I was relieved this morning when I looked at the scale and found that I didn’t gain more than a pound from yesterday’s caloric consumption. One of the reasons intermittent fasting works is that it does enforce caloric restriction: it’s nearly impossible to cram what you would normally eat over the course of the day into one meal. In other words, if you eat throughout the day, you’re going to consume more calories than you would if you ate just one meal. While I didn’t intend to eat throughout the day, I did end up eating more than once.

For some reason, I have had it in my head that I should be able to cook the perfect cheeseburger at home. That project has been limited to the weekends since I began this journey, and, honestly, my efforts have yet to yield anything close to perfection. I don’t make a bad cheeseburger (I even have a tool to smash a ball of ground beef into a thin patty), but the time it takes to make what is at best a messy result isn’t really worth the effort. I can also make homemade fries in the air fryer, but that, too, takes more time than it should.

Beef in general is not a good choice for protein. Red meat is highly inflammatory and has more fat than other protein sources, which means it has more calories than those other choices. And I can’t have a cheeseburger without a bun, which means consuming a large bun consisting of processed flour and loaded with 45 grams of carbohydrates. And, finally, red meat is likely carcinogenic (see https://tinyurl.com/59y8t5br).

The cheeseburger-building was a lunch exercise that took far too long (and wasn’t inexpensive).If you’re craving a good cheeseburger, just go to a good cheeseburger joint. Anyway, I noticed something interesting after lunch: I was lethargic. I don’t think this was just the typical food coma; I think it was inflammation-induced lethargy. I woke up yesterday morning strangely energetic and motivated. Post-lunch, I was useless.

The homemade fries were a bad choice, too. White potatoes are carbohydrate-laden and full of starch, which is basically sugar, so they have a high glycemic load. I did use olive oil to coat the fries and cooked them in the air fryer, but sweet potato fries would have been a better choice. Unfortunately, I don’t particularly like sweet potato fries.

Prior to the cheeseburger and fries, I had my usual breakfast of yogurt and blueberries. After lunch, I also managed to consume three pounds of mandarin oranges (that isn’t a typo). While I didn’t do this at one sitting, I did do it, and while mandarin oranges (or any fruit, for that matter) are a good choice when craving something sweet, they do have a relatively high sugar content (although they’re low in fructose). Still, I love them, and I’m not sure I regret my overindulgence.

I also had a bit of ice cream. While my ice cream consumption was limited to a few of those tiny single-serve cups (rather than my usual pint), it was still a poor choice and a violation of my no-sugar policy.

Anyway, although some of the food I ate yesterday was healthy (the yogurt, blueberries, and mandarins), the total number of calories consumed was high for the day. I actually felt really full after lunch, and that was a sign that I’d overindulged. Calorie count does matter, and it’s no surprise that I gained a pound. To be honest, I was surprised I didn’t gain more.