Leveling Up through Eating

Bulimia nervosa [1].

This is a rare disease which affects two types of people. If you are afflicted with this disease, no matter how much you eat, you would not be satisfied.

Whether it be Korean, Chinese, Japanese or Western cuisine a person with bulimia will eat it up. They would not care about the type of food.

The average calorie intake [2] of someone with bulimia is approximately 15,000 to 20,000 calories.

Kang Minhyuk is a bulimic patient. He’s 185 cm tall and weighs approximately 170kg.

And the man in front of Minhyuk is… Lee Jinhwan, a professor of psychiatry at Seoul Hospital. He is a renowned doctor of psychiatry in the country. Minhyuk visits him once every week.

His knee pains have been getting worse by the day and it has been getting difficult to walk. His throat has started to get strained and he’s having difficulties with breathing. Severe symptoms of hyper-obesity [3] have started to show in Minhyuk.

“You’ve been eating cherry tomatoes these days, right?”

“Yes.”

Minhyuk smiled wryly as he opened the bag he brought. The bag contained an air-tight container filled with cherry tomatoes.

“It seems that you can still get fat while eating cherry tomatoes.”

Cherry tomatoes are widely known as a representative diet food. It’s about 2kcal [4] per piece. 

“You’ll still gain weight even if you eat diet food if you eat lots of it. How much do you eat per day?” 

“About 5 thousand?” 

“……So you’re a vegetarian piggy.”

“Prof, don’t you think that’s too much for a fact bomb [5]?”

Lee Jinhwan smiled wryly. They can talk like this because they have been consulting for 5 years already.

“You also know that I exercise. About four hours a day?”

“A healthy vegetarian piggy.”

“…You also know that I got first place in my CSAT [6] before, right?”

“Then you’re a smart, healthy, vegetarian piggy.” 

“My father owns this hospital.”

Minhyuk smiled while wondering how this will turn out.

“Ahhhh…”

Jinhwan scratched his head. That was dangerous. But then he laughed.

“You’re a rich man’s son, you study really well and it seems that there’s nothing wrong with the other aspects of your life. Then… You’re really a very healthy piggy.”

“Fine. I don’t even understand what you’re talking about Doc?”

The two of them laughed. The mood between the two people did not seem like they were talking about Minhyuk’s rare disease.

Suddenly, it felt dreary. What’s wrong with himself, what treatments should he undergo. Minhyuk’s condition was too difficult to speak of.

And when he needs to talk about something serious, Jinhwan always felt a need to ease the mood a little bit. He opened his mouth carefully. 

“Mr. Minhyuk.”

“Yes.” 

“It would be really dangerous if you go on like this.” 

“……..” 

Minhyuk knows this too. At least, he understands the reason why he endured this much. Working out for four hours each and every day and even trying to control his appetite as much as possible.

Even if he doesn’t eat something all the time, it’s still a miracle that an anxious bulimic patient can maintain the weight of 170kg.

But… 

It’s a fact that he has reached his limits.

“I know.”

“Is it hard?” 

Minhyuk nodded his head.

“What’s the hardest part?”

“When you want to eat but you can’t eat what you want.”

So Minhyuk gestured. 

“Prof, think about it.”

He smacked his lips.

“My alarm will ring at one in the morning, then I will turn on the gas and put on a pot of water on the fire. And then I will split the ramyeon and add it in.”

“Oh.”

At Jinhwan’s exclamation, Minhyuk made a gesture as if he’s holding chopsticks. 

“I’ll stir the noodles to cook them well. And when it’s done, tak! an egg! I’ll crack one and add it in. At this point…”

He looked so serious, as if what he said was very crucial.

“I’ll hurry up and set it in front of the TV while watching reruns of Infinite Challenge [7]. And that’s when I’ll eat my ramyeon…!”

Guulp! 

The nurse behind Jinhwan gulped down her saliva. 

“S-sorry. I unconsciously did it while imagining the scenario.”

Minhyuk laughed heartily.

“It’s the best right? [8]“

Jinhwan gave a low laugh. It was a relief for him to see that Minhyuk did not lose this laugh.

“So eating well is still the hardest part?” 

“As you can see, I’ve been eating 5000 cherry tomatoes everyday, of course it’s hard.”

“But you’re still doing very well.” 

It’s clear that Minhyuk is doing well. In fact, there were three bulimic patients before. But one died. He was a fourteen year-old boy, he was 160cm high and 200kg in weight, he couldn’t control his diet because he couldn’t overcome his appetite that’s why he died [9]. He died during the spring.

“I hope that there will come a moment where I can eat what I want to…”

Jinhwan couldn’t talk back.

At that time, he might really die.

Clenching his hands together, Jinhwan started their main topic for the day.

“Right now, I will suggest to you a new type of therapy.”

“A therapy?”

A new treatment.

So far, he has tried countless treatments and therapies and all of it has failed.

“Yes, the virtual-reality game Athenae.”

“…Didn’t we try that before?”

Athenae has aimed to be the most popular game among all of the existing virtual-reality games. They have more than 9 million active users right now. It has been gaining massive popularity all over the world.

However, Minhyuk has already tried virtual-reality games as a treatment for his bulimia.

“There was Versal [10] before.”

Jinhwan clarified.

Versal. It was a game released before Athenae.

“There was no sense of taste even though it felt real in the game, and it just resulted in a more severe yo-yo effect [11].”

That’s right. Versal is a virtual game that has an uncanny resemblance with reality. But no matter how close it resembles reality the food you eat is still tasteless.

He smiled at him.

“You can actually taste the food in Athenae.”

“Eh?”

“I tried it.” 

“……” 

At that moment, Minhyuk felt like his heart was thumping like crazy. 

Jinhwan is a responsible doctor.

Athenae was launched about 6 months ago. 

Jinhwan, together with other doctors who researched bulimia, thinks that bulimia is a disease highly related with your mind.

That’s why they aimed to lose weight by trying to repeatedly eat inside Versal [12]. But being satiated without tasting the food was like poison to the patient.

However, this time it’s different. Jinhwan opened an account, tried it, tasted the food and even enjoyed himself. 

“You won’t gain any weight inside that game even if you eat 100 ramyeon at one in the morning.”

***

Footnotes

[1] Bulimia nervosa : a disease where you consume excessive amount of food followed by a behavior to compensate the binge-eating (either through vomiting or excessive exercise) Read more here. Back

[2] Average calorie intake : According to NHS women should have at least an average intake of 2,000 calories while men should have 2,500. Read more here Back.

[3] Hyper-obesity : Probably is considered as extreme obesity classification or Class 3 obesity. For more information about obesity read hereBack

[4] kcal : a unit of calorie. This is the amount of energy needed to heat or raise the temperature one kilogram of water by 1°C. 1kcal = 1000cal Back

[5] 팩력배 : According to what I have searched, it means fact bomb. It’s a slang or abbreviation for fact bomb in hangul. Back

[6] CSAT : College Scholastic Assessment Test, basically an entrance exam for college. Back

[7] Infinite Challenge : A Korean reality variety show. It’s a variety show where the casts tries to do almost impossible challenges in a comedic way. Back

[8] 개꿀이죠 : Apparently this is a slang, used by teenagers meaning good, very good, so fortunate. They use 개 which means dog before a verb as a replacement to very or really. Back

[9] For clarifications. As said before bulimic patients keeps on binge-eating then try to lose weight either through vomiting, extreme exercise or extreme fasting. They do this in a continuous cycle. They can’t stop. Once they eat and eat they will gain weight which will make them obese. Once they get obese they will suffer from severe symptoms ranging from difficulties in moving amd breathing to heart attacks which are extremely life threathening. That’s why the boy died. His BMI exceeded the normal range (around 78.1 where the normal is from 47 to 63)  and was considered to be extremely obese. Back

[10] 베르사르 : The manhwa translations I’ve seen translated this as Versailles. However, when I translated Versailles to hangul it showed 베르사유. So I used Versal which means whole, this is a word short for universal. This may also be correct and I will be using this. If you know the correct translation, do help me and point it out. Ty. ^^ Back

[11] Yo-yo Effect : or yo-yo diet refers to the cyclic loss and gain of weight which resembles the motions of a yo-yo. Back

[12] TL Opinion : I think they were trying to lose weight by controlling the appetite of the patient via eating in-game. It makes sense in a way, since you’ve already eaten a lot and tasted a lot of food in-game then you won’t probably feel the need to eat once you’re out of the game. Back