Bad eater.

[mrissa]

One of the first pieces of praise a baby gets in my family is, "Oh, she's a good eater." It's a matter-of-fact tidbit, a subset of "an easy baby": easy babies are good-natured, they sleep well, they are often alert enough to pay attention to passing aunties (always gratifying to the said aunties), and they are good eaters.

I have recently noticed that I am just not a good eater.

It's not that I don't like food. It's that actually eating it is not that important to me because of the smells. For example, I just put a pan of bars in the oven, and I didn't even want to lick the batter, because it had taken me slightly longer than usual to make the batter (puply interference), and that was just enough additional time smelling the stuff that I didn't want to eat it. It feels like I've already had about three bars because of the smells, and in fact I've had nothing. And I need to eat lunch at some point, because the hypoglycemia will kick in and I will fall over. And also because people need to eat, generally, and I am a people. I'm not trying to lose weight -- it's not like that. It's just that the smells get so overwhelming.

The other hard bit, besides the smells, is coming up with things I want to eat. This is much easier with other people to deal with: lunch will be a bagel, because I could pick up bagels for timprov and markgritter and at that point it was just as easy to pick one up for myself. Dinners are generally pretty easy, because they involve other people most of the time, and so I cook for them and eat incidentally. I like too much stuff. It's hard to figure out which bit to grab next. Last week I went downstairs for lunch by myself and had a handful of nuts, some blueberries, and half a grapefruit. And I was ready to be done -- wanted to be done. But I knew that it would not hold me for the rest of the afternoon, so I had to come up with something else in addition to all that. The grapefruit smelled almost peppery. It was overwhelming by itself. Overwhelmingly good, but I just wanted to be done and keep the grapefruit smell for awhile.

I'm not really sure how to do this, except continue to eat with other people because I want to spoil them. But it's a bit frustrating.

Comments

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

I think the vast majority of folks out there take smelling their food for granted, and don't realize just how important the smells can be with regard to appetite. I've seen your sort of situation in hospitals before, and it is very distressing because only you can say what smells good to you AT THE MOMENT and therefore what might spur you to be hungry or, as the case may be, NOT hungry. It happens also with patients who have anosmia - those who entirely lose the ability to smell, either due to radiation therapy or chemo or some such cause. Patients with anosmia have literally no appetite after a very brief time because they can't smell the food and smell is part of taste, so they can't TASTE the food, so why bother? I'm sure you're doing your best to get all the nutrition you can. Hopefully this will all straighten itself out in the meantime...I'm thinking good thoughts in that direction for you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Much appreciated.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Personally I find the best way to solve the lunch problem is have just a few set meals I know I like enough to eat and which have enough in them to keep my body happy, and then just rotate them, and have a fixed lunch time. So come 3pm (I get up late) I'll be there in the kitchen fixing my chicken and seared veggies or my ham salad or whatever because that's what's due for that day, and that's the time to be eating it. Which isn't to say I don't often enjoy it when I get to it, but it takes care of the brain work of "what shall I eat.. I'm not hungry... don't fancy that.. ". And the meals I have planned feature enough protein, carbs, fat etc to be balanced for what I need, so again, its a no-brainer. The system might work for you, I don't know.

Also maybe try and find some simple snack foods with more nutrition then just the fruit so you can nibble on them and get enough calories etc even when you can't face anything else, nuts are good for this.

The annoying thing for me is I *am* trying to lose weight, and I don't get hungry, and it would be quite nice to just skip meals, thanks, but my blood sugar plays merry hell with me if I don't eat properly - its much easier on days I can automatically fix one of the same old, same old meals rather than having to come up something new and exciting.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I don't have a smells issue, I should add, just never seem to get the hungry messages in time before I get the keel over pass out messages.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Some people find it helpful to mix an 'instant breakfast' sort of drink in advance, then just resolve to take a cup of it every morning. Within an hour of waking, one food help group says, I think they're radiantrecovery.com.

I used to use coffee-flavored eggnog. Now I use a protein powder in hot herb tea or in hot chocolate. (I hate thick drinks, I try to have some fruit/oatmeal cookies around for the rest of the 'balanced breakfast'.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Instant breakfast makes me gag. But breakfast is my easy meal -- I can always eat breakfast -- so substituting fruit and cereal in for other, later meals is one of my favorite tricks anyway.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I do the same thing, adjusted somewhat for being in college. I eat just about the same thing every day because I know it's edible. Nothing fancy, no waste of food if I discover I can't stand it, just blah. I eat at the same time most of the time, too, which helps make me hungry out of habit.
If I'm at home or out of school three days, I stop eating. Just doesn't happen.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Our college food was awful, so most of the time a bagel and an apple were as much as I could manage anyway.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I need more nuts in my diet. I think that's pretty clear right now.

[(Anonymous)]

I do wonder what actually triggers the hunger reflex. Lately I don't ever seem to get hungry, but I can tell it's time to eat when I start getting dizzy, which seems wrong. You would think that a person would get the hunger reflex before there was that great a need in the body that it's going to drop over. At any rate, the best I can do is just try munching on little snacks throughout the day and have fixed mealtimes when my brain says "eat now" even if my hunger doesn't.

Good luck on the whole eating thing. If you really need, I will stop by so that you have a reason to eat. :)

Heathah

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You're a Hero of the Revolution, Heathah.

And I have days like that, too, where dizziness is the first indicator. It just seems suboptimal, is what.

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

I get that brownie phenomenon too -- smell something long enough, and I'm done with it. It comes and goes, for me. My solution is to depend strongly on foods that hold well or taste better the next day. If I cook things 8-24 hours in advance, the cooking smells don't affect my eating -- I can eat something else easily, just not whatever has been perfuming the kitchen.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I like leftovers.

[(Anonymous)]

I undrstand it's an old kitchen truism that if you've cooked a curry, you've dined on the smell. I haven't so much heard it apply to brownies, though. Still, it shows again that you're not completely unique in this area, either. Quite.

One solution to a lunch that doesn't hold you until dinner is called a "snack". And more, smaller, meals are I believe officially recommended for the hypoglycemic anyway.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. And I do try with the snack. But if I pop up and have another handful of blueberries an hour later, the problem is not solved.

[ladyamylynn.livejournal.com]

As a chef, I can relate to the problem of not being hungry when I'm through cooking something. At the end of a shift, eating is the last thing I want. There's always eating out to solve that problem (not financially always the best option,) but hey, it sounds like you deserve to be the tiniest bit selfish sometimes. Order takeout! Make somebody who's getting paid deal with the smells.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, we go out or get takeout more than we used to. This works better for me as a social eating thing, though -- if I can't motivate myself to make toast, I really can't motivate myself to call for vindaloo.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I have recently noticed that I am just not a good eater.

Do you know you're kind of intense?

I'm sorry about your smell and food-related problems of late. Planning specific meals in advance (even having them prepared in advance) seems like a good idea to... well, to someone who does not have that problem. For whatever that's worth.