September 17, 2007

• Cravings

  I no longer have any doubt about the oft touted link between how one feels and one’s eating habits. The last few months have provided enough evidence to cinch the case in my mind.

  You see for the last couple of months I wasn’t very hungry nearly all the time and so I ate very little and what I did eat tended to be healthier foods. Since I no longer go out to lunch every weekday this has probably been the two months during which I have eaten healthier than in any other period of my entire life. And it was almost an accident really. I just wasn’t all that hungry.

  But then over the last week and a half things changed, and it was very noticeable the direct effects. 

  I went on an interview where I acquitted myself very poorly and made a fool of myself. It wasn’t a job I really wanted anyway, but I was still quite annoyed with myself. Afterwards I felt very hungry.

  I took some practice tests, lsat, gre where my score was lower than I expected or desired it to be (not bad of course, but not great either, 80th, 85th percentile, yuck).  Afterwards each test I felt hungry again.

  I got a letter back politely rejecting an article I had written for an internet magazine. After reading it I wanted to go out and get something good to eat.

  I sent an email with questions to my professor and got a response basically blowing me off. After that I was annoyed but I felt a need for some chicken mcnuggets.

  I started this new strategy game and was constantly having my kingdom sacked by enemy forces. After each occurrence I would go and get a big drink of water to fill my stomach and keep my mind off of my desire for more food.

  The other day I sat down to play FF XII which I hadn’t done in forever and after fighting through this long a boring dungeon for hours my party was nearly annihilated and I had to run for my life to get back to a save point. That night I dreamed of eating pizza which I hadn’t eaten in weeks.

  Recently I started playing Magic: The Gathering again online, something I haven’t done in forever, and I keep losing and losing and losing even when my decks are very good. In four events I’ve played I’ve only won 2 packs, and most events are double or quadruple prizes. Almost invariably my loss is the direct result of miss play I identify almost immediately after making it. It isn’t random chance. It’s my own stupidity. Whenever I stop playing  Magic for the day I find myself feeling as if I am starving.

  So over the last week my eating habits were quite bad. I ate fast food several times, and ate out quite a bit and I snacked a lot on whatever random food was around my living place and I started drinking soda again. 

  Is this strange? It certainly surprised me, but the evidence was overwhelming.  What I thought was particularly surprising is that it isn’t worry or fear that spurs my appetite. For if it were, all the last two months I would have been stuffing myself with food. I worry all the time about others and about myself. Nah, worry or fear, whatever other foolish things they might drive me to do (and there’s a lot of that), they don’t seem to have an impact on my eating habits. 

  Rather, it seems to be the direct immediate strong negative emotional feelings that spur me to act upon my base desire. So feelings of failure or disappointment in my self, short term anger and sadness in the immediate aftermath of those feelings, that’s when my mind seems to go into a mode where it seeks out the opposite, an immediate feeling of insubstantial pleasure to make myself feel better. It’s not just eating that serves this purpose, but eating is the most common thing.

  It’s strange that the cravings themselves seem to last a long time if I don’t act upon them, but once acted upon the pleasure that I get from eating or whatever is so very fleeting.  And yet it helps. The cravings go away immediately and things return to normal albeit I am one step closer to the grave as a consequence of the garbage that I have consumed.   It’s as if my mind needs to cancel out one trivial bad event with one trivial good event to keep me in equilibrium.

  This also explains why I always wanted to go out to eat for lunch back
  when I had a job that I hated, because it was always the mornings when
  things would go wrong and the lunch helped me to feel better and face
  the second half of the day.

  It’s silly, but knowing it will be so it should be easy enough to fight against it and use my will to resist these urges. The question is should I? And what will be the consequences if I should do so?

  One thing is for sure if I want to make it easy on myself, all I have to do is shut myself in and never go anywhere, never talk to anyone, and never play any games or try to accomplish anything. If I do that I will be sheltered from these feelings to the extent that they will no longer trigger hunger and then I would surely become a lot healthier in short order. But that’s probably not the best long term life strategy.

  • 2:49 pm
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