A Confession

WARNING - CONTENT MAY BE TRIGGERING

I’m feeling dizzy and confused. I’ve just eaten lunch. Before lunch I probably couldn’t have even focused or thought clearly enough to write anything. I was just so hungry and light headed. I felt angsty and angry too. I dreaded the possibility that my boss might stop me to talk about something and DELAY MY MEAL. I get so angry and scared when I think my meal might be delayed. I even get pissed off with people who aren’t delaying me in any way, JUST FOR BEING THERE. Before lunch I chatted with a work colleague it the kitchen. I couldn’t focus on what she was saying. I couldn’t answer the questions she was asking. I was just too damn hungry. I couldn’t do my work properly either – about the last hour of my working day prior to lunch was wasted, taken over solely by hunger.

This is not a one-off situation. The other night, I was on my way home from the train station after a weekend away and I found myself praying that my flatmates wouldn’t be in - not because I didn’t want to see them, but because I did not feel like I had the tolerance, patience or concentration to interact with them before I’d had a chance to eat dinner. 

Part of the reason I'm finding it so difficult to honour my hunger at the moment is, I think, that I'm actually not eating that little. I'm pretty much eating what I normally eat, which is generally sufficient (although admittedly tends towards restriction); yet, for some unknown reason, I'm much much hungrier than usual - real, dizzying, stomach-gnawing hunger. If I knew why, perhaps I'd be better able to up my food intake accordingly - perhaps my immune system's working over-time to fight off some illness I don't know about or perhaps I've lost a little weight without realising it or perhaps regular exercise has jump-started my metabolism? But ultimately the explanation isn't the point. Our brains can't always fathom what's going on for us physically, but they don't need to know because our bodies do. I need to learn that my body knows what it needs even when I don't. I need to learn to trust my body's physical signals.

I realise that this is a slightly depressing post. It certainly exposes the fact that I have fallen off the intuitive-eating-wagon (the most important rule of IE being to EAT WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY and not let yourself become famished). But it is important to me that I write this post so I can re-read it and remind myself that this is why I want to get better. I want to get better so that I can experience life fully rather than in a blur of hunger; so that I can interact properly with others and give them my full concentration and energy; so that I can be mentally alert at work; basically, so that I can function normally, mentally and psychologically. 

But why is it that even when I know exactly why I need to change, I'm still finding it so hard to put that change into motion?