I fasted until about 8 pm yesterday evening but broke the fast with tacos (preceded by chips and queso) from Torchy’s Tacos. I was visiting a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, we got hungry, so we ordered tacos. While all of it was delicious, I’m sure the tortilla chips and tortillas from the tacos dumped a significant number of carbohydrates into my gut. Additionally, because my stomach was still rumbling late at night, I rummaged around in my cupboard when I got home and found some spaghetti, so I made buttered pasta with parmesan cheese (I had no emergency marinara).

So yesterday was a high-carbohydrate day—especially with the late-night pasta. The pasta was a mistake for a few reasons: it was high in carbohydrates (pasta is easily broken down by the stomach and quickly causes a spike in blood glucose), it was consumed late at night, and eating pasta without any significant protein just makes me hungrier.

Despite fasting all day before eating, I didn’t lose any weight (in fact, I gained a little bit). The influence that high-carbohydrate intake has on efforts to lose weight cannot be emphasized enough. I read somewhere that you should limit your carbohydrate intake to no more than 50 grams per day, and yesterday’s meals definitely pushed me over that limit (especially the poor choice of late-night pasta). Had I consumed some fruit, my carbohydrate intake would have been much lower (a medium-sized apple contains only 25 grams of carbohydrates), and my fiber intake would have been much higher. I guess I need to keep some emergency fruit around.

Despite my straying from my low-carbohydrate course, however, I’m still averaging a loss of five pounds per week. Certainly that number would likely be higher if I had been more strict during the past three weeks, and it’s a bit alarming that most of my weight loss has occurred due to all-day fasting. I guess I’ll need to stick to salads with grilled chicken on the days that I eat and make a concerted effort to avoid carbohydrates. But I’m trying to be a little bit flexible as I cannot imagine eating salads every day for the remainder of the four months I plan to be dieting.

I’ll be fasting until evening again today. I don’t expect to lose any weight since that’s been the pattern on days on which I eat, but we’ll see what happens.