Week 1: The Shakedown Cruise

It has been seven days since I decided to stop living like a medieval king at a banquet and start living like a man who actually wants to see his toes again. And I have to say, the results have been… enlightening. In the same way that crashing a car is enlightening—it teaches you a great deal about physics, though the process is somewhat jarring.

I began this journey on New Year’s Day, a date traditionally reserved for people to lie to themselves while nursing a headache. However, I had a secret weapon: I had eaten so much on New Year’s Eve that I had managed to make myself physically ill. It was a masterpiece of gluttony. I felt so genuinely wretched that the idea of “fasting” wasn’t a noble sacrifice; it was a medical necessity.

The Perfect Start (And the Tea Tragedy)

Day 1 was, quite frankly, a triumph of laziness. I was too sick to eat and too tired to stand up. I dozed on and off like a hibernating bear and went to bed early. If you want to fast for 24 hours, I highly recommend being completely incapacitated. It’s a “no-brainer.”

Then came Day 2, where I discovered that while black coffee is the preferred fuel of the fasting elite, to me, it tastes like liquid charcoal. So, I turned to English Breakfast Tea. A simple mug of black tea. No sugar. No milk. Just leaves and water. And yet, there is something deeply tragic about a “naked” tea. It feels like wearing a tuxedo with no trousers.

By Day 3, the biological engines were demanding fuel. But as any engineer knows, you don’t just throw a cold engine into top gear. I eased back in with a light broth, followed by a simple fried rice. It was civilised. It was controlled.

The Pancake Peril

By Day 5, however, the “Toddler in the Suit” had clearly grown bored of broth. I found myself near the end of my 8-hour window staring at a stack of home-made pancakes. Now, pancakes are many things—delicious, fluffy, excellent vehicles for syrup—but they are not “diet-compliant.” They are, in fact, the metabolic equivalent of throwing a bucket of sand into a gearbox.

I corrected the course on Day 6. I returned to the OMAD (One Meal A Day) lifestyle with a soup spiced up with Red Thai Curry paste. It was magnificent. It had enough “kick” to remind my metabolism that I was still in charge, and I followed it with an early night to avoid listening to my stomach’s union-mandated complaints.

The Great Weight Mystery

And now we come to the final tally. At the end of Week One, the scales tell me I am at 122.8kg. That is a net loss of 2kg for the week. In any other world, a 2kg drop in seven days would be cause for a celebratory parade.

But there is a fly in the ointment.

Between Day 6 and Day 7, my weight shot up from 121.2kg to 122.8kg. That is a gain of 1.6kg in twenty-four hours. And for what? I had been a “good boy.” I had eaten nothing but soup and eggs. I had stuck to the plan. So why has my body decided to pack on the weight of a small sledgehammer overnight?

The answer, as I’ve learned, is Biological Noise.

Yesterday’s “soup and eggs” might have been low in calories, but that Red Thai Curry paste is a salt-mine. My body has reacted to the sodium by hoarding water like a desert nomad. I haven’t “gained fat”; I’ve just become more… absorbent. It’s a classic case of a sensor giving a skewed reading because of environmental interference.

If I were an emotional man, I’d be throwing the scales out the window. But I am an engineer. I know that the daily number is a liar. The “signal” is the 2kg I’ve lost since New Year’s Eve. The “noise” is the curry-induced water retention.

We like to think we are the masters of our fate, but the reality is that we are all just one “bugger it” away from a weekend-long binge and a very tight pair of trousers. This week taught me that even when you play by the rules, the body likes to play games with the data.

But I’m not falling for it. The toddler is currently in his room, the house hasn’t burned down yet, and I am moving onto Week Two.