Mouth Hungry

I don’t know how to tell this part of the story, so I will do my best and hope that it becomes clear by the end.

I’m not sure when it happened but over the last several years there came a division of the word hungry and all that it implied. There is the normal “Stomach Hunger” I feel when I need food. These hunger triggers come around 11:30am for lunch and around 4:30pm for dinner. There is the “Tired Hunger” that I feel when I am tired and don’t need food, but rather a nap. This hunger trigger comes around 3:00pm and 10:00pm. And finally I have a state that I now call “Mouth Hunger” which can strike at any time of the day or night, though it is always stronger in the evening. This is an eating trigger where my mouth is salivating and I have the desire to eat despite being full or having already had my meals for the day. This will often lead to binging, when my eating becomes frantic and uncontrollable.

"Mouth Hungry" has been happening to me for a long time now and I can trace it back to the last time I came off Prednisone. It also seems to come directly from the primitive Reptile part of my brain that says; “I must eat food whenever it is available”. Intellectually I know, and am aware of what I am eating, and when I am eating. I also know and understand when I am overeating or binging (again two different things), but the power to limit intake is simply overwhelmed. When "Mouth Hunger" occurs, it seems part of my mind is hijacked by it, and as a result, when I find myself overeating or binging, I can even provide rational justifications for it.

So how does this all tie in? Well, the surgery is the key. It is the tool that installs the limit. My stomach, which I will now refer to as the pouch, holds only 2 – 4 ounces of food. By the end of the first year, the pouch will hold 4 – 6 ounces. If my intake is larger than that I will experience one of the following consequences; vomiting, diarrhea or I will tear the pouch open. These are consequences that I do not wish to experience, especially the last. So the surgery puts into place the tool that allows me to limit my intake where I was unable to do so previously.

Does the surgery take away the hunger? Yes and No. I currently do not have any "Stomach Hunger" triggers for food; this has most likely resulted from the drastic change to my eating style.

The first thing I do when I wake up is start to drink water. I am required to get into my system about 1 ½ - 2 liters of water daily. Easy, for a normal stomach, but with my pouch being so small I start my day with drinking about 700ml first thing in the morning. This takes me about 1 – 1 ½ hours. Then I have to wait about 15 minutes before I eat my breakfast. Currently, my breakfast is about 1 cup of well processed, strained foods; ¼ each of cream of wheat, apple sauce, milk, and Minigo™ cheese. Eating this takes about 1 hour and most of the time, it is way too much food for me to comfortably eat. I say comfortably because a large part of this process is to bee keenly aware of “full signals”, and to stop eating when they occur.

Half an hour after I finish eating breakfast, I start to drink water again. My goal is to get about 350 ml down, 2 ounces at a time, until lunch. I try to have lunch between 12:00 – 1:00. I go through, the same process of eating about 1 cup of well processed, strained foods over the span of 1 hour. Currently, I am eating soups that my parents made for me, but eventually I will start cooking for myself again.

Half an hour after that, I try to finish the remaining 350ml of water and then, before you know it, it is dinner time. As you can see, there is really no time for my stomach to every really “feel” hungry.

As for the “Tired Hungry”, well I don’t feel that either. Again, because I spend most of the day drinking water, and grazing.

“Mouth Hunger” is a completely different story. I had my first experience with it last night around 10pm. I was getting ready for bed and, in my usually way, I was watching a bit of TV before settling in. Lo and behold, a commercial for Kentucky Fried Chicken came on. Now, first you must understand that I do not eat Kentucky Fried Chicken at all. In fact I can tell the last time was over one and a half years ago when I had a single Big Crunch sandwich. The commercial was showing Chicken Fries. Why did the Chicken Fries trigger this response? I don’t know, but my god, my mouth just started to salivate and I just wanted to crawl into the screen and devour it all.

I knew in my head that there was no way I had space in my pouch to even put one mouthful of that Kentucky Fried Chicken Fry in, but did I ever want to eat. In the past, I would have gotten up and had a snack, but this time I could not. The limits that the pouch placed on me convinced me that I should remain in my bed and suffer. And I did, suffer, that is. I could have been walking, reading, on the computer or any number of other things and I would have still been thinking of those damn Kentucky Fried Chicken Fries.

What does the future hold? I don’t know. I am working at developing a positive mantra that I can say to myself when I get "Mouth Hungry" and I will probably include some type of Behavior Modification, but I am not sure what it will look like in the end. That’s the adventure!