So my diet is well under way after 12 days of successfully starving myself half to death. Things got a bit rocky there at around Day 8 when I discovered that my body was trying to trick me into quitting by packing on an extra 1.1kg after a week of 100% dead set perfect dieting, though I saw right through its cunning deception and soldiered blindly on into the cold night. So far I've lost 2.2kg - yay me!
I say "soldiered" because I've been listening to military marches to help keep pace while I've been out walking at night... also The Bee Gees... occasionally some Slayer for the extra hilly bits when "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" and "How Deep Is Your Love" aren't providing quite enough motivation.
In two weeks time it will be my birthday, which I'll be spending alone, wallowing in the utter serenity of my all-time favourite beach-side camping spot - my happy place! Three days and nights laying in a hammock, listening over and over to the nearby waves crash and then fizz as they gently roll back to the sea. Nowhere to be, nowhere to go, no phone reception - just me, the beach, and a preposterous amount of alcohol... also those Arnott's Butternut Snaps I doltishly purchased a day before starting this diet.
To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill (and in keeping with the military theme I've got going here), I have before me an ordeal of the most grievous kind. It's not to stick to my diet over these three days (because I'm very definitely not going to do that), it's to continue my diet after leaving Nirvana and returning home to a reality of screaming kids and a passive-aggressive wife who will resent me for going camping even though I booked the trip six months prior with her blessing. I know me - I know I'm going to be tired, cranky, and by no means in the mood for a salad.
The best thing I can think to do is to make a food plan and set some iron-clad rules to follow for when I come home, to help make sure I don't bullshit myself with the same old "I'll grab some KFC on the way home and start fresh tomorrow" nonsense. I know from years of failed diets that "tomorrow" never comes.
On a related note, I've discovered that I'll be able to burn off a whole carton of Pure Blonde Ultra Low Carb Beer if I walk my usual 3.7km route 4.1 times, and a packet of Butternut Snaps 2.2 times, so my aforementioned diet recovery plan may just be to death-march my camping trip away. That would at least get me away from the screaming and resentment.
