Fast 09, Day 1

I started a fast today. Bsic kind: don't eat sunrise to sunup, and stick to natural foods for meals. No corn syrup, processed food, hydrogenated oils, or meat. No snacking. Coffee in the morning, afternoon, and evening ... and that's it. No alcohol.

And I can't wait for the sun to go down. It's taking it's own sweet time.

I didn't take a fast last year, and kind of missed it. Paddling season got under way early, and I couldn't do it during the season. This year I need it. I've been picking up all sorts of bad habits, and I've been excusing most of them by saying well, at least I'm not smoking. But the past couple weeks it's been nuts. There are tons of snacks left over from the holidays at work, and I munch on those all day. Then I'm not even hungry for lunch, and don't eat a decent meal until 2pm or so. Meanwhile, I pound the coffee to keep going. I head home, but am not hungry because I ate so late. So I pour a cocktail. And since I haven't eaten proper food find that I'm smashed after one drink. Then I f' around online until it's time to go to bed. It's taken me three frakkin' weekends just to do a deep cleaning for the new year.

And each thing feeds into the next, and then the nicotine cravings came back hard and out of the blue. That was unexpected - but maybe this was all a build-up or a delayed reaction. I bummed a few cigarettes one night, and a few more a different night, then caved and bought a pack mid-week.

I'll fess up to that. I don't even want to print what my waist is right now. I'm still at 202 pounds, but since I haven't been going to the gym regularly since Rio I can't even claim oh it's all muscle. Cause it's not. Muscle doesn't jiggle like that.

So I need a radical break. It's like I gave up one addiction and added four others to replace it (chocolate, bourbon, coffee, & internet - I drew the line at crack whore), and then went ahead and added the original addiction back.

So it ends. Now. I went to the Farmer's Market and bought thirty bucks worth of veggies. I cooked up a bunch of mezzes and salads yesterday. We'll see how the week goes. I have two cocktail parties this week, so there will be some temptation along the way.

Sun is down. Dinner time.