I'm Hungry!

It is 5 AM and I don't know whether my insomnia is attributable to the rumblings in my belly or something totally unrelated, but the fact is that I am hungry. I am currently living in a regime of self-imposed starvation. This isn't something I have chosen to do in nearly 15 years, and frankly, something I didn't think I was capable of carrying out any longer.

My relationship with food is intense. It is one of the few things that consistently gives me pleasure. I love cooking, and more importantly, I love eating. I mean, I really love eating. There is very little I am unenthusiastic about putting into my mouth (and not like that, gutter minds!). Spicy, sweet, salty, crunchy, slurpy, chewy, veggie-based, liver-loaded- there is very little I won't try and come back for seconds for.

Food is and represents so much, almost all of it with positive connotations. At its most literal, it is sustenance, a key component to a healthy (and in my case happy) life (which reminds me of a time when I returned to Ecuador after having been gone for a few years and everyone there commented, with a collective smile, how “gordita” I was. That led to this little fatty's last self-imposed hunger strike). When done well, or even with just a lot of butter, food for me is the most pleasurable indulgence of my all-time favorite sense of taste. It is the open door to any culture, ignorant of any traveler's inability to converse in the local tongue and forgiving of her slaughtering of it. It is communal, the literal “breaking of bread” that occurs on first dates, business meetings, arms agreement negotiations- basically in almost any setting and under almost any circumstances.

Unfortunately, in my case at least, food can also mean unhappy sideways glances in full length mirrors, the appearance of dimples on my thighs, an uncomfortable tightening of my pants, a growing roundness in my face and, currently, numbers that, when measuring myself for my wedding dress, signal that, Houston, we have a problem.

About four years ago, I did Atkins and looking back on it, I am not sure if it was more the combination of diet and exercise or those pre-FDA-aproved pills that made my BMs look like the Gulf of Mexico after the latest BP debacle, but I did lose weight- probably 20 or so pounds. While Atkins does take a lot of discipline, I was, up until recently, pretty much the pro of self-denial.

In my 20's, I even came up with my own eating disorder- Annierexia. Unlike its famed sister, anorexia, rather than going through all the effort of swallowing and then upchucking (not to mention stinky breathe, aching throat and acidic taste of stomach bile in the mouth), Annierexia offered the much simpler and, dare I say, healthier, eating disorder of simply spitting the food out once all pleasure was extracted after chewing and before ingesting. To be sure, it wasn't perfect- I am sure some calories seeped in through the tongue and make their way into the tummy with inadvertent swallows, and forcing oneself to consistently spit out food that is primed to go down the gullet is hard, but it does have its obvious upside.

This past January, having indulged a little to much in the holiday festivities and happy in love (which for me, means cooking lots of love/butter-filled meals to express my feelings), I got strict with myself- back to Atkins. After 2 months of induction, I still didn't see any measurable results. Since then, I have been trying my versions of different diets promoting moderation. The problem is that I am simply not a moderate kind of girl. If I do anything, it is usually all the way. Go big or go home!, I say. And with all the constant temptations in Spain, none of which are collectively permitted in any diet I have found, I have managed to put on another few pounds. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Though I am not resorting to Annierexia quite yet, I am severely limiting my caloric intake resulting in my sitting here on the couch at what is now 5:53 AM, my tummy in turmoil.

Have I mentioned that I am hungry?