I’ve been on travel for work for the past 3 weeks and somewhere along the line I got this lovely little cold. But for the first time ever, I lost my sense of smell AND taste…for a foodie like myself this was hell. Not to mention the last leg of the trip was in New Orleans…my favorite city…land of beignets and etouffee. *sigh* Yea, so my tastebuds wound up kicking in after about 2 weeks of bland land and I could enjoy my jambalaya in piece, but I’m not here to talk about that.
Sorry, lol.
But seriously, a funny thing happened when I lost the sense of taste and smell. My entire relationship to food changed. At first I went through denial and tried my best to find the enjoyment of some of my favorite foods, but it was no use. I couldn’t taste a damn thing. And then I got angry because I found the whole point of eating to be an exercise in futility. For someone like myself, eating is an experience. It’s the look, the smell, the taste…all of that. Part of being a foodie I guess. But with 2/3 of those vital elements out of order all I could do was look at food. I quickly lost interest in eating. Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t starve myself nor did I stop eating, but eating was really just something to do to keep my stomach from growling. It messed with me mentally. Eating without tasting…and all I could rely on was texture, which wasn’t SO bad, but it’s not the same.
I got to thinking…and noticing…that it’s super easy to allow your body to tell you when you are ACTUALLY hungry when you can’t smell or taste a thing. It’s crazy, but the nose plays a pretty big role in how we taste food…and when combined with taste the two can play a doozy on how you interpret hunger or desire for food. I was just kinda “over” eating just to eat, because I couldn’t really get any enjoyment out of it, lol. It was boring and pointless. I got over my resentment in time, and now that I’m close to being normal in that department again I’m trying to allow my stomach to speak for itself. Hopefully, this will mean some additional weightloss in the near-ish future.
Have you guys ever lost the sense of taste? How’d you deal with it?
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