I have been denying my hunger for as long as I can remember. I would see my peers seemingly mindlessly giving in to this basic human need. But from a very early age, I knew that that carelessness was not for me. My destiny was to practice not giving in to hunger. And I was really good at it.
With decades of practice, I thought that I was a master of hunger denial. And then, back in 2018, I completely lost any appetite. It was just gone. I lost any interest in food. Which was a problem, because without any hunger whatsoever, it can be very difficult to eat. Especially after a lifetime of denying my appetite.
I did eventually figure out that if I exercise A LOT. Like way more than should be necessary, I would be able to eat. As long as I did it with about an hour after exercising. If I didn’t eat by then, then my appetite would disappear again. This meant that I was in really good shape when the pandemic hit and I stopped going to the gym.
I did mention my complete lack of appetite to all of my doctors at the time. But despite the fact that a radical change in appetite is an actual symptom of multiple medical issues, none of my doctors thought it was a problem because I was overweight and not wanting to eat meant that I was losing weight.
Fast forward a few years, I still don’t know if the change in appetite was an early symptom of my gastroparesis, but it had certainly been helpful given that I can’t eat. But recently that has all changed.
All of the appetite that I was missing ‘lo these years has come roaring back with a vengeance. I am now fiercely hungry. I am vampire staring longingly at a pulsing jugular hungry. I am a teenage boy wanting to inhale everything in sight. I am starving.
That last sentence is not an exaggeration. Despite the fact that I have the exact same nutrition pumping in to me as I did last time I was on TPN, which caused me to gain 20lbs. This time, I am dropping weight at the same rate I did back when I was starving. Before Etisarap helped me feed again.
The tag line for gastroparesis awareness is “starving for a cure.” I have never felt the starving part of that so acutely. I am obsessed with food. I cannot stop thinking about it. Unfortunately, thinking about for triggers motility. That leaves me caught in a cycle of pain and nausea. I am in hell.
I have an appointment with my dietician on Thursday and we will see what she has to say. To this point, she hasn’t been concerned about my weight loss. Even though I am down 31lbs since I had to drop my feed to 60%.
This is exactly why I was ok with having some fat reserves. The medical system moves slowly, and I need some buffer to factor in the time it takes to resolve any issue. Last time, it took me losing 30% of my body weight to get a GI’s attention. Hopefully, we will get this resolved before things get that extreme. But it is good to know that I have the weight to lose.
This is a complete 180 on my past perspectives on weight gain. But don’t think that I have magically made peace with my body. I have made minimal progress on accepting how my body looks. But, I have starved with fat reserves and without, and it is SO MUCH HARDER to starve without fat reserves. Starving without fat reserves leaves me in bed, barely able to function. Starving with fat reserves means that I can still mostly live my very limited life.