Between Hunger and Discipline: A Student’s Battle with Food and Self-Control

Self-control is indeed not an easy feat; kudos to those who have total self-control over everything in their life.
Especially when it comes to food!
Yes, I can say food is one of my guilty pleasures.
I have tried my best but my eating lifestyle is in shambles. I often tell myself “Don't worry, when you have enough money you will be able to choose what you want and choose healthy" but I know I can't blame everything on being broke.

To be honest, I have told myself I would stop buying food outside. I also told myself I would not eat any food cooked by another person I don't know. And there was a time I was committed to it.
I was locked in that even in school for three weeks and some days straight, I didn't buy anything outside for one day.
Everything I ate was cooked by me.
And I honestly enjoyed it, but as a student it was stressful.
And being a broke student made it worse.
The school schedule didn't help matters either.

Starting classes by 8am and ending by 6pm, sometimes even past 6pm.
Most days after school I am so tired and strained that anything I attempt to cook ends up being rubbish.
Sometimes I don't bother cooking and go straight to bed on an empty stomach.
Then the next morning I wake up earlier than I am meant to just to prepare what to eat, and by the time I have succeeded I end up sleeping during early morning class because I am already tired and deprived myself of sleep.

There was one night I came back so stressed and decided to boil rice since there were 9 remaining stew. I put the rice in the cooker and mistakenly touched the bed.
More than two hours later, I woke up and luckily for me the gas had finished and the fire went off with my rice only being slightly burnt.

The last one before I stopped was a full pot of rice that got spoiled because I promised myself instead of leaving the pot on the fire and dozing off. I would satisfy my sleep before cooking or warming anything.
That night I slept and woke up the next morning to spoiled rice.

Since then I have been buying food outside and I have no choice even though I know it isn't good for me because as long as you aren't present you can never know how the food was made. The spices, the intent of the cook, and the hygiene of the cook. That's literally enough reason to never eat outside but I still do.

Even the fruits I buy to make it a little better, are still something I said I wouldn't do. I told myself I wouldn't buy already cut fruits anymore because of hygiene but because of money I still do it. I don't have the money to buy whole fruits or even the means to store the ones that would be left, so I buy the ones that have been cut and are affordable. I don't know the state of the knife used to cut them, and I don't know if they were washed properly with clean water.
I don't know how long they stayed exposed before being packaged.
And later I would be wondering what is making me sick when I know what I am doing wrong.

And oh, I can't forget this sweet roasted yam and pepper sauce (bole) I was addicted to. The pepper made me purge everytime but it was just too sweet that I ate it almost every day.
But at least I have reduced it, this year I have bought it only four times.

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