ouchy

I feel like my stomach is betraying me, and I feel old.

Since about four years ago--when I first recovered enough from an eating disorder to feel like my body was my friend instead of something to destroy and that eating could be a delicious, social thing instead of a terror--I've been gleeful about the fact that I have a fast metabolism, a stomach that always rises to the occasion (though I'm always bested by Emma's Doritos-and-salsa stomach, which is a monarch among abdomens).

My first day in Bangalore today, I ate breakfast at a local institution and a thali lunch at a fancy hotel, laughing as Prati's friend refused to buy her chai on the street, calling the delicious beverage we've been consuming in mass quantities for the past month and a half "dirty chai."

I've had an upset stomach all afternoon.

This, on the heels of overeating Prati's mom's delicious food in Beawar, which left me full and lethargic and food-bellied enough to have to think about curtailing my consumption for the first time in my life instead of struggling to eat or eating whatever I felt like. Yes, my pants all still fit and yes, I still have my now-underused yoga muscles. But I feel like my stomach's non-compliance with my desire to try as many different foods as possible by refusing to be bottomless and refusing to digest within hours may be the first step toward a shift from scoffing at women constantly monitoring their figures to joining them. The possibility of needing to exercise self control in my eating when I feel like I fought so hard to enjoy it scares me more than traveling by moped and more than my go-to fear, nocturnal animals.