GIT IN MA BELLY!

A small mousey looking guy stood up and scanned the faces of our small little group.  “I’m Henry,” he said.

“Hi Henry,” we all say in unison.

“And…well…I’m hungry.”  Well, he’s straight forward isn’t he?  Most of the time it takes the group members 2 or 3 minutes just to stammer through their issue—not Rodent Guy.  “I’m hungry all of the time, and I know that this is a runners group but ever since I started moving more, my stomach wants more.”  He turns his attention to Nancy—which is good because his beady eyes give me the creeps.  “Isn’t that counter productive?”

Nancy, usually not a squirmer, squirms a bit at Rodent Guy’s question.  It could possibly be his serial killer look that makes us nervous, but I bet he’s a pretty neat guy once you get past the urgency to dial 9-1-1 every time he looks your way.  “Henry,” She starts with a warm smile. “It’s ok to be hungry.” 

Say what?

It is kind of unsettling to be hungry.  There’s this one episode of SpongeBob (don’t judge me—ya’ll watch it too) where Squidward told him to empty his mind of everything but food service, and SB being who he is he did exactly that.  When Squilliam (Squidward’s rival) asked SB his name—his brain went haywire and these little SpongeBob’s were running around in his brain pulling out papers and setting the ‘office’ on fire because they were panicking.  That’s what happens when I’m hungry.  A bunch of mini-me’s are running around in my brain yelling “What do we do?!” “She’s hungry!”  It’s a pain in the ass really.  Aren’t we supposed to be hungry?  When did it become wrong—or better yet unusual--to be hungry?

This book I read last year Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat gave me the exact same advice Nancy gave Henry—it’s ok to be hungry.  It can be easy to forget, especially when everything in society says ‘eat this’ or ‘take that’ so you won’t be hungry.  This morning, I ate breakfast and felt satisfied.  About 2 hours later, I felt hungry.  Wait.  Why was I hungry?  Trying to keep a lid on my mini-me’s so they wouldn’t run amuck in my brain, I ate something—but I felt very guilty for eating.  And now, 2 hours later here I sit feeling hunger in my tummy again. 

Many of us have been on this diet and that diet and we forget that food is indeed fuel and if we want our vehicle to run properly—we have to fuel it up.  For many of us, eating no matter when (or what) has turned into a guiltfest.  So what you had a cookie.  Big deal you ate a muffin the size of your head for breakfast.  Who cares if you drank a diet Coke with your salad.  It’s not the end of the world…and neither is being hungry. 

I know what Dr. Oz and the rest of the body-do-gooders say: Eat small meals every 2-3 hours. Easy to say—harder to do.  I’m realizing on this journey to be fit enough to run the 6.2 miles in the humid Atlanta hell heat on July 4^th that some brain rewiring has to take place.  I suppose a change in my eating habits is the natural step to take after step one (getting my ass off the couch), and as scary as it feels—I’m just going to embrace it and keep moving. 

The Runner