Yesterday was a non-fasting day, yet I still lost almost two pounds. I suspect this was mostly due to the fiber consumed the day before “exiting” my body. I’ll probably experience something similar today, and it’s a fasting day, so hopefully I’ll be down three or four pounds by tomorrow morning.

I’ve been plagued by a persistent craving for pizza recently. I haven’t had any pizza since beginning this project over two months ago, but I nearly succumbed to temptation both yesterday and the day before. Pizza is a forbidden food for anyone trying to lose weight given that the crust is made from refined flour full of carbohydrates (it’s also not a low-calorie food, obviously). However, sometimes a little sacrilege is necessary to extinguish a craving.

These sorts of cravings tend to get stuck in my head until I do something about them (usually by giving in to them). I have a plan, though. I found a well-reviewed New York-style (thin crust) pizza place that sells pizza by the slice. While the slices are apparently huge, eating a huge slice is still better than eating an entire pizza (which is not beyond my ability). So, if this craving doesn’t go away (it probably won’t), I’ll travel to this place next weekend, get a slice, and hopefully be over it.

What frustrates me about these intermittent cravings is that they’re not logical. There is this weird, exaggerated sense of urgency that kicks in when they happen. I’m not going to die if I don’t have some pizza right when I’m craving it. And pizza will still exist a month from now or whenever this project ends. So I should be able to put the desire for pizza on the back burner of my brain, but that’s not what happens. Right now, the best I can do is to extend the time before I give in to the craving. If I can do that whenever a craving occurs, perhaps at some point I’ll be able to put off indulging in the forbidden food indefinitely.

I’ve been bad about regularly specifying goals during this project. I need to get in the habit of writing down specific goals for every week (if not every day) at the end of each post. It’s more helpful to say, “I’m going to lose five pounds to get down to 240 pounds by weigh-in on Friday” than to say, “I’m going to lose some weight this week.” So, for my goal this week, I’m going to lose five pounds to get down to 240 pounds by weigh-in on Friday. We’ll see.