For some reason I never realized how sick you can start to feel by not eating enough.

During the summer, I ate pretty steadily throughout the day, or I grazed, if you prefer.  I munched here and there all day.

I got back to school and my eating habits dropped, a lot.  I was super busy and running around again so much that my first real meal of the day might not have been until dinner.  I would munch here and there, but it was never really anything hearty or really a full meal.  Especially once the kids came back and I’m pretty much just a revolving door of student check-ins and introductions of new transfer students, and college check-ins, etc.  I barely gave myself time to eat.

Typical life of a school counselor.

But, my body wasn’t used to it.  Last Thursday I felt a little weird in my stomach after only managing to eat half my granola bar.  My stomach was grumbling and gurgling and I almost felt like I had heartburn or indigestion or something.  I managed to have part of a banana later which calmed it down, but (of course me being weird with stomach issues) that was all I ate until a few hours later to be “on the safe side”.

Friday was the best my stomach felt in all of this and, I later realized, the only day I ate “normally”. I had a decent breakfast, actually stopped to eat lunch and had dinner.

Saturday, again, I didn’t really eat until dinner.  I had a cinnamon roll around 11am, then had to take my cat to the vet and run other errands, so I didn’t eat again until dinner.  Dinner was a spicy baked pasta.

Big. Mistake.

Before I went to bed, I had a little heartburn and indigestion.  I took stomach meds and eventually went to bed when it felt like it was calming down.

Sunday morning, I woke up miserable.   I couldn’t tell if I nauseated or had the worst indigestion ever.  I had heartburn so bad I could barely breathe and I just felt like hell.

Obviously, I again, didn’t eat anything.  Mainly because I assumed if I put anything in my mouth I would immediately throw it up.

I mention to Devon that I feel like my insides want to explode.  He half-jokingly responds with, “clearly your stomach isn’t appreciating being back in school”.  But I’m eating less than I was before, by a lot, sometimes.   Then he gets all science teacher on me, “then that actually makes sense because the acid in your stomach isn’t getting as much to neutralize it as it did before so it’s just sort of churning around and making you feel sick…and likely only having what we had for dinner last night as your main form of food yesterday unlikely helped” (or something like that).

Because he just HAS to make sense all the time.  Damnit.

I did feel better on Thursday once I ate more.  Once I finally ate some bland food (after another hit of stomach meds; I was taking no chances here) I actually did feel better.

I also think there might have been some dehydration happening, too.  Because I was super thirsty on Saturday.  No matter how much I drank I wanted more.

I’m a mess sometimes.  I feel better now, though.  I ate normally yesterday and my stomach felt so much better.

I also don’t like when Devon is right and knows what’s wrong with me.  I mean, I do, because I’m a hypochondriac (which he knows all too well) and more often than not his logical and scientific explanations calm my crazy self.  But I don’t need him knowing he’s right so much.  That’s just un-American.