The Invoice
Half a burger, a very good Kung Po, and a battle with the biscuit tin I actually won - followed by my gut presenting its bill the next morning.
Yesterday was the £10 burger. Half of it, anyway.
By the evening I was apparently still capable of undoing all that good behaviour in one sitting.
Dinner was Kung Po chicken. M&S, good quality, a proper amount of meat in it. My wife matched that with a generous pile of noodles.
I knew, somewhere around the halfway point, that I’d probably be better off stopping.
I didn’t stop. It was too good.
That’s not a failure I want to dress up as anything else. I recognised it, and I ate it anyway.
Where it got more interesting was later that night.
Biscuits. Chocolate. Crisps. My brain went looking for all three.
That one, I won.
Which is a strange thing to notice about yourself in the same twelve hours: losing a battle you saw coming, and then winning one you didn’t expect to.
This morning, my gut sent the invoice.
Churning. Gas. A couple of trips I’d rather not have needed.
Not overnight — that’s an important distinction I’ve been getting wrong in my own head. It’s not “big dinner, then a 3am disaster.” It’s specifically a morning thing. I wake up, and at some point after that my gut decides it has an opinion about yesterday.
And it doesn’t happen every morning. Not even every morning after a big meal. Just sometimes.
I don’t think I can honestly say “Mounjaro gives me diarrhoea.” That’s too tidy, and it’s not really what I’m noticing.
What I’m actually noticing is narrower than that: on mornings after I’ve eaten considerably more than my gut currently seems happy with, there’s a reasonable chance it lets me know about it. Not the specific food. Not every big meal. Just, sometimes, this.
My brain can clearly still order a meal sized for the version of me from a year ago. My digestive system has apparently downsized without telling it.
You can eat all that if you want, it seems to be saying. Just don’t be surprised if I send you the invoice in the morning.