I Was Never Hungry.
No one who hasn’t done the LEAP program will understand this story, but I have to tell it anyway.
For two weeks, I ate only a handful of things – “non-reactive” things, according to my blood test. These were things I could eat that wouldn’t make my immune system attack itself. So these are important things.
I could eat rice, tapioca (not the pudding), pork, lettuce (not spinach), pinto beans, peanuts, almonds, cheddar cheese, tilapia and grapes. There were some other options, but mostly I subsisted on ham, bacon, cheddar and nuts.
For two weeks, I was never hungry. Not once. I ate three times a day, as instructed, but I never, ever wanted to eat. To be fair, none of it was particularly good, except for the pinto beans and ham that Bill made. (No, he didn’t get to eat any of it.) There was limited seasoning – no sugar or pepper, for example – but I certainly had enough to eat.
After two weeks, I was allowed to add a few more things into my diet. One of these things was salmon. So I thought, Hey, I can eat rice! I can eat salmon! I can eat sushi!
Well, no. Technically, I can’t eat most sushi. I’m not allowed to eat noki (the stuff used for rolls) or sauce or little crunchy crumbles or even wasabi. So I had to call the restaurant directly.
“You can eat seaweed?” asked the chef, the only person who could answer my questions.
“No,” I said. “Just salmon and rice. I figured I could eat sushi?”
“Oh sushi, okay. Well the rice have just a little bit of sugar and salt in it; is that okay with you?”
Hm, I thought. I’m really not supposed to eat sugar until tomorrow. But I felt a wild and rebellious.
“That’s okay!” I said. Takeout was exciting, all by itself, and if the rice had a bit of sugar in it, well then okay.
I placed my order, and waited for the rest of the family’s pizza – then we all sat down for our twice-weekly movie night. I was very excited to be included in getting food from an actual restaurant.
I picked up my chopsticks, picked up some rice and salmon, and took a bite. And I nearly dropped my food on the ground.
The sushi was so sweet, I thought I was eating candy.
Having had no sugar for two weeks – no sugar at all – meant that, for the first time in years, I could actually taste the sugar in the rice. Every bite was like eating a lollipop.
I had eaten rice during my LEAP plan before – alongside fish, made by Bill. That rice was wonderful. But it did not taste like candy.
So I had ten pieces of sushi. I ate them slowly, savoring every bit of that sugar. And when they were gone, I was – as usual – not hungry.
For twenty minutes.
After twenty minutes, for the first time in two weeks, I was suddenly starving. I needed something to eat. My options were immensely limited, but I was getting physically shaky from hunger.
It’s only been 20 minutes! I thought. What the heck?!?
And then I remembered the sugar. Sugar is in almost everything in the American diet. It’s added to milk, bread, canned goods, frozen foods and nearly everything bought in a box. There’s so much sugar in our foods that dessert is not only unnecessary, it’s overkill.
But – I suddenly realized – if I am hungry 20 minutes after eating sugar for dinner, dessert is the next logical thing! My body will always want more.
So I got up, grabbed a Costco-sized bag of peanuts in the shell, and started shucking. I ate so many peanuts, I could have gone without dinner altogether.
Maybe that’s what I should have done.