I didn’t lose any (significant) weight yesterday. While it wasn’t a fasting day, I did limit myself to yogurt with blueberries in the morning (to break the previous day’s fast) and a salad with grilled chicken in the evening. I did accidentally over-season the chicken, so I may be retaining water, but still I’m a little disappointed.

I only recently got into cooking, which may seem ridiculous for a middle-aged man. I’m not saying I didn’t make my own meals before, but I would call what I did in the past more of an “assembly” process rather than actual cooking. One of the problems I encounter with cooking, though, is that I tend to sample while doing it. Sometimes this seems necessary—such as when testing the “doneness” of something—but it leads to consuming more calories than intended.

One of the ways in which my weight began to get out of control during the past two years was when I started cooking and baking. The cooking probably didn’t contribute that much, except on the evenings when I made pizza or pasta, but the baking was a recipe for disaster (again, puns are free) in terms of packing on the pounds. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think there is any deadlier combination than sugar and flour when it comes to gaining weight. Because I gained quite a significant amount of weight from consuming pumpkin muffins from Whole Foods, I think I’ll call this “the muffin effect.”

The whole cooking and baking thing got started because I had a friend who started cooking dinner for me once a week. To contribute, I learned to bake dessert (cookies, brownies, lava cakes, etc.). And when that friend kept forgetting to give me the grocery list in time for our dinner dates, I started doing the cooking. I wish I’d kept track of how much weight I gained during this period, but I didn’t. Still, it’s another example of how social eating can lead to an expanding waistline.

This friend of mine also likes to eat out. I’ve never been someone who ate out regularly. I’m kind of a cheapskate, and it always seemed to me that eating out at full-service restaurants was a waste of money. However, because this friend likes to eat out, we’ve done so at least intermittently over the past couple of years, and I’m sure doing so has contributed at least somewhat to the emergence of the bulging belly. If I’m going to go out to eat, I’m going to order what I want and damn the consequences.

Anyway, today is another fasting day. As for the rest of the week, I’ll see if any significant weight loss is occurring on days other than the two fasting days. If not, I’ll need to start fasting three days a week or do some troubleshooting to find out why I’m not losing more weight on the non-fasting days. Last weekend unfortunately featured a lot of grazing, so perhaps I’ll lose some weight this weekend by avoiding that. What I’m learning is that losing a substantial amount of weight is a trial-and-error process, and I’ll probably have to keep tweaking the diet as I go along.