Full

Lunch today was a delicious salad nicoise, not unlike the one pictured here. I ate nearly all of it, stopping because I was full.

Why am I telling you this? Because it's been about 7 months since I have eaten and felt full. Not because I'm starving myself but because I've been taking an anti-depressant that messes with my metabolism. I knew it would have this effect. I knew this intellectually, but still, over the last few months, I've struggled with various kinds of fallout from never feeling full.

You eat more when you don't feel full. Especially if you are, like me, a person who likes food and likes to eat. Normally food stops tasting good as you begin to feel full. But if you never feel full, the food keeps right on tasting good, and it's an effort of will and intellect to stop eating.

I say that I knew this medication would have this effect. What I actually mean is that I think it has this effect on me (and on others). But part of me didn't buy it. On some level I've been flagellating myself for the last few months for eating so much and never feeling satisfied.

We do such a good job in this culture of conflating appetite with gluttony, with greed, with being out of control in a scary way; I don't know if it's possible to think of appetite in neutral terms. Certainly it isn't for me. Certainly it's been tough to say to myself, "The little thingy in my brain that signals satiety is not working right now." Much easier to say to myself, "What a greedy, insatiable fill in the blank I am."

So along with that feeling of fullness today came another feeling: relief. It feels good to feel full. It's satisfying.

But it's disturbing to feel this kind of relief. I may very well have to back on this medication, or one like it, in the not too distant future. Part of me says unh-unh, never doing that again, I don't care what the consequences are. But is that really true? Would I rather be thinner and more depressed? Thinner and more anxious?

The questions make me think back to this study, which found that people would rather give up years of their life, be severely depressed, lose a limb, go blind, be unable to have children, if they could only be thin.

I think of myself as smarter than that. And yet--it feels good to be full again.

Listen up

A few weeks ago I did a radio interview for a show called "A Touch of Grey." You can now hear the interview online here. (Scroll down to "Harriet Brown.")

If you haven't written an Amazon review of Feed Me! yet, I'd love it if you would. (Even if you didn't like the book.)

Happy spring!

Al has ham. Al is a fat cat. As is a sad fat cat.

Thanks to blog reader Joan M. for sending me the following:
I have a 5 year old and I am teaching her to read. I have a program made by a company called Frontline Phonics. They have a book called "Ham and Jam": Al is a cat (happy smiling cat), Al has ham (happy cat eating), Al has jam (happy cat eating), Al has ham and jam, Al is a fat cat (cat now has distended belly and is frowning), Al is a sad fat cat, Al ran. Al ran and ran. (cat on the treadmill) Al is a cat. (happy thin cat again)

And the questions that the parents are suppossed to ask after they have read the book are: What made Al so fat? What did Al eat first? What did Al do to become thin again? Why is Al smiling?

Talk about teaching kids while they are young to associate fat and sadness and thin with being happy.

Let's tell the story another way:

Harriet is a blogger. Harriet reads about books like this. Harriet feels sad. Harriet feels mad! Harriet's head feels like it might explode. Harriet swears at the screen. Bad screen. Bad books. Bad thinking.

Any of you come across similarly egregious books aimed at early readers? Inquiring minds want to know.