The smallest change I made: a spoon instead of a fork

On the days when my energy is at the bottom, everything about eating is a negotiation. Will I get up. Will I go to the kitchen. Will I put the food in a bowl. Will I heat it. Will I sit down. Will I pick up the fork. Each step is a question I have to answer yes to, and by the time I am sitting with the bowl I have used up most of my yes.

The fork was one more negotiation. Spear the food, balance it, bring it up, repeat. On a good day that is nothing. On a bad day that is a series of small decisions stacked on top of the bigger decisions I already made to get to the table. I would eat half the bowl and stop because the remaining bites were more decisions and I was out of yes.

I tried an experiment one night. I ate the first half of a bowl of lentils and rice205 kcal with the fork and the second half with a spoon. The fork required me to stab a piece of lentil, scoop rice onto the tines, balance the load, bring it up. Four small motions per bite. The spoon required one scoop. The lentils and the rice and the broth came up together. Same food, same appetite, different tool. The spoon half was faster and I cleaned it.

The fork asked four things of me per bite. The spoon asked one. The bowl emptied when the asking got cheaper.

The spoon changed one thing. Scooping is one motion. I do not aim it or balance it or spear anything. I put the spoon in the bowl and bring it up and the food comes with it. On the lowest energy days this is the difference between finishing the bowl and leaving half of it. The spoon does not fix the depression. It removes one layer of effort from the act of eating, and eating is the thing I am trying to do.

I eat more on the hard days now. The spoon took one decision out of the chain, and the chain was long enough that one fewer link made it finishable. I still struggle to get to the table. I still struggle to heat the food. But once I am there with the spoon, the bowl empties, and the calories get in, and that is what I needed from the evening.