What Would You Give?

What would you give up to get something else? 

I've always said that I'd like to be one of those people that just views food as fuel. That it would make it so much easier. 

Because I love to eat. I have an involuntary happy dance that happens when something is really good. 

Even now with the dietary restrictions I have I still have what we call cheat meals. I know it's possibly going to mess with my digestive system or I'm going to break out in itchy hives, but I still eat my very favorites every few months. It's worth it to me. And if I'm really careful the rest of the time, the problems those foods cause when I do eat them is minimal.

But now there is an option for food to just be fuel. Semaglutide. They are figuring out that that is why it works for weight loss. At the higher doses it dulls out the pleasure center of your brain. It's why it's also working for gambling addiction and alcoholism. You don't get the pop of YAY! So you just don't crave it anymore. You break that pleasure loop and so your brain stops seeking it. Food is just fuel. 

I'm not super heavy but this is America so I could absolutely find a doctor willing to prescribe it for me. Convincing Brent that it's worth over $1000 a month might be trickier, but I bet I could do that as well. And then once I started I could stop being obsessive about my weight. I could ditch a lifetime of disordered eating. I could FINALLY be done with it all. And that is really tempting. 

All for the low low price of $1200 a month, possible nausea and diarrhea, weekly injections and doing this for the rest of my life. 

Oh and that whole losing the pleasure in eating part. 

I worked with a woman quite a few years ago who was just naturally skinny. Not thin, not svelte, skinny. She could not put on weight. Which, of course, seems like not a problem to most of us when you hear about it, but it was a problem for her. People constantly commented on her size. And she had a hard time regulating her body temperature, and her periods were super irregular. Everyone assumed she was anorexic. But it was because she didn't enjoy eating. She just didn't get pleasure out of it. She ate enough to stay alive, basically.

You could never tempt her with goodies. No salty or sweet treats made her run to the breakroom to make sure she got one before they were all gone. When we ate together she would have two or three bites and then sort of force herself to have a few more. She just didn't like it. The food itself brought her no pleasure. Eventually a nutritionist put her on those Ensure shakes they give to older people to make sure they get enough calories. She drank a few of those a day as well as a pretty strict diet of things she "had" to eat to get her nutrition in. She viewed it just like medicine at that point. And it worked to get her to a little healthier weight. Still very slim, but at least she started menstruating again.

She saw food strictly as fuel at that point. 

When people undergo chemotherapy they lose their appetites. Same thing. Food doesn't taste good. It doesn't smell good. It can cause nausea. They lose weight. One of the times that my mom was pretty sure she was going to have to start chemo again she told me, "I'm glad, I've gained a little weight and this will make me lose it." I come by my disordered eating naturally. 

A lot of people lost their sense of smell and taste with Covid. They lost weight too. When food loses it's pleasurability we stop eating. 

Which to me means that our bodies were designed to find food pleasurable. To make sure we eat. And that something major has to happen for us to not have that drive. We lose our sense of smell or taste. We circumvent the pleasure we get from eating with the pleasure we get from controlling our eating. (Hello, anorexia!) Or now we inject ourselves with a drug four times a month that dulls the pleasure center in our brains so we no longer feel the need to eat our favorite foods. 

Would you be willing to dull the pleasure you find in life to be thinner? 

How much does being thinner mean to you? 

Does it mean more than the happy dance inducing warm chocolate chip cookie? 

I have always said that I wish I viewed food as fuel and not pleasure. 

Turns out I was wrong.