the ramadan diet

Ramadan is over Sunday next week. I don't know if I'm going to make it to then without starving to death.

I don't mean to whine, but, as a westerner, it kind of sucks to be forced by law to follow the ramadan diet. In what feels like the billionth week I have lost so much weight that my stomach is actually concave. It's not that I don't want to cheat. It's that I can't. Places that sell food aren't open during fasting hours and I only have a tiny refrigerator (currently stuffed with dates) and a little kettle that makes hot water. So even if I could buy food during non-fasting hours I have no where to put it or make it.

For the muslims, it's not that bad. They have family spending the entire day cooking food for iftar. They stay up until the wee hours of the night eating. I have a narrow window to get food and then I have to eat it all in the 3 hours between the breaking of the fast and when I have to go to bed.

Yesterday, as an example, I had four packets of oatmeal and two cokes for breakfast. Then, 2 hours before the breaking of the fast, I found myself laying on my bed trying to not throw up because I was so hungry. Literally the minute the fast was up I was at the food court buying dinner and snacks. Over the course of 3 hours I ate an entire medium pizza, two garden salads, two rolls, two nectarines, 3 plums, 8 cookies, two oatmeal bars, half a bag of yogurt potato chips (and I don't even like potato chips) and before I went to bed, another packet of oatmeal because I was still hungry.

I would buy cookies and snacks to eat during the fast except you have to keep everything in the refrigerator or else it goes bad in a day. Even my oatmeal turns into these disgusting clumps and I have to break it up before I can fix it, and it doesn't taste quite right. Cookies will turn into a crumbly mush about 12 hours after the packet is opened. And I've found from past experience that I will eat an entire box of cookies waiting for the fast to end, causing me to have a stomach ache for the rest of the night. Part of the problem is the heat and humidity, and that's compounded by the fact that there's no air conditioning in my room unless I'm here. I've gone to work and come back 10 hours later only to find my grapes shriveled up like raisins in the short time I was gone.

Oh well. Just 8 more days. I can survive that...