Day 26, Funny bodies

More specifically, what funny things our bodies are capable of doing.

So my brother has been back in town these last two weeks after having been away for about six months for naval boot camp training and all of the schooling that comes after graduating boot camp, whatever that schooling might be and how much of it he has to go through I do not really know and probably wouldn’t fully know unless I myself actually joined the Navy. But that’s not going to happen. Anyway, yesterday was his last full day back here in Corona on leave so as a bit of a going away present/goodbye to him the family all went out to eat at an Italian restaurant (or something close to Italian).

Now going out to eat on a diet, especially the PCP, is hard enough as I found out, yesterday being the first time since starting the project that I didn’t have any major meal here at home. Not only did I have to find something that would fit in with my vegan diet (which is always a great difficulty, even still during these changing days in the food industry), I had to find something that wouldn’t completely ruin all of the hard work that I’ve put into my PCP these last three and a half weeks.

So I settled on the basic house salad with the tiniest bit of vinaigrette (like a quarter of a tablespoon, probably less) sprinkled over it, a small slice of sourdough bread, and a laughably small portion of spaghetti, small enough that I could have counted the strands of spaghetti on both hands and still had fingers left over. You know, I say laughably small because it seems that I’m still getting used to the portion sizes of this diet and when I think back to how much spaghetti I took and how that little bit wouldn’t have filled me up in the slightest before I started the project then I sort of chuckle a wee bit.

Whenever Patrick mentions how much he is eating now compared to how much he used to eat and how the portions he eats now, or when he was about where I am now, would always fill him up like his pre-PCP meals I always thought that he was exaggerating. That little bit of food fills you up completely? Nah, that can’t be right. You’re just telling us that to make it seem like the project is more dramatic than it actually is.

Well let me squash any of those same thoughts that some of you readers may have, the dinner meal that I had last night filled me. Totally. I had difficulty drinking down my evening protein smoothie and I had that hours after that dinner. Believe me, I was astonished myself. It seems that serving sizes that once used to be mouthfuls, mere nibbles before the project have become meals that floor me and make me lethargic and make me vow never to eat another bite of any food ever again!

So what’s going on here? I’m being defeated by my meals, my miniscule meals? There must be some funky supernatural voodoo happening here because there is something not right about this. But, nay, I say, it seems that my body is adjusting to my daily diet sooner than my initial generous estimate. It seems that my stomach is shrinking to the point that even a small dinner such as the one I had last night has a noticeable impact on the evening. Now that’s just downright odd to consider given the veritable mountain of food I have to eat daily for my lunch. It seems that our bodies are varied, fickle things that change on whims that we, or at least I, don’t know about and faster than you realize.

Which shouldn’t come as a too much of a shock. I’m assuming everyone reading this has gone through puberty and you all know the weird changes our bodies went through then. But I wasn’t prepared for this one, it blindsided me, folks, and best of all...

It lets me know that the project is having wonderfully beneficial effects on me far greater and much quicker than I could have ever guessed. It shows me that my steps towards a better me aren’t in vain and that I’m on the right track. It shows me that my determination isn’t foolhardy and can produce amazing results if combined with something amazing. And how cool is that?