eating is a chore

i have always wanted to be the type of lotus flower who ate slowly and delicately, and became full off of a couple of bites of food. but instead, i'm the type of person who, if it were socially acceptable, would eat everything on my plate, then pick off of someone else's plate, and then eat the cardboard packaging too. i eat really fast and i'm never picky about what i eat. in fact, i usually think that just food in general is so good that i can't stop eating it even though i'm so full i can hardly breathe. i never really spent a lot of money on clothes, but i loved eating - what i couldn't eat in the highbrow foodie kind of way, i made up in volume/calories.

you always hear about bad things: war, recession, cancer, swine flu, morning sickness... but you never think it's going to happen to you. i didn't even know i had it until i started eating one of my favorite things, tabouli, and started gagging. 'omg, what the hell is that? onion? since when did onion taste like elephant turd?!' i desperately tried to find something else to eat that would make this gagging feeling go away, but nothing worked - not even soda. i felt like i had elephant turd lodged in the back of my throat for the rest of the day. i woke up the next day feeling totally fine, but as soon as i started to eat, the same thing happened.

garlic tastes like elephant turd!
pad thai tastes like elephant turd too!?
saltines and gingerale, not you too!
omg, korean food is the devil incarnate!

everything i ate turned into elephant turd and pretty soon there were only a few things i could eat. kelloggs special k cereal, apples, sour patch kids and cream cheese. and even those things started to taste like elephant turd's distant cousin after a while. seeing pictures of food, touching food, or just thinking about food made me want to vomit. your pregnancy hormones peak at around 8-9 weeks and during that time, it felt like i had a horrible hangover and someone was chasing me around trying to force feed me shots of johnny walker... all day long. i cried myself to sleep, on the nights i could fall asleep that is.

you're i-have-mono exhausted all the time and you turn into a bloodhound. i could smell what people had for lunch on their clothes, i could smell my boss's breath from five feet way, i thought hdr smelled like mushrooms, and sometimes i would just sit around sniffing shampoo bottles bc organic smells made me want to jump out the window. i mean, it kind of feels like you're allergic to everything in the world, including the one thing that could make you feel better, benedryl. it's that tragic. i have no idea how those women who vomit every day and get hospitalized for dehydration do it.

"morning" sickness sucks all the joy out of finding out you're pregnant. honestly, i think it was worse than getting the swine flu. but there are other changes accelerating in your body and it's the sensation that you're really pregnant and that the little zygote is safe that gets you through it.

i'm doing a lot better now, but i still get nauseous when i eat foods that are too flavorful or if i go too long without eating. as always, it gets worse as the day/night progresses. i'm slowly adding foods to my repertoire but the most frustrating part of this is that i can't seem to muster an appetite and eating is such a chore. i'm having such a hard time meeting my calorie requirements that i have hardly gained any weight, and most of the food i eat is junk. i tried so hard to eat healthy during my first trimester that i have strong negative associations with most healthy foods and can't eat them anymore.

once, i went to a house party with my friend. i parked myself in front of the guacamole and couldn't stop eating it. i think i ate half of it by myself. i turned to my friend and said, "omg, this is so good, i can't stop eating it! help me!" she was so confused, "i don't get it, just stop eating it." but i couldn't and she looked at me like i was crazy. whatever that gene is, i don't have it (i would have failed the marshmallow test). this reminded me of a conversation i had in college with the same friend. she's really skinny, but by no means is she anorexic. she's one of those dainty lotus flowers who always has a flat stomach and can eat just the right portions. in fact, she's probably like most of the asian girls i know. she was telling me that she doesn't really like eating. she eats bc she knows she has to, but she never really seeks out food. it's true. whenever we'd meet for dinner, i'd always pick what to eat bc she was so apathetic. i've never heard her say, "omg, we have to eat this!". i never understood her very un-american appetite, but today, as hdr was force feeding me, i had a pang of empathy. today, i was a lotus flower and all i could think about was how i wish i could just stop eating. hdr was telling me every five minutes that i had to finish everything like i was three years old. i practically had tears streaming down my face as i finished my soba noodle by noodle over a painfully long 30 minutes.

now, i can understand why some people never over eat. i can understand why people eat slowly. i can understand why some people are picky eaters. and i can finally understand the obsession with sour things.

some healthy things i do like to eat now are: cheese, apples, pineapples, dried mangoes, bagels-n-cream cheese, things with vinegar in it, salmon sushi, and trader joe's apple watermelon fruityflakes (little flecks of happiness).