If you were hungry, you would eat

You’re not eating because you’re not hungry. Beloved, I come to you today not just as your friendly neighborhood tooth fairy, but as your judgmental Nigerian mother and your know-it-all best friend or your tell-it-like-it-is cousin, and any other derivative of a person close to you, vocally invested in your betterment. Let us begin.

Have you ever been hungry? In efforts to lose my baby weight (and by baby I mean my Dental degree, and by weight, well I mean weight as in pounds incurred while delivering said baby), I started what is known as intermittent fasting. I don’t know all the details or the biomechanics of it, because I couldn’t be bothered with such important ideas at the time, but essentially it is the millennial term to make skipping breakfast an elevated, conscious event.

It is remarkable how we suddenly become aware of food when we can’t or choose not to eat.

 I don’t have to reach to make the argument that food is a necessity. We need it to have energy to do the things.

 Isn’t that interesting, how we classify our needs and wants? If you’re like me, you are a semi-repentant impulse shopper (think Sarah Jessica Parker meets Regine from Living Single. She lives in Harlem but she is familiar with how to get to Bloomingdales on the subway. She is devoted to her Louboutin and her Louis Vuitton but she is not above finding a steal at Nordstrom Rack. She is me.)

You become Jessica Pearson from Suits when you need to justify a rash purchase. You want it, it brings you joy, therefore you need it. Wants become needs. And speaking of wants, what if I argued that the dream you’ve been sitting on is not a want? Is not a desire? Is not a hobby, but a need? What would you make of that? We don’t need a deposition to justify why we’re eating because we all need food.

So why are you making excuses for not eating? For not pursuing your dream? After all you need to eat. Maybe even so that once you achieve the dream, once you obtain the meal, you can be a blessing to others.

 If you were hungry enough, passionate enough, committed, consistent, you would eat. You would nourish that dream. You would feed that vision.

I know, this is tough. And I am not ignorant to the fact that many in this country and this world go hungry, and it is not out of choice or a willful desire to deny their needs. I am not speaking to those desiring to eat but unable, rather to those who do not view their desire as necessity.

To those I say, get hungry.

 Check your appetite. Have you been conditioned to want less/ eat less as so many of us have?

 There is a biological mechanism that causes our mouths to water in anticipation of consuming a meal. In the same way, it is necessary to water your vision.

Hungry people do not care about who knows they are hungry or what the next person is eating.

Become hungry for your dream.

Get passionate.

Implore focus.

Write down your long term goals.

Work backwards from the meal to the recipe.

 For goodness sake,

Eat something.