Today I ate too much. I didn’t think you could eat too much salad and vegetables. How wrong I was… I had a HUGE lunch. I felt so unbelievably full this afternoon, I couldn’t bring myself to eat much more for dinner, DESPITE throwing an unexpected leg workout into my day’s exercise schedule. WHAT IS HAPPENING?
I’m usually hungry 90% of the time and if I’m not hungry then I’m lethargic from having eaten too much. Then the lethargy is replaced by thirst, thirst replaced by hunger and the cycle perpetuates. Yet on my way home from the gym, I found myself struggling to decide on what I fancied for dinner. I swung by a whole foods store and paced the aisles hoping for some kind of inspiration.
I looked at the zucchini uniformly laid out in their trays, butt-side up and began planning an elaborate salad with sunflower seeds, zucchini and some kind of spicy dressing. All of a sudden however, the phallic shape of the exposed root vegetables got to me and I felt offended not just by the zucchini, but the cucumber, egg plant and oddly, the asparagus. Walking past the salad chiller, a green pepper caught my eye. It was awkwardly placed amidst a number of yellow and red ones and seemed to have been neglected by fellow shoppers. On closer inspection, I recognized that this was most likely due to its odd-alien-esque shape and slight bruising. I was reaching over to grab it when I remembered I was in an over-priced whole foods store, not an animal rescue center, and this vegetable-related empathy is probably a sign of early-onset developmental insanity. Eventually, I stumbled across a tester box full of fruit tasters. I’m a sucker for free food, so I helped myself to a small (generous) dish of pineapple, melons and grapes.
Error.
Now I was hungry for sweet.
I shoved a box of figs, pitted dates, oats, coconut flakes, a carton of unsweetened coconut/almond milk and raw almonds into my basket, paid the cashier my month’s paycheck for them and made for home. I then proceeded to make myself a champions bowl of muesli (recipe to follow) full of oats, chopped dried figs and dates, coconut flakes almonds, topped with cinnamon and a dash of agave nectar and a generous splash of coconut/almond milk.
Every mouthful felt SO WRONG. I was effectively having cereal for dinner. It was a crime against food-kind. I was breaking all the foodie rules. But it tasted so gooooood! So… I had another two bowls. Sure, it isn’t something you should do every day as it still lacks enough protein necessary for recovery after working out, but I don’t care. It tasted delightful and it was still 100% TED.
Sticking to mealtime norms is a very British thing to do. Seeing as I need to convince America to keep me here, I need to shake such Britishness. So really, I was taking one for the team. ‘Merica.
Lesson learned: listen to your body. Craving sugary foods can be a sign of thyroid dysfunction, adrenal stress or PMT/Menopause, among many other things. I narrowed my sugar cravings down to the drastic change in my diet coupled with possible PMT and post-exercise drop in glycogen – but it’s always wise to give your physical symptoms enough professional medical attention. However, if you’re needing an easy fix – craving food unnecessarily (i.e. you’ve recently eaten enough kcal) can be alleviated by drinking a glass of water and reassessing hunger after 10-15minutes. If, on the other hand, you’ve lost your appetite, have a sip of apple cider vinegar. This has always acted like a reset button and sparked my hunger for basically anything in front of me.
So.. Kale Me Maybe? 