On another fast this week, day three, as a matter of fact. No, it is not a water fast; it’s the modified fasting diet called Prolon. I’ve done it before with great results in helping normalize my blood glucose and lose weight. But there’s a small problem.

By the time I finish the fast I’m dreaming about what my first culinary indulgence is going to be. As a matter of fact, I’m deeply craving it once I figure out what it’ll be. This is when my efforts are about to go off the rails, and what I have accomplished is tossed to the side. While I’m down over 20 pounds since I started these fasts, I should be down another 18 except I keep bouncing back like a yo-yo. The exhilarating thrill of food exploration following the fast has me diving into a path where my stomach needs a little bit of everything in order to find satiety. This unhealthy mentality that somehow a magic combination of particular food choices is going to satisfy having been deprived for so long is a serious bout of idiocy. So, this time, I’m doing things a little bit differently.

I’m going to try being conscientious about my choices, and just as I have very limited choices on this week of fasting, I hope I’ll be able to restrict myself to a fixed diet where I have to stick to what’s on the plan instead of giving into what I desire and following the spontaneity script I know so well. I’ll employ the same thinking that gets me through the week, where my caloric intake is restricted to about 800 calories a day, which comes mainly from two 8oz portions of soup.

I’ve worked out a meal plan for the first 19 days of what Caroline and I will be eating following this fast. Well, Caroline will continue skipping breakfasts five days a week as she’s been doing her own fast regimen of not eating for 18 hours and then getting lunch and dinner between 12:00 and 6:00 p.m. She makes an exception on weekends when I make a scrambled egg fry with whatever random things I can toss in to clear stuff out of the fridge. While it’s taken me a long time to come around to portion control, I’m finally able to satisfy myself with a 6-8oz piece of meat instead of the 16-28oz behemoth steaks I was eating 20 years ago. I’ve also mostly given up eating on a large plate as when it’s mostly empty, I feel cheated, so we now use 8-inch plates or a bowl that holds about eight fluid ounces worth of food.

I believe this is only now possible after becoming so accustomed to eating at home, as we have for the last 95 days. While we could return to restaurants, I do not want to be in an enclosed space with others who might be sick with COVID and not know it yet. Another effect of this self-isolation is that we appreciate the amount of money we are saving from not eating out 2 or 3 times a week. For example on a typical day for breakfast, my granola and soy milk costs $2.00. Lunch of pork chops and butternut squash costs around $4.00 per person. Dinner can cost between $3.50 each for Corona beans with chermoula to about $7.00 each for spaghetti squash with arrabbiata sauce and some ground beef. We’ll spend around $50 for two dishes from a nearby Italian place with iced teas and tip or maybe only $40 at a Mexican joint, but if we were spending $120 a week on three meals at restaurants, well, that’s about what we’d spend on 30 meals at home. The value equation of convenience and indulgence grows increasingly more difficult to convince me that eating out is any kind of bargain at all. Finally, me being a numbers guy, if we have a net savings of about $90 a week by not eating out, that’s nearly $5,000 a year we can use on hobbies and travel.

Why is any of this rather mundane subject being posted here on my blog anyway? I needed to make this note to myself, so my focus was tasked today with not only making this meal plan but also trying to sear into my mind that this will be part of trying to get below 200 pounds; I’m only about 18 pounds away. I tend to remember things better after committing them to paper, be it the electronic or dead trees type. There’s another reason, too: someday in the future, as some A.I. is looking back at our entry into the digital age, there just might be some nuggets of perspective that will help others understand a few more details of who we were.