Living with "the Beast Within"

It's early Sunday morning. What is that sound? Chewing? Footsteps? It's more like a crunchy material like cereal being chewed but without the accompanying 'clink' of the metal spoon against the bowl. Then, a crinkle of a wrapper. - - "Cereal Bar!" I think. I discover I am right when I walk around the bed, I notice a few granola bar wrappers, cereal bar wrappers and other food items on the floor beside the bed. Natalie is always hungry! She even has a name for it: "The BEAST". She's not referring to the baby. She's referring to the actual hunger itself with its own personality and its own agenda! Living with "The BEAST" can be challenging.

• If you over-eat, you're sick.
• If you wait too long, you're sick.
• If you 'think' about food, you're sick.
• If you 'smell' food, you're sick.
• If you eat the wrong 'trigger food', you're sick.

So far, we've discovered what these trigger foods are: Pinapple, Citrus fruits especially lime flavor, egg, anything slimy, and watching food on T.V. commercials. She also gets "bad associations" where if she got sick doing it once, she associates it with that nausea feeling. Such as reading a certain novel, watching the local news, or going to a certain restaurant.

Some of the foods that work well: Bowl after bowl of cold cereal, soup, chicken, steak, pasta, bread, Taco Bell, Panda Express, and any other meal not prepared at home.