Yesterday was supposed to be a fasting day, but I decided to break the fast in the evening. I can’t explain exactly why; I just felt this nagging discomfort (maybe restlessness?) and decided to scrounge around for something to eat. I had some almonds, an apple, and some blueberries, so I at least remained in a calorie deficit since I avoided driving to P. Terry’s for a cheeseburger or HEB for some ice cream. This morning, I’m two pounds lighter, and all I’ll eat today is some yogurt and blueberries for breakfast and more of the same later for dinner.

Although everything I ate last night was healthy, the snacking broke the fast. The problem with that is the consumption of carbohydrates: rather than continuing to burn fat (more specifically, ketones made from fat) for energy, my body switched back to burning carbohydrates. And although the carbohydrate count in what I ate wasn’t terribly high, it was enough, and I’m not sure how long it took to burn those carbohydrates and go back to burning fat. I don’t feel too bad, though; losing two pounds on a day I got to eat something is acceptable to me.

From a psychological perspective, I suppose I should have resisted the urge to eat and forced myself to acclimate to the discomfort or restlessness or whatever that feeling is that arises when I haven’t eaten in a while. It isn’t hunger, but it’s still something persistent that makes it hard for me to not think about eating. If I can make myself get used to that feeling, I’ll have an easier time doing without food. But it’s hard. For obvious reasons, we’re not really wired to go without food when food is available, so that’s a bit of evolutionary psychology to contend with, I guess.

I left work last night feeling defeated. The reality is that I can’t reconcile how I do my job with how my employer would like me to do my job. It’s a matter of ethics, and I have a hard time bending my own ethics if the reasons for doing so seem ridiculous to me. I mention this because my greatest urge to eat something bad for me occurs right after I get off work. As I’ve stated before, food (especially food that isn’t particularly healthy food) is my version of an anti-anxiety pill. No one likes anxiety, and most of us will take whatever route is available to get relief from it. It’s recently sunk in that the stress from my job is making this weight-loss project a lot harder than would have otherwise been, but, for now, I have to try to mitigate that effect. It just irks me that I’m currently spending so much time doing work I hate under circumstances that just make me hate the job even more. Life is too short for that shit, so I’ll continue trying to figure out how to put myself in a far more tolerable (if not enjoyable) situation.