OW.

Tried the Atkins “fat fast” (which is pretty much the anti-Paleo/Primal, if you go the (organic) cream cheese route), because I read that it is better at fat burning than simply fasting.

OKAY…I really thought I was going to die. Nothing in my life has ever made me feel so gross and icky and sick on the inside. Oddly, I think my skin loved this brief interval into cream cheese hell, but my internal organs protested too much to go on. I felt like my insides were folding in on themselves, and that can’t be good.

I neither gained nor lost weight or (suspiciously) body fat percentage. On the other hand, I feel soft and squidgy, bloated and weird in all the wrong places, so I think my body composition has suffered. I worked the weight machines at the gym yesterday for all that I’m worth and am fasting (the real deal) today. Undecided as to whether I feel absolutely to unwell to run sprints today.

In which I struggle with food anxiety

Eating socially is actually easier if there is a large group of you.  When you are visiting a (skinny) friend one-on-one, and she wants to order chili, pass off two thirds of her cheesy potato skins on you, and split a bottle of wine, you are kind of on the spot.

Which isn’t to say it wasn’t my responsibility to say no.

Really the only thing calming me down at this point is the fact that I am in the middle of a 24-hour fast.  In theory, I would like to follow the Eat Stop Eat protocol, but I tend more toward an alternate day fasting schedule (M-W-F) because I’m too afraid that the extra day of eating will cause the pounds to pile on.  The downside is that maybe the alternate day fasting lends itself more to bingeing while a less stringent schedule might make it easier to “eat responsibly.”  I just don’t have the guts.

But now: cupcakes

Fasted for 24 hours for no apparent reason (or, you know, reasons, but vague and harebrained ones). The interesting thing is that I didn’t get hungrier or more tired than I normally do. I was more of a blabbermouth than usual, possibly just to fill up the time I would normally use for meals. I will need to think over the past day to see if what I actually said was completely airheaded. Still, I’m a natural introvert, so it may be that incorporating regular fasting into my lifestyle would do wonders for my social life.

Also, and perhaps coincidentally, I remembered more dreams (my usual number of recalled dreams: 0). I think they were stress dreams about being late for something. This would make sense because earlier that day the downtown F train was not functional, and it took me 2 hours to get to my scheduled 4th St. rendezvous with coworkers for hot wings (not eaten by me) and the trek back uptown for Batman in IMAX. Which, yes, was immense for landscapes and action sequences, but made close-ups of faces more difficult to see.

As I laid me down to sleep, I noticed…The electric whine of the cicadas has given way to the chirping of crickets. And, for another season, the fireflies have vanished.