I WANNA EAT NOW!!!

So, I've complained about my schedule before--evening classes lead to late night eating which interferes with my sleep quite frankly. I still don't have a solution to the problem really, but I'm working on it and I'm particularly paying attention to how being really really hungry screws with my sense of emotional well being. Being hungry scares me--I was never deprived as a child; I lived in a very food-secure home, so this panic is not coming from a place of real lived poverty (which is EXTREMELY important to consider when talking about food-justice!)

Last Thursday night I was starving after class (and I couldn't do my generally flex schedule because a planned meeting Friday) so I had to figure out what to eat. All I could think was: I WANNA EAT NOW!!! Nothing was prepared at home and once again, I hate frozen meals though I do have some; I wanted to eat in the car on the way home (or so I told myself), but all the fast food options just kept going through my head. Now, I have gluten issues, so fast food is particularly bad for me also its bad for everyone. I was adding up in my head how much a combo meal at any one of the usual fast food restaurants is and it pissed me off. Then, I realized that I could eat Thai food for a couple dollars more. There is a really healthy Thai Restaurant right before the exit to get onto I-75 where I work (all the Chinese places in this town are awful, but the Thai place still has several healthy and tasty options). So, I went in and I ordered the vegetable and tofu dinner with steamed rice. The sauce is a soy sauce/ginger/garlic thing, not an oily pad-thai sauce or sweet type sauce. I had to sit in the restaurant for a few minutes as the order came up (I now have the to-go menu in my car so that I can order ahead if I'd like to do that in future). Of course, they gave me a ton of rice, but I used it over several days. I didn't eat until I got home, but what I ate was ready, delicious, and healthy. Because I was in my I WANNA EAT NOW mode, though I was greatly improved by the wait in the restaurant and the drive home, I still did eat a bit beyond satisfaction. But, I filled up on veggies and tofu and still had some left (instead of putting the veggies/tofu over the rice, I put some of the rice in with the veggies which cut back on the rice quite a bit).

If I get into one of these moods on Tuesday/Thursday nights, I think that I will keep the Thai place in mind. Healthy doesn't always mean homecooked or from a cardboard box. Dealing with these anxious I WANNA EAT NOW times is important to examine because I do have food issues and I want to self-soothe without food (or feed myself in a reasonable way when I'm in those food tantrums--I feel like when they aren't food specific, they are more like tantrums than binges because 1. it is true that I've deprived myself a couple hours too much, 2. there was no trigger food, just lack of food that took me to a place where I feel slightly out of control).