“The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy,” goes the classic line from American humourist, Samuel Levenson. But to get the full effect, you really need to have heard it delivered by my grandpa, Willie, grinning from ear to ear.
I think about this most often regarding my dog, Gracie, with whom I share a common obsession: food. Beagles are famously food-motivated, bred to hunt and are endearingly optimistic. Gracie will follow me into the kitchen on the basis that you never know when a scrap (or, on one occasion, an entire roast chicken) might fall from the sky. But what’s my excuse?
No matter the time of day, how many or the quality of calories I have consumed, I am never not hungry. I can pile on the protein, double down on fibre, opt for soup and salads — foods that by their nature ought to be more filling by virtue of literally taking up more space in the stomach. It makes little difference. Satiety is always just out of reach.
I used to think this was normal. That everyone else was perennially famished too. I was only disabused of this notion by a flatmate who would frequently just… forget to eat. While I would be logging meals on MyFitnessPal and counting down the minutes until I could justify an apple, he would waltz into the living room at nine in the evening and reluctantly conclude he should probably eat a meal before bed. I was of a mind to contact the landlord to ask for a Section 8 notice — this was surely eviction with grounds.
It’s not that I have never experienced ‘fullness’. I know what it feels like to have eaten so well and so much that you need to undo your waist button, take several deep breaths and have a little lie down. Instead, my party trick is the ability to be at once full and somehow, still hungry.
If you think this has anything to do with my walking obsession (I have walked almost 40,000 miles in the last decade) and my body is just crying out for replenishment… alas, you’d be wrong.
