I didn’t really follow any of my weight loss rules at all this past weekend. I had a small pizza on Saturday and tacos (and chips and queso) on Sunday. While those were really the only high-calorie meals of the weekend, both likely exceeded 3,000 calories. Also, I had quite a few mandarin oranges on Saturday and a couple of apples on Sunday, but I don’t feel bad about those snacks since they were packed with fiber. Anyway, the end result was a gain of about three pounds, which obviously wasn’t unexpected.

So, the problem with weight gain during the weekends continues. Because my workweeks are pretty miserable, I seem to be in a somewhat celebratory mood when the weekends come, and I feel like celebrating with food, apparently. And, while I have plenty to do on the weekends, how much I do and when I do it are decisions that are entirely up to me. I guess my weekends need to be more regimented; it seems like there’s just too much time to think about food. It’s hard, though, because I want to take it easy and decompress on my weekends, and having a bunch of stuff planned for both Saturday and Sunday seems like work.

I’m not sure how I’m going to reach my original goal of losing 80 pounds in four months—or if that’s even realistically possible at this point. Now that I think about it, it almost certainly isn’t. That was an ambitious goal, and it would have only been possible if I’d strictly adhered to the most important rules (no sugar, no flour), but I didn’t. I suppose I just need to accept that this project is going to take longer than I originally envisioned, and that there may be more stumbling blocks along the way. Still, my pants are looser, so I have to give myself credit for that.

I may change the way I fast. There are a few different variations of intermittent fasting, and the one I’ve been employing is a bit on the extreme side. While not eating for an entire day isn’t as hard as it might seem, it’s still not an easy task, and I’m wondering if fasting all day but eating a low-calorie meal at the end of the day would be a better way. If, on the days I typically fast, I consumed only 1,400 calories or so, that might be enough of a deficit to get similar results, and I wouldn’t be tempted to splurge so much on the weekends.

Anyway, I think I need to set a more realistic goal. I’ve lost about 30 pounds so far (although the weekend erased a bit of that progress), but if I can muster a little more self-discipline and utilize it more regularly, maybe my progress can be more consistent.