Yesterday was supposed to be a healthy eating day. And it was…until about 7 pm. The challenge during the weekends is to stay busy, and on Saturdays I carve out time to spend with a friend. She happens to be a very unreliable friend, though, and getting her to do anything (even something as simple as responding to a text that says, “Hey, what time do you want to meet up tonight?”) is like pulling teeth. I’ve gotten past the stage where I’m willing to send multiple texts that aren’t replied to and make multiple phone calls that aren’t answered in order to finally get together with her, so when she didn’t get back to me last night after a couple of texts earlier in the day, I gave up.

The problem is that my friend’s flakiness created a chunk of free time that I didn’t have any plans for. Yes, I could have done a number of different things—I’ve got plenty of books to read and there’s always searching Netflix for something worth watching—but I wasn’t in the best of moods, and I started thinking about junk food. I’d been good up until that point; I’d had a giant salad and some mandarin oranges for lunch, but I happened to notice that my P. Terry’s app said that the shake of the month was Reese’s peanut butter and chocolate. And the next thing I knew, I was in my car on the way to P. Terry’s—and I didn’t just get the shake.

This morning, I’m almost 1.5 pounds heavier and probably lucky that I didn’t gain more than that. Some of that weight, of course, is retained water and fiber from the salad and oranges, but, had I stuck to my eating plan for the weekend, I would have lost at least some weight. I’m trying to get below 240 pounds, and adding 1.5 pounds is obviously a step in the wrong direction. I don’t blame my friend for my poor choice, though; I made that decision. Given her unreliability, though, I need to have a backup plan to stay busy when she flakes.

I think I’m going to try to fast two days this week: Tuesday and Thursday. For some reason, it’s more psychologically daunting to fast three days a week versus two, although I always alternate fasting days and eating days regardless of which schedule I choose. I need to start seeing those big dips in my weight loss graph again, though. I always get a boost from them, and it makes weight loss sort of like a game, which is motivating.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my job is sucking up too much of my time and making it extremely difficult to do any of the things that I actually enjoy doing. And for some reason, it’s now clearer than ever to me that I need to start working really hard to get out of the daily grind. This morning, I had an idea for something I wanted to write about (a humorous piece about the deterioration of my knees and the challenge that deterioration poses when using my new climbing contraption), but I don’t have the time to sit down, write, and revise (I’m a slow, very deliberate writer). Besides working at work, I do a lot of extra stuff outside of work (like learning more about the technology I support), and that eats up time. I’m not getting any younger, and I can’t afford to spend most of my waking hours doing something I pretty much hate, so I’m making plans to eject from what feels like a plane that’s about to crash. My current trajectory is just not sustainable (or remotely fulfilling), so I’ve got to start focusing seriously on other ways of making a living.

Anyway, I’ve ranted enough. I’m just fed up with external turmoil, especially since one of the side effects is that it’s bad for my health. Onward.