I don’t like food.

I’ve come to the solemn (and obvious) conclusion that I really don’t like food. As a kid, I was a picky eater. You know the difficult child that never seemed to like anything new? That was me. The repeated exposure effect did work on me, this is how I’ve come to enjoy brussel sprouts. She’d tell me, “Just have one.” And I did. I’d hate it every time. Then when I was twelve I realized, “You know, these aren’t that bad.” Now cognitively, when I eat brussel sprouts, they still taste kind of weird to me. But part of me likes them.

But just about every other vegetable makes me want to gag. Corn tastes okay, but I have no desire to eat it. I hate green beans. I hate peas. I hate carrots. Broccoli is tolerable, coliflower is gagable.

But it’s more than just disliking a lot of foods. I used to get by on one, maybe one and a half meals a day. I would repeatedly forget to eat. That’s right. A meal would go by, then I would realize several hours later that I hadn’t eaten in a long time. Sometimes I would shrug and eat, other times I would just wait longer. My hunger mechanism will eventually kick in, I don’t think I’ve ever gone a day simply starving myself.

I am not hungry first thing in the morning. Never was. I typically find myself hungrier later in the day. Even now, as I’m trying to eat everything in sight, morning is a difficult time to make myself eat. I find getting up earlier and giving myself breakfast sets my digestive process in motion and makes me hungrier through the day. Consistently over the years, I find I’m able to eat more later in the day if I’ve eaten more earlier in the day. Consider how victims of starvation find they can not eat much when they finally have food. Perhaps our stomach gains a certain capacity for tearing through food if you eat consistently. Perhaps.

I like liquids. Consistently through the years, I find myself reading for more liquids than anything else. Maybe not the best choices over the years, but I couldn’t fathom how people can eat a meal without having something to drink with it. Where some people will have one short glass of liquid with their meal, I almost always need a refill. If I’m doing anything, there will be a glass of orange jews or milk nearby. I could sit here all afternoon and drink orange jews. In retrospect, perhaps I gained a good amount of calories from sugary drinks along. Perhaps.

Yet the fact remains that when I’m stressed, when I’m depressed, my reaction is not to gorge myself. My reaction is the opposite: I want to starve myself. I know there’s a problem I’m ignoring if I just don’t want to eat. As if I want to wither away. Like a challenge to myself, “Let’s see how long I can go without eating.” To reiterate, my hunger mechanism will eventually kick in. It’ll just take a while.

I feel like one of the few people on the planet who doesn’t like cake. I never did. I didn’t see the point of it, it never tasted all the good to me. (I like brownies.) I never liked ice cream much. That was always a social thing, to me. (Don’t get me started on my dislike of beer.) I don’t like gum, I don’t like coffee, I don’t like jellybeans, I don’t like seafood. Even if you asked me what food I did like, I’d have a hard time thinking of anything beyond beef. Yes. Beef. Without thinking much, I’m willing to bet most of my favorite foods have some form of beef in it. Beef is a lot harder to screw up than chicken.

I digress. I was just reflecting on my status as an ectomorph, and just how I’m an ectomorph. I don’t think it’s so much as having a high metabolism. I’m sure it’s in there somewhere, as my set point was low enough to make many ladies jealous. Fact is, if you’re not hungry, you’re not going to eat as much. It’s kind of scary to think that I may have to eat with my brain for the rest of my life. A lot of people’s taste buds lead them estray. Any “cut” cycle I go into would probably still eating more than I used to. As much as a bulk cycle is a change, I can’t say I want to go back to the way I used to eat. We all get colds now and then, but since I’ve been exercising and eating better, my immune system takes care of them with a cascade array of photon torpedos.

I don’t like food. Think about what we do on a daily basis. We sleep, we get up, we pee, we poop, we EAT and we EAT (and we poop again) and we EAT. Or so it feels. I wish I could go a day without freaking worrying about food. Freaking food. In a way, since I don’t like food anyway, it makes it easier to fix my diet. Because I hate everything, anyway! Okay, now I’m just babbling. But I like babbling. Time to go buy three vats of cottage cheese. (I’m not kidding, either.)