I’ve never been one to skip breakfast, but I’ve had other issues with the meal over time. In high school, I would get up, get dressed, eat my bowl of minimal sugar cereal (plain Cheerios or Rice Chex) and milk, brush my teeth, grab my backpack, and walk to school. By the time I sat down to my desk in first period, my stomach would be growling as though it was hungry. It never made sense to me.
Fast forward a few years, I am twenty and work stocking shelves in a grocery store. Everyone who does that kind of work has a decent amount of strength and fitness purely from the walking between the back and the floor and repetitive lifting of products to trolleys or pallets and then to shelves. The Coke vendor at our store, though, clearly did body building after work. One day, one of the other (male) vendors was quizzing him about his food and workout routines. My ears perked up when he started explaining his breakfast routine. Yogurt and a banana were the foundation of his breakfast. Before I left work that day, I bought yogurt and bananas.
The next morning, I swapped out my traditional bowl of cereal for a fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt and a banana. I proceeded on with my day and never felt that empty feeling I typically got an hour after eating cereal.
Yogurt and a banana have been the baseline of my staple breakfast ever since. I’ve made modifications to it over the years. For at least 5, but probably more like 8 years before developing Long COVID, my staple breakfast was Greek yogurt, granola, berries, and a dash of maple syrup mixed together with a side of a banana.
But then, I got COVID, which morphed into Long COVID.
As happens with many people, COVID screwed with my taste buds. Shortly after getting sick, everything just tasted weird. But the one thing I couldn’t stand the taste of was my yogurt/granola/fruit/maple mix. I tried leaving out an ingredient to pin-point the problematic one, but nothing worked. So I gave up on my traditional breakfast. Toast became my go-to.
Throughout Long COVID, I’ve had fluctuations in my taste buds and appetite. There were times when I was back to eating just about everything with normal taste, except my yogurt combination. Other times, the thought of food was completely uninspiring and thinking about or smelling anything more complex than white rice, plain chicken, maybe a little cheese, was nauseating.
One of the strange surprises after my surgery (October 2024) was that I had an appetite and food tasted good. Since then, my taste and appetite have stayed relatively good. Some days I still don’t have an appetite. Some foods don’t taste anything like they used to, but they still taste good. Although, I have completely lost my minimal tolerance of spice. Mild banana peppers and spice level 1 are now too much for me.
But still, my yogurt breakfast mix remained a problem. At least until a few weeks ago when I decided to try again with just the yogurt, berries, and syrup. It tasted good! I started having it most days for breakfast and continued to have a positive experience, though I started missing the crunch from the granola.
Finally, this weekend, I gathered my courage and added granola to the mix. My taste buds danced at the familiar combination, bringing tears of relief to my eyes.
I still don’t understand why COVID/Long COVID affected this one particular combination of foods so strongly. Regardless, I am thrilled to have won back this specific slice of my normality.
cereal bowl by Circlon Tech from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)
Carolyn Ristau 