Wasting Away

I have this thing when I see people that I haven't seen for a while where they always ask if I lost weight and tell me I look skinnier. Usually flattering, but I have been the same size since my senior year of high school. Same height, same weight, and while I'm sure some of my high school muscle has flabbed over, I have pretty much the same physiqe. My guess is that people just have a mental image of me that I am a little thicker than I actually am. Which is fine, better than the other way around I guess, I would rather have people think I look skinny when they see me as opposed to wondering when I got fat. Plus I'm ok with people thinking I am jacked when I have worked out twice since senior year of high school. :)

But anyways, the point of the story is that I have been the same size since senior year of high school. 5' 9" 3/4 (I used to say 5'10", but my girlfriend freshman year of HS didn't believe me that I was that tall, so we measured in the lobby one morning before school. Turns out she was correct that I was a quarter of inch short, so I had to promise her that I would never again tell people I was 5'10") and 180 lbs (give or take 5). Well, until the last few weeks that is. It started when I put on jeans to head out for the night, and they were falling off me. Even when I grabbed my belt, I had to go in an extra loop to keep them up. And lately my eating habits have started changing. Three of the last four days, I realized I have only eaten one meal. Usually late afternoon, and I eat a decent amount of food, but that has been my only meal all day. And I've also been way more tired than I should be for the lifestyle I am living. I do a decent amount of walking, going around town to different schools and language centers. I prob average 2.5-3 hours of walking a day, but coming home around dinner time, I have just been exhausted, coming home to nap every day. And with Julia living far away, most nights I'll just hang in my room, reading, plotting my next day and watching movies. But not usually eating.

Anyways, I realized this is not healthy, eating a meal around 3 and not at all the rest of the day. And while its good for my pocketbook, I'm pretty sure there is a direct correlation between my lack of calorie intake and my lack of energy. (Calories = energy, thank you Mr. Dennerlein) And there are plenty of places to get cheap food, it's Thailand, it's like their thing. So I made a concerted effort today to eat as much as I could. I woke up this morning and went and got some snacks from 7/11 (breakfast is really not their thing here). I had a small banana bread and a packet of cookies, and by the end of the cookies I was like forcing them down. I'm pretty sure my stomach has shrunk when I can't finish 12 cookies at noon. I was out running some errands, grabbed a pineapple shake (pineapple and ice, more like a smoothie), couldn't finish it. So I figured I would call out the big guns. Was right down the street from Burger King so after I finished running around, I went in, ignored my lack of hunger (and my wallet) and ordered a Whopper w/ Cheese, fries and a Coke. Pretty much I signaled to the bullpen for America. I put Wait Wait Don't Tell Me on my ipod in attempt to distract myself and trick my stomach into thinking it was hungry. Bite, chew, swallow, repeat. Over and over. Till I looked down and it was gone. I walked home and collapsed into bed, just as tired as usual, and hoping it would just take till tomorrow for these calories to work their magic.

I woke up from my nap, did a little cleaning, downloaded some tunes and messed around online for a while. My friends started waking up, skyped for a bit with one of them, watched Bones online and started writing this blog post. And I was halfway through it when I realized it was 11 pm and I hadn't eaten since Burger King! Gosh darn it. I am literally just not hungry. Luckily I still had half my snacks from this morning, so I forced some pizza bread down. And Burger King alone was more than I had eaten each of the past two days, so I understand why I wouldn't be hungry today if I wasn't then, but its still worrying. Listen, I know that complaining about not being hungry and losing weight is something that very few people want to hear, and that there are millions of people throughout the world who are starving everyday, I get that. But its starting to scare me a little bit as to why I'm not ever hungry. Each of the last three days, I'm pretty sure that if I wouldn't have made it a point to eat, I would have been fine and not noticed it. The fact that my stomach isn't telling me to eat is a good thing I guess, but its just worrying as to why its not. And if I wasn't so tired all the time, I would be more ok with it. Its just weird, and was pretty much the focus of my day today, trying to get myself to eat, so I figured I would write about it. My plan tomorrow is to have 4 meals, finish my snacks when I get up, lunch when I leave, late lunch after walking around, and go back out for dinner, even if I'm not hungry. Hopefully after a day or two of this I will see my energy levels improve. I'll let you know how it goes.

TPWWLT - Emerson, Lake & Palmer - 'Karn Evil 9'

PS - That was way too many words about my eating habits and immediately jumped to the top of the 'Blog Posts I Was Better Off Skipping' List. Haha I just don't understand it! Why am I not hungry? Who knows? Not this guy.