Better start eatin’, kid!

So that Thrive diet didn’t really take me anywhere.  For some reason, I never got the promised emails, which is funny because normally I’m getting emails all the time that I don’t want.  I guess it makes perfect sense that the emails I actually do want never come.  It’s disappointing, though.  Plus, shortly after I posted about it, I lost my appetite.

Losing your appetite is a funny thing, really.  I used to be the sort of person who couldn’t imagine “forgetting” to eat a meal, and it would always surprise me when people would say they had.  “Oh, yeah, I was just so busy, I forgot to have lunch.”  Um, what?  How do you just forget to eat for several hours?  I have pretty sensitive blood sugar and when I don’t eat I start to get very unpleasant, very fast.  Just ask people who know me.  My friend Mike and I even have a special name for this: Hungry Cranky.  When Mike and I are together and I say I’m hungry, he knows he has a certain amount of time to get me to food before Hungry Cranky sets in and he has a raging monster on his hands.  And that’s true.  But anyway, I digress.  All of a sudden, I found myself forgetting to eat.  I’d look back on the day and find that rather than thinking about when I’d be eating again, and what delicious thing I could have for dinner, and how good my breakfast would be, I’d realize most of my breakfast was left uneaten, lunch was a couple crackers, no snacks were consumed, and dinner was pretty inconsequential.  This has not been entirely true of every day since the beginning of the month, but it is pretty accurate.  I have gone out for meals and been able to eat and enjoy what I’m eating.  But when it comes to wanting food or wanting to prepare it, I’m out of luck.  Grocery shopping holds no appeal and seems overwhelming.  If food preparation takes more than a few minutes, I can’t whip up the motivation for it because I know that ultimately, I’m not really going to want the food.  I’ve been eating for the sake of eating lately, just trying to manage as many calories as I can so that I can get through a day without extreme fatigue, blurred vision, and shaky hands.  Most of my days have still been full of that, though.

Oddly enough, I’ve been able to continue running.  My running hasn’t been great, but on distances of under 7 miles, I’m doing well.  It’s the distances of over 7, when I have to kick into reserves that aren’t really there that are becoming problematic.  I ran about 12 miles on Sunday and the week before and both times it was naught but pain and suffering.  Of course it doesn’t help that my dinner on Saturday night was two baked sweet potatoes.  Healthy maybe, but not exactly substantial for marathon training.

I’m pretty sure this dramatic change in my attitude toward food is stress-related.  It started around the same time my new boss did, and so far working with her has been massively unpleasant and has necessitated a not-insignificant (okay, I exaggerate slightly) amount of Ativan.  As you can imagine, those are fun times.  I’ve lost about eight pounds since the beginning of September, and although it doesn’t look like I’ve lost muscle mass, this is not really how I would like to be slimming down.

I’ve had little energy to blog, even though I’m constantly thinking about things I want to write about.  My reader is really backed up right now, with about 800+ unread items because I’ve just gotten to the point where I feel so overwhelmed.  There are obviously issues that need to be addressed, and I think that in order to address them, I need a good, hearty meal.

Has anyone else dealt with anything like this?  It’s disconcerting, to say the least.  Do I just sort of wait until it passes, and try to stick it out until then?  Do I continue trying to force myself to eat, even though nothing that I can reasonably and consistently acquire seems enticing?  Anybody?  Anybody?  Bueller?…Bueller?

Honestly, though, any feedback would be welcome because at some point, I’m no longer going to be able to run distances of under seven miles, and I don’t want to lose that, too.