Apparently, Frustration is Hungry

Apparently, Frustration Is Hungry

Yesterday was one of those days. Not a terrible day. Nobody needed an ambulance. The house didn’t burn down. There was no major catastrophe. It was just an extremely irritating collection of small things that apparently got together beforehand and decided to work as a team.

It was hot.

There was traffic.

There was more traffic.

And then there was Apple.

I had made an appointment at the Apple Store because my phone battery was down to 78% health and needed to be replaced. I had backed up my phone. I had done everything I was supposed to do. I arrived at my appointed time prepared to hand them my phone, have the battery replaced, and continue with my life.

That was adorable.

I was told they couldn’t get it back to me that day and that I might have to leave it overnight. That wasn’t going to work. I need my phone for authentication to log into my computer for work.

So I left.

Back into the heat.

Back into the traffic.

My father called and recommended another repair shop. I drove there, and twenty minutes later I had a new battery.

Twenty minutes.

At that point, however, I was hot, tired, aggravated and completely finished with humanity. And apparently frustration makes me hungry.

Except here’s the interesting part.

I wasn’t hungry.

I came home and started prowling the kitchen.

You know the prowl.

Open the refrigerator.

Close the refrigerator.

Look in the pantry.

Nothing.

Open the refrigerator again, because perhaps something exciting materialized during the previous 37 seconds.

I ate a cheese stick.

I ate some edamame.

I still wanted something.

I wanted something sweet.

Then I remembered there were chips in the house.

And that’s when I realized what was happening. I wasn’t standing in the kitchen because my stomach needed food. I was standing there because my brain wanted a reward for surviving the day. That was an interesting thing to notice.

There have probably been hundreds of times in my life when I have done exactly the same thing without ever stopping long enough to recognize it.

Bad day.

Find food.

Eat food.

Feel better for a few minutes.

Possibly feel guilty afterward.

Repeat as necessary.

Yesterday I actually caught myself somewhere in the middle.

I didn’t tell myself I wasn’t allowed to eat the chips.

I didn’t declare chips evil.

I didn’t announce that I was on a diet and therefore must suffer nobly beside the refrigerator.

I just thought:

What am I actually needing right now?

Apparently the answer was partly food, partly decompression and partly something to do with myself besides stand in the kitchen negotiating with a bag of chips.

I ate the leftover salad in the refrigerator. That helped, but it wasn’t quite enough. There wasn’t any chicken left in it, and a bowl of vegetables wasn’t giving me the substance I wanted.

Then another thought arrived. I could go get Wendy’s for lunch tomorrow.

That would be easy. And after the afternoon I’d had, easy sounded pretty damn attractive. But I also knew that if I didn’t cook something, tomorrow afternoon I would be right back where I was now: tired, hungry and trying to figure out what to eat.

Then I remembered something else in the refrigerator.

Tofu.

Yes.

Tofu.

The food I had spent most of my life regarding with roughly the same enthusiasm I reserve for damp sponges. I had recently bought extra-firm tofu because apparently I am now a person who voluntarily buys tofu.

Life comes at you fast.

I cut it up and put it in the air fryer.

Then I started chopping vegetables.

And something unexpected happened.

The kitchen prowl stopped.

My hands were busy.

I had something to think about.

The frustration began wearing off.

Instead of standing there trying to find something that would make me feel better, I was making something. And then I tasted the tofu. It was actually good. A little nutty. Browned on the outside. Nothing like the soft, mushy tofu I’d disliked before.

Well, shit.

Another food for the list.

But the tofu really isn’t the point. The point is that yesterday I noticed something about myself while it was happening. I didn’t execute some perfect healthy-eating strategy. I ate because I was frustrated. I ate when I wasn’t particularly hungry.

And I don’t think either of those things makes yesterday a failure.

Humans eat for lots of reasons.

Sometimes we’re hungry.

Sometimes we’re celebrating.

Sometimes something tastes wonderful.

Sometimes we’re sitting around a table with people we love.

And sometimes we’ve spent an hour driving through Louisiana heat and traffic because the first place couldn’t replace our damn phone battery.

What mattered yesterday wasn’t that I experienced the urge.

It was that eventually I recognized it. And once I recognized it, I had choices.

I could still eat. I could cook. I could take a walk. I could complain about Apple.

I could chop an unreasonable quantity of vegetables. I could apparently air-fry tofu.

The goal isn’t to become a person who never wants chips after a frustrating day.

I don’t think I want to spend the rest of my life policing myself that closely. Maybe the goal is simply to get better at noticing.

Am I hungry?

Am I tired?

Am I frustrated?

Am I bored?

Do I need food—or do I need something else too?

Sometimes the answer may still be food.

That’s okay.

But yesterday, somewhere between the refrigerator, the chips and the tofu, I interrupted an old automatic sequence long enough to ask the question.

And I think that’s progress.

Also, I now have lunch for tomorrow.

And my phone battery is at 100%.

So perhaps yesterday didn’t win after all.

⸻

Want the food part?

I’m learning how to make meals that actually satisfy me while I work on improving my blood sugar—and apparently tofu has now joined the experiment.

You can follow my adventures, mistakes, recipes, vegetables and occasional culinary profanity at Aleta’s Favorite Pan.