and genuine problem, and that not all things can be solved alone. In seven weeks, I will be back where insurance applies and I will be able to get therapy in-person for my assorted mental flavours. Yes, distress is an inspiration for creativity, but it just produces sad art. Happy art is made when the artist is happy. Seek therapy if you experience things like this, I beg of you. It is frightening and depressing to live as I do in regards to my relationship with food. Love yourself and love how the world works. Acknowledge that you can change over time. Hating yourself or having self-esteem in the gutter will kill you faster than any other cause or mortality.
Aaaa I have written two things in just over 1 hour aaaaaa.