The Falsity of “Don’t Allow Yourself to Get Hungry”

Just back on Monday from a lightning-like trip to North Carolina to celebrate the 80^th birthday of a family member. Such a nice time! Once again, as I mentioned back in May, much of that time was spent eating in restaurants—or at the party itself, of course. I tried to be very conscious of the time between meals, as no sooner had we finished one session than we started talking about the next: “Where are we going for dinner?” “What are we doing for lunch?” Also, the inevitable “Are we going to Goodberry’s?”

Once again I was struck by the need to think in terms of distinct meals and to try not to eat between those set points. Which reminded me of the adage mentioned in the title, although there’s no one definitive version that I can see. Sometimes it’s “Never allow yourself to get too hungry.” This is better phrasing, since it’s pointing out the danger of getting so far into the red zone that you just want to eat everything in sight. As much as possible, though, aim for just eating at meals. So for instance (not to pat myself on the back or anything), the birthday party was at 6:00 on Saturday evening. But that wasn’t really when we were going to eat, of course. That was when we were all supposed to be there, ready to hide and then jump out to yell “Surprise!” when the birthday girl (birthday woman? birthday person?) arrived. I can’t remember what we’d done for lunch that day, but whatever it was had worn off. My stomach was growling, but I wasn’t into Horrible Sinking Feeling territory, a term I use for when my blood sugar has plummeted to the point that I start feeling weak and dizzy. If that happens I really do need to eat something, although there have been times when it’s struck and I just haven’t had access to food. Eventually what happens (I’m guessing) is that my body starts burning reserves, from either muscle tissue (in the form of glycogen) or from fat tissue (in the form of, well, fat). But here I was just sort of pleasantly hungry, anticipatorily hungry, as it were. I was having a great time talking to some fascinating people and just ignored the stomach growls (and the approximately one ton of appetizers/snacks out on the tables). When I finally got through the line and sat down I was thoroughly ready to enjoy my dinner, including some bread to dip into olive oil. The chicken Parmesan was fabulous.

Then of course it was time for the birthday cake and the ice cream. Well, I’d had a nice meal, and I was pleasantly satisfied, and I don’t really like cake all that much anyway. If they’d been serving some kind of pie I might have had some, but there was no reason for me to eat the cake. (I will point out that it wasn’t a Costco cake, thank goodness.) I had a bite of Jim’s serving and that was enough for me.

And I tried to follow that pattern throughout the trip. When I weighed myself on Tuesday morning after our return I clocked in at 117.5, a result with which I was quite pleased. (Remember, I have a very small frame and I’m pretty short at about 5’3”. This is just a good weight for me.)

What other fabulous, distinct meals did I have on the trip?

The bagel with smoked salmon, red onion, capers, herbed cream cheese and salad mix at Foster’s Market—the first bite was mind-bending. I must try to reproduce it at home.

The shrimp and grits at Elmo’s Diner, more of a brunch than a breakfast (and with the world’s greatest waitress), so I didn’t eat a separate lunch and waited to eat until . . .

Dinner at Mama Mia’s, where I had chicken Marsala, asking for half the amount of pasta. Lots of mushrooms, really nice flavor.

And two small treats:

This time, as opposed to every other time I’ve ever been there, for our two visits I just ordered one scoop of chocolate frozen custard at Goodberry’s and got my usual two toppings—malt powder and almonds—instead of caving in and getting a small concrete, which is about twice the size of the scoop. I paid at least the same and probably more for my item, and they won’t mix it in for you if you just order the scoop, but man! was it ever better to get the smaller size! Just about the time I started to get sated, it was gone. I thoroughly enjoyed it and didn’t have that lingering dissatisfaction that comes from not having appreciated every bite. I plan to do this from now on. My hopes for the “flavor of the day” being peanut butter were dashed, unfortunately; if that had happened I would just have ordered the scoop with no toppings. Ah well. We’ll be back.

One other food-related item from our trip, this one a negative (a “demerit,” as they call it on the Happier podcast):

I didn’t bring along anything to eat on the plane. On the way out this wasn’t all that bad as we’d eaten breakfast before leaving and lost two hours on the way, so we were fairly close to dinnertime (about 4:30) by the time we landed. By the time we got our rental car and made our way to the restaurant (not one of my memorable meals, but okay) it was getting on for 6:00. But on the way back we didn’t eat before leaving; we had nothing on hand in the rental house and we needed to get out the door by 7:00. We were gaining two hours and should have arrived at 10:00, so that wouldn’t have been all that bad. But, because we had to be in a holding pattern at the Denver airport, our plane got too low on fuel. We had to divert to Colorado Springs, re-fuel, and then head back to Denver. We ended up landing at about 12:30 instead of 10:00, but that was 2:30 in NC. We’d had nothing to eat all day, not even pretzels, because Frontier Airlines doesn’t give you any free food at all. And I just couldn’t stand the thought of eating another restaurant meal. So we came home and foraged, and it was all too easy to keep eating on and off for the rest of the afternoon in an attempt to make up for the morning’s deprivations. A bag of almonds would have made all the difference, but I refused to pay $3.99 for that item on the plane!

Well, as usual I’ve gone on and on. Jim leaves on a teaching trip to Central Asia on Saturday and will be gone for 2 ½ weeks; then after that we’re going to the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Festival on Oct. 5. Last year we tried to attend it and never made it onto the balloon field, so we’ll try to do better this time. (We had a great trip anyway.) I’m sure there’ll be lots of overpriced fairground-y food at that one. We’ll see.

How did your summer go, food-on-trips wise? What changes for the better can you make next time?