Week 2: The Smorgasbord Of Self-Sabotage

We have reached the end of Week Two, and I’ve made a discovery. It turns out that if you tell your brain you are on a “strict regimen,” it responds by immediately scanning the horizon for the nearest KFC. It’s a primal instinct, much like a heat-seeking missile, but instead of aviation fuel, it’s seeking out fried chicken and chocolate.

The final tally for the week is 120.1kg. That is a loss of 2.7kg. Now, in the cold, hard world of mathematics, a 4.7kg loss over a fortnight is a success. If I were a civil engineering project, the stakeholders would be popping champagne. But if I’m honest—and this blog is an exercise in brutal, public honesty—this week was a bit of a mess.

The Breakdown of Order

My goal was simple: OMAD (One Meal A Day). The logic was that if I only eat once, I can afford to be a bit “flexible” with what actually goes on the plate. Unfortunately, my brain interpreted “flexible” as “a license to eat like a unsupervised teenager at a mall.”

Day 9 saw me at the local Mall, face-to-face with a pizza. It was not compliant. It wasn’t even close. Then came Days 10 and 11, where I introduced a new “supplement” to my diet: chocolate and coffee. Not just a square of chocolate, mind you, but the kind of intake that suggests I’m trying to personally bankroll the Swiss economy. I’ve always considered eating a single square off the chocolate block is a sign of a sick mind.

By Day 12, I had completely lost the plot. I found myself at the local Immigration office – a place that would make anyone crave a drink – and celebrated my survival with a Jollibee breakfast. This was followed by my designated main meal, more chocolate, and more coffee. At this point, the “window” of my Intermittent Fasting wasn’t a window at all; it was a gaping hole in the side of a building.

The Potato Salad Incident

I tried to regain some dignity on Day 13 with a Thai chicken curry. I was, for a fleeting moment, a “good boy.” But then came Day 14.

I was hit by a wave of desperation in the afternoon. I needed “something.” I raided the fridge and found some potato salad. I ate it, and my digestive system—which had clearly enjoyed the peace and quiet of the previous days—reacted with the kind of violent, immediate rejection usually reserved for bad sequels. I spent the rest of the evening empty-handed because there was literally nothing else in the house. I went to bed hungry, with actual hunger pangs for company.

The Forensic Audit

So, what have we learned from this week of culinary anarchy?

Firstly, chocolate is a gateway drug. It doesn’t just add calories; it shatters the fasting window. Every time I reached for a piece “later in the day,” I wasn’t just breaking Keto; I was setting fire to the Intermittent Fasting schedule. I was teaching the “toddler” that if he screams loud enough, he’ll get a Hershey bar.

Secondly, the performance was “poor” because I was fighting against my own system. You cannot expect a high-performance engine to run on a mixture of Thai spices, Jollibee gravy, and cocoa beans.

If this seems like a bit much for a few “snack” hiccups, then you aren’t taking the architecture of a habit seriously enough. This week, I didn’t just have a few treats; I compromised the integrity of the “window.” The 2.7kg loss is a gift from my metabolism, but it’s a gift I didn’t deserve.

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. The habit is a delicate thing, yes. It requires constant vigilance. Because if you don’t protect that fragile glass ornament, you’ll wake up one morning and realize that while you were busy being “reasonable” and “flexible,” the toddler has burned the house down.

And then you’re back to square one, standing in the ashes, wondering where it all went wrong… and why the KFC was so tempting.