Don’t make me hungry. You won’t like me when I’m hungry.

You know when you’re in the supermarket and you can see a toddler really playing up, throwing things and shouting a lot and maybe spouting tears vertically from the outside of the eye? And the mother sees you trying not to notice, politely, and says “Oh, I know, but she’s just hungry” (unless she’s frayed to the very root, in which case she may punch you in the face?)

Well, that’s me, except I’m 30, and, well, if not louder, then certainly more capable of damage.
But I always forget that if I’m busy, or being careful what we eat and/or trying not to snack between meals, I forget and if … like last night, dinner gets delayed and delayed, then I still forget to eat, and there are other things to distract me, and dinner STILL hasn’t come and then it does and something is missing from the order?..

Well, then; then I am grumpy.

And not rationally grumpy, either, as if that were a thing. I’m the kind of Hungry Hulk Rage hungry that leads me to shout “How am I supposed to EAT without lime pickle!?” and kick my hand bag across the floor. It is the kind of little temper tantrum that would go away in about five seconds if I just sat down and ate something (yes, even without lime pickle), calming my blood sugar levels and pumping my inner hulk full of inner hashish. It is not mentioned in the diet books so very much, this exciting physiological fact. But boy, is it handy to know!

You need to keep fuelled, or you may quite literally hulk-out. It is no wonder those people who have never been on anything but diets their whole life are a bit crabby, you know what I’m saying? They’re so hungry they’re PERMANENTLY teetering on the edge of a big hungry-hulk temper tantrum. Allthetime.

So this is the thing. I have to remember not to eat crap, but to eat at all.
I have to snack, just not snack badly.
Therefore, I have decided, I should start leaving dried apricots lying around the house for occasions such as these.
And in case I get lost, obviously.

The story doesn’t end there, of course, but the catalogue of disaster that followed is not as it is doubtless not dietty enough for this blog, I suspect, so I will post it over my normal everyday blog where it might make more (or knowing me, less) sense in context.

But my point is only this - the point that no one ever made to me:
Let no one ever tell you that snacking is a pointless activity, or that empty calories ruin lives.
Snacking, I argue, is not only laudable, it is an imperative.

I just have to keep reminding myself that it doesn’t necessarily have to involve cheese.