Friday 22 August 2003

Pic of the day: Male pregnancy? More like beer belly without the beer. Of course I kinda push it out here, but the fact that there is this much to push shows that starvation won't happen quite as fast as my stomach insists...

I live! I hunger!

But how long that will last, is of course anyone's guess. It is a month to the day since I first and most painfully noticed whatever it is that ails me down in my right side above the hip bone. The last couple days it seems to have faded or moved, after I switched to bread and jam as my main food source. (And a thin layer of poly-unsaturated margarine.) This could be sheer coincidence. As could the fact that I've been hungry as a werewolf tonight.

I ate plenty of bread and jam at work, as well as some "light" milk and a bit dark chocolate. Yet I was barely home before I started to feel hungry. I took a couple glasses of chocolate milk. Then I just accepted the gnawing feeling in my stomach, since I did not have ready food at home. Well, I thought I didn't. It was only rather later in the evening that I remembered that I did indeed have bread at home. So I ate some bread with jam again. Enough to fill the tank according to my judgment. But somehow I was still a little hungry afterwards. And a couple hours later I am once again so hungry my stomach is almost hurting. That's just plain weird.

***

Tragically, we have come to the point where a large part of the population suffers from obesity or at least overweight. Others who are not obese, still suffer because they think they are. That's mostly women: Men suffer because they don't have the muscles they want to have. This too is largely independent on how they actually look: Many young bodybuilders see themselves as scrawny. Of course it helps that they spend so much time with other bodybuilders. But enough about that. I want to say something about dieting.

There is a lot of different diets out there. Ideally people want a diet where they can eat almost exactly what they want, as much as they want, and still lose weight. One way to do this is to eat less often, say only every other day or so. Of course, this is kinda hard the days you don't eat. But it works. You will rarely be able to eat twice as much on the eating days. I have no idea why people would do this, but they do.

A fad that is sweeping the western world now is the Atkins diet. This has gathered so much force that it is influencing the economy, driving up the price of some foods. It encourages protein and even fat above carbohydrates. Sadly for the economy and the world at large, producing protein and fat is not just more expensive than producing carbohydrates. It also requires large amounts of carbohydrates as fodder for the animals. As such, it is not sustainable for the world: Prices of staple foods will rise, and the poor will starve. Luckily for all involved, this is just a fad, and will no doubt give way to some other random diet soon enough.

I am sure some people will lose weight by eating meat and egg. After all, it really satisfies. As I can attest today, you can eat more bread and jam and still get hungry again, while the heavier meals will last you longer. A definite downside to burning protein is that it creates a LOT of nitrogen-based poisonous molecules that needs to be filtered out through the urine. Be sure to drink excessive amounts of water or your kidneys could suffer permanent damage. (Of course, if you drink a lot of water you will most likely lose weight anyway.)

Then again, many people can lose weight by eating carbs. It is partly in the timing. If you eat something sweet before dinner, as most parents will know, you will not have much appetite when the heavy food comes on the table. And it is virtually impossible, in a biological sense, to grow fat from bread ... unless you have fat on it, as is the custom at least around here. The human body lacks the chemistry to convert sugar to fat. But if you eat both, it will happily burn the sugar first and save the fat.

From my own experience, I know that I gain weight from dinner, while eating bread for all meals will make me lose weight slowly. Of course, bread with jam is boring. But it is also quick and simple, and I intend to eat a lot more of it in the near future, if any.

***

As for the pain in my side, I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with appendicitis. There are no symptoms in common except the location of the pain. I am more worried about cancer of the colon, truth to be told. I am approaching the right age for that, and I spent my childhood and youth with almost constant constipation ... in fact, I considered it the natural way of things until some years ago. This is a dream for wannabe cancer cells, from what I read. The main contra-indicator is the fact that my family doesn't have a history of middle-age colorectal cancer, and it likes to run in families. Plus, it is usually not discovered by simple pain like this but by other changes, and usually fairly late. Weight loss is a classic symptom. If so, I should be pretty safe for now...