My wife is paralyzed. Facedown in a swamp of her bodily fluids. I’m running around our oak dining-room table, entertaining two toddlers with the help of a friend that doesn't exist.
Alexa, play Mulberry Bush.
Alexa, play Wheels on the Bus.
Alexa, play Dance Monkey.
I had plans today. Big plans. I had beers to drink! Sports to watch! The Saint Peter’s Peacocks! The number fifteen cinderella seed! Will they beat North Carolina and upset all of the Tar Heels fans that are only Tar Heels fans because of their powder blue jerseys?
It’s Sunday.
Sunday is my day.
I hope my wife’s slumber will bring her back to life. For a sane Sunday, I need like Leia needed Obi-Wan. She’s my only hope.
She gets sick like this at least once every year. Her intestines squirm and squeeze every which way, like a freshly decapitated snake. Her body rejects food and drink of any form, trying to deal with matters more important than digestion. If it’s a good year, she weathers the storm. If it’s a bad year, we end up in the hospital, dehydrated.
We don’t know why this happens. Food poisoning? Eh. I eat the same foods she does and I don’t get sick. (Then again, I have an iron stomach. I've never had food poisoning in my life.) Stomach bug? Eh. I live with her and I don’t get sick. It’s a mystery that, at this point, is more important to manage than solve.
My wife comes to life in an undead sort of way. She slides around the house on her side like Jabba the Hutt, pawing the ground with her upper body to get from place to place. You’d be surprised how helpful a second set of working eyeballs are when you’re watching multiple kids, even if those eyeballs don't have a Krang to carry them around. They're even more helpful when they’re assisting someone that’s running on three hours of sleep, which I am, because our youngest son didn’t sleep well last night. He didn’t sleep well the previous night, either. No fever. Just an unexplained discontent — a parent’s nightmare. Every ounce of love and compassion you have eventually fades into darker feelings, like frustration and fear. These types of moments wear you down, as a parent.
I feel worn down.
It’s just from lack of sleep, I tell myself. There's no way my youngest son had a stomach virus that he gave to my wife even though that would explain everything, including the fact that my appetite has sunk faster than Squints Palledorous in a public swimming pool overseen by Wendy Peffercorn.
I keep my spirits high, but I'm slipping into another state of being, slowly, like hot wax oozing down the side of a candle. Something inside of my stomach starts performing parkour, forcing me to join my wife on the floor. I’m shivering. I’m a salt-covered slug. I’m the latest victim.
I don’t eat anything on Sunday. I eat a banana and two eggs on Monday. I try to eat as I normally would on Tuesday. I'm rewarded with violent stabs to the stomach at 2:37 a.m. I eat minimal food on Wednesday to avoid what happened the previous night. By Friday, I feel normal, but I'm a changed man: I'm considerably leaner than I otherwise would have been.
Losing weight is easy when you fear food the way you fear the future when you're a nine-year-old kid watching Emeril Live at 11:22 p.m., thinking about the fact that your parents won't be around forever.
Kate Moss infamously said, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” This quote has a new meaning to me. For those few days, nothing tasted good enough to risk serial-killer stabbing stomach pains. You can disagree with Moss, but you can’t disagree with the message:
Being skinny is easy when your chemical reward systems aren't tied to deriving enjoyment from food.
I don't know how to rewire your chemical reward systems, but I know the answer isn't breaking into the backend of a Cheesecake Factory, dressed like a white-aproned employee, and licking dirty dishes in search of salmonella.
Besides, there's nothing wrong with deriving enjoyment from food. I enjoy what I eat (for the most part) and I lose fat without trying. For more on that, see Two Meal Muscle.
May the Gains be with you,
Ant