This Is What Happens When I Eat By Myself

Work yesterday/Monday was a grind.  I feel as though I was in the wrong frame of mind going in to work after four days off.  The load of work was not an unprecedented amount, although it was as high as it has gotten.  I just felt as though it was a lot.  And I got out of there at ten hours not quite completing everything I want to do before I leave for the day.

Still, since my parents are home and they're willing to cook something for me, I went straight home for dinner.  What did I get?  Mashed potatoes and shrimp.  It was great.  Really, it was.  So great that I ate 20 shrimp -- and they weren't small.  They were plump.  And deep-fried.  Haven't had shrimp in a long time.  Haven't seen my parents break out a ketchup bottle for dinner in a long, long time.  But I sat at the dining room table, by myself, scrolling through my phone, gobbling up first the potatoes and then having a first serving (by which I mean I sprayed an amount of ketchup on my plate) of shrimp, and then deciding to have a second serving of shrimp.

Big mistake, that second serving; me eating my feelings quickly ended, and my bloated feeling of getting fat kind of rose up from my stomach and slapped in the head and screamed at me, "What the hell are you doing??!!  You're eating too much!!"  And I am, and even as I type this now -- after finishing up a bowl of melons Father cut for me for work after the shrimp, and then putting jelly into the peanut butter sandwich he made for me for work which I actually ate around midnight -- I certainly am feeling the aftereffects of my, uh, bingeing in my stomach.

I am quietly freaking out now because my health screening for my health insurance is coming up.  OK, it's in five weeks.  But I'm still freaking out about it.  They have increased the number of benchmarks you need to get the discount I have gotten on my insurance ever since I started working for my company.  Up to this year you had to just sign a statement saying you don't smoke and fall below a Body Mass Index threshold.  Now, there are three more markers -- one of them is high blood pressure and I don't remember the two others -- and you have to reach three of the five.  I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get the high blood pressure one, and I'm scared as hell that stuffing my face like this is going to cause me to overshoot the other two factors.  And I think it's best to start as soon as possible limiting how much I eat and what to eat, but dammit, I've got my parents at home and they're worried sick that I'm not eating, and I'm worried sick that if I don't eat at home I will displease them.  It would be me if they decide to leave the day after I do this panel.  One final week's worth of dinners at home, one final week of proving I am their son, and I am going to sacrifice potentially an extra $240 to do it.

(Well, there are diversionary options if I don't hit three of the five that still get me that insurance break.  You have to sign up through some fitness coach thing on the work health insurance, but I don't want to do that.  And to be honest, I could be stuffing my face if my parents weren't here, so there's that.)

But this is what happens (sometimes) when I eat by myself.  I can't eat just one shrimp.  I have to eat 20.  And I have to feel it for the next 24 hours ... or five weeks.