Well, I screwed up last night. I had an especially frustrating day at work which ended poorly, so my thoughts turned to eating something bad for me. Yesterday was supposed to be a non-fasting day, and I’d managed to fast up until I left work, but on the drive home my brain kept struggling with temptation: I wanted a cheeseburger and fries. In my mind, I kept going back and forth, and I knew that if I could just make it home, that would be the end of it. But once that idea of something comforting gets stuck in my head, it’s hard to shake. Unfortunately, P. Terry’s is on my way home, and, at the last minute, I made the turn toward the burger stand.

So, I arrived home with a cheeseburger (calorie bomb) and fries (carbohydrate bomb). The meal had the desired effect: I enjoyed it and it soothed my perturbed emotional state. I didn’t feel bad about it; it was a reward for enduring a really crappy day at work. And it was good. So, I broke my fast. The interesting thing, though, is that I didn’t gain weight—in fact, I lost  just over a pound.

The problem with succumbing to temptation is that it reinforces bad behavior. In contrast, resisting temptation in one situation makes it less difficult to resist it in another one, and gradually that resistance grows, becomes stronger, and kicks in whenever necessary. So, I didn’t teach my brain anything good by giving in to temptation. That’s what I regret from last night. At every instance in which I’m emotionally agitated and feel like I’m drawn to some sort of comfort food, I need to exercise the discipline necessary to resist that lure. It has to become a consistent practice.

I have a few books on emotional eating, but thanks to work and the toll it takes on me, I haven’t found the time to read them yet. I’m really behind on a lot of reading, actually, especially reading about diet and nutrition, and I have to figure out how to carve out the necessary time if I expect to finish other aspects of this site (and, more importantly, if I expect to learn whatever those books have to teach). Managing my time is hard for me, and devoting so much time and energy to my miserable job just makes it harder. But, I’ll need to figure out how to get those books read eventually. Currently, they’re stacked on my coffee table, so at least they’re serving as a constant reminder of what I should be learning.

As I’ve said previously, the weekends have been the great interrupter of my weight loss progress. I expect to be down to 245 pounds after fasting on Friday, and my goal is not only not to gain any weight on Saturday and Sunday but to lose a bit. We’ll see…