Breakfast Anyone?

My brothers and I seemed perfectly spaced for our high school years.  When one was entering their freshman year another was graduating.  So about the time that my brother went off to high school and I found myself the last sibling in grade school, my mother decided I was old enough to go to school by myself or with friends.  At roughly that same time, I got another option as well; I could wake up early and make sure I had breakfast, or I could sleep a little longer and skip breakfast before going to school.  Like any self-respecting, cool and "not knowing what's good for me" preteen would do, I decided sleep was much more important then breakfast and thus began my moratorium on breakfast.  In this fashion I made it through grade school, high school, college, grad school, and becoming a teacher.

Its not that I never ever had breakfast, just rarely on a weekday, or weekend that I wasn't in Jersey if we're talking about the last five years for that matter, fast forward 20+ years and over 100 pounds, and I found myself sitting in my first ever weight watchers meeting getting reprimanded by the lady next to me about the importance of breakfast.  By the end of the meeting I was making both a promise and a pledge that from that day on (or the next day since breakfast was long over by then) I would start having breakfast.  Sure you're a strange woman I met 5 minutes ago, sure you have a death grip on my hand like a woman in her 10th hour of labor, but you are also a woman who quite obviously cares about breakfast and her fellow man's lack there-of, and isn't this what I joined for, to have support and help, no matter how off-putting and forceful the source?  So I promised, that no matter how small or insignificant the portion, no matter how pressed for time I may be, I would have breakfast, and I did.  I kept the promise for exactly 14 days, and then today happened...

Running late, frantic to get out of the house so I wouldn't be in trouble, I skipped breakfast and you know what I found?  Your body gets used to eating things quickly!  For years I have managed to go for upwards of 6 and sometimes more hours on not a single bite, 2 weeks of breakfast and I can't make it past 10am.  By 10 o'clock I was STARVING, cranky, pissed, starving, restless, starving, I had a headache and did I mention that I was starving?  It was the craziest thing.  Who the hell am I?  Great, so already my personality is changing along with my eating habits!  Have I become one of those horrible people who eat your head off when they haven't had their coffee or something?  Am I an addict?  A Breakfast maniac?  Or, (gasp) have I turned into the woman at the meeting, soon to find myself holding hands with perfect strangers eliciting promises about their eating habits from them?  Has my lack of breakfast made me slightly insane?  Maybe, maybe not, but I'll tell you this much, I think tomorrow I'll be sure not to oversleep.

So today's post is a warning, if I ever get pissy with you from this moment on, just ask me if I've had any breakfast.