Meal Plan Incontinence

Meal planning is that time you had to go to the bathroom so badly you thought the pressure on your abdomen from your seat belt when you suddenly braked would make you pee on your seat. Do you remember how good you felt when you finally got to go to the bathroom? Do you remember smiling on the toilet and leaning back, wanting to say, “I did it! I survived and now I feel great!!!!” That is the feeling I had after successfully completing two weeks of meal planning and I stepped on the scale and realized I had lost 5 lbs, dropping from 152 to 147 lbs.

Euphoria cannot describe the two-week process of actually keeping to the meal plan but the agony of needing to pee extremely badly can. The attempt to the two-week successful meal plan started in October. At first, I could not successfully complete more than a day at a time on my meal plan. Over time I increased to every other day, then a set of days in a row and finally, after enlisting a friend for help, I can finally say that I have survived fourteen days successfully planning meals and executing them. The feeling of bliss and control that I felt upon rereading my food journal and realizing that I had kept to my goal and had seen the rewards of them is going to propel me through the rest of the third week.

I am trying to reframe the concept of meal planning by entering a mature understanding of food and my control of it. As we age, we should be able to control more of our bodily processes, such as peeing and eating. When I was a child, I would announce that I would have to go to the bathroom and would expect instant access to a toilet—whether that meant a pass to the restroom or a family member escorting me. As I have grown, I have had to learn to recognize appropriate times to go—like during breaks—and non-appropriate times to go—like when the professor says, “you will need to know the following for your board exams” and during important meetings. I plan and control my bodily needs as an adult, recognizing such responsibility as a part or growing older. I hated meal planning at first because it meant I could not have whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it.

I clung to the childlike concept that food could be impulsive and good choices could happen without planning. Unfortunately, that is not the option in our culture. If you do not plan ahead, the choices you are left with are between vending machine fares or fast food restaurants, none of which are good for your waistline or your long-term health. From the day our parents let us decide between bringing a brown bag lunch or getting the cafeteria pizza we are weaned into a world of making our own choices of food. Do you remember when you had to pack your own lunch? Do you remember being too lazy to do so and ending up with U.M.P. (unidentified meat product) between white bread in a “tangy” sauce on your tray? We can plan ahead and eat what we enjoy or we can procrastinate and end up eating something that is either foul all-around (U.M.P.) or foul for our long-term health (Baked Lays and a diet soda). Instead of making meal planning a chore, we need to conceptualize it as an opportunity to show personal growth and control.