Monday
Reheated leftovers: Pad Thai noodles with shrimp
Vegetarian spring roll
Thai iced tea
My stomach’s attention span mirrors that of a four-year-old given $5 to spend in a candy store. Food it savored and clamored for the night before, it repulses and rejects the next day. Or it may even choose to turn from delight to disgust from one bite to the next—whether the food remains properly prepared or not. The cut-off varies depending on a mysterious set of variables I have yet to unravel.
Is the number of bites? The chemical structure of the protein? How many ridges appeared on the shrimp? The grams of sugar—including the sugar alcohols? Or something unrelated to the food, such as how I turned my wrist as I held the chopsticks?
Despite my constant optimism, the only certainty is that I will never finish a single meal. My stomach will twist, igniting the cascade of synaptic activity connected to my vagus nerve that yields immediate nausea and transforms the sight of food into an image of horror. Then the slow walk to my husband to ask if he wants to finish the meal so the food doesn’t go to waste.
Tuesday
Smoothie containing:
Frozen tropical fruit
Soy milk
Whey-based protein powder
Water
I like to believe I’m smarter than my stomach. After all, I possess the rational, problem-solving brain out of the two of us. Given time—and access to enough search engines—I should be capable of devising a clever solution to its erratic behavior. The fact I’m attempting to outwit a part of myself never seems to factor into that reasonable, common sense, thought process.
Perhaps it’s succumbed to the subtle imaging and mind-warping of television and print ads. The constant rebellion and temper tantrums are nothing more than a “silent” demand for a healthier point of view. Provided with a bounty of superfoods and slow-release glucagon, it will happily settle down and behave.
My brain controls my stomach. (Or is it that the stomach influences the brain?) Therefore, using it to circumvent my stomach’s wild highs and lows defies any logic. Downing a smoothie equates to drinking bottles of chalky radio-opaque contrast: Each swallow harder than the last. And once the image of those dreaded tests surfaces in my mind, the meal becomes another torture session.
I’ve used my “clever” thinking to transform food into hell.
Wednesday
Protein bar (consumed after 3:00 PM when partner asks if you ate lunch)
My stomach is a recalcitrant child, stomping its feet and screaming for a sugar sweet that it rejected not two seconds earlier. I’m not one for patient parenting. You deal with such nonsense by ignoring the behavior until the brat decides it’s ready to listen to reason. Acknowledging the tantrum only serves to lend it credence, prolonging it indefinitely.
And while everyone—from doctors to trainers to social media to television personalities to family members to random strangers—insists the human body requires food every day, my stomach lacks the mechanism that triggers hunger. Ignoring it as it twists and sloshes acid around is a simple task. Hours, even days, slip past without notice.
Am I punishing my stomach for the constant waves of nausea? Or am I earning myself a series of lectures from the outside world when I catalog the gaps in my eating habits? Considering the number of people that thrust food into my hands at regular intervals, I’ll never know.
Thursday
Multigrain bread
Crunchy peanut butter
Current jam selection (note <10g of sugar)
2 stalks of celery
Once upon a time, my stomach worked. I ate whatever food landed on my plate (exempting the brussel sprouts I attempted to slide to the floor) and went about my day without so much as a twinge of discomfort. The two of us worked on the same team: I provided it with sustenance, and it processed the items into seemingly endless energy. A seamless, functional circle.
The sudden betrayal still aches. That first rejection on an innocent summer day; the first protein to find itself crossed from the tolerance list. A childhood friendship shattering without rhyme or reason.
I sometimes long for the peace of those long ago years. The nostalgia of the simpler times when food meant nothing because anything settled into my stomach without complaint. Attempting to recapture those moments in hopes of rebuilding the fractured relationship never ends well. I’ll never know what I did to offend my stomach that summer afternoon, but it drove the first nail into the coffin.
We are never, ever getting back together.
Friday
2 Rice cakes
Smear of Laughing Cow© Cheese Wedge
Cup of Baby Carrots
Water
Maintaining a position of vitriol gets tiring, even for my stomach. There are rare moments when it reaches a point of negotiating a truce. Provided, of course, I’m willing to agree to its demands. The menu borders on violating decency statutes for human survivability. But it is, by definition, food. And my stomach consents to allow it to pass without so much as a rumble or grimace.
People eye my plates with incredulity. Is that all I’m eating? Do I get enough sustenance? Is there something wrong with me? Do I feel all right? My smiles of reassurance that the bland offerings are actually satisfying do nothing to reassure them. I hear whispers with the words “starvation” and “unhealthy.” Nothing I say will convince them differently as they sit behind plates piled high with sauces, meats, spices, and complex carbohydrates.
As I crunch on the flavorless bits of cardboard my stomach has decided it now enjoys, the smells of actual food fill my nostrils. Something in my middle shifts, growing curious. Signals flare in my brain. My stomach begins to wonder what those dishes might taste like. And the cycle starts again. My eternal hope that—this time—my stomach might consent to return to normal.