Fasting Day 3: My Kingdom for a Taco

Of the 10 days covered by this (semi) fasting period, the two Saturdays are the ones I've dreaded the most. Saturday, you see, is breakfast day. Generally speaking, I don't 'do' breakfast and by any standard I'm a pretty poor cook but Saturdays - blessed Saturdays - are the exception to both rules.

On any given Saturday morning at Rancho Meathead, you'll hear the feverish tinkering of wooden spoons against pots and pans - as if some experimental jazz band was warming up in the kitchen, only instead of a hipster in a turtle-neck you'd find me in my underwear, wielding a stick of butter.

Through the years I have developed an ever expanding repertoire of breakfast dishes. Admittedly, they all involve the same principle ingredients: Eggs, Bacon, Cheese, Avocado, Baked Beans, Chorizo. All that varies between dishes is the quantity and balance of each and the vehicle in which they're delivered (crumpets, biscuits, tortillas etc.).

These are all influenced greatly by my background. Having grown up in South Texas, the breakfast taco is king. To this day, I cannot smell chorizo without sending my mind spinning back in time - harp music and all - to my mom's kitchen where she would be making chorizo & egg tacos while I waited eagerly at the table like a stray dog.

Today, sadly, tacos are not the menu. No tacos, no chorizo & beans, no bacon & egg muffins (or as Miss Meathead calls them - MikeMuffins - because my name is Mike and she is clever and they blow Mickey-Dees muffins to hell and back).

Instead, on Day 3 of this "fast", I had the option of a 'power bar' which is only slightly longer than a house key OR about a coffee mug worth of a strawberry flavoured drink, (powder mixed with water). Think Strawberry Quik, minus the milk and sugar and crack.

Miss Meathead and I decided to pick one each and share half with each other, thus giving the illusion of a multi-coursed breakfast. After a few days of this, I've realised that dealing with such a massive reduction in caloric intake (80%) is almost entirely psychological. Its enough food to keep you alive, but the mental anguish from just wanting something else is greater than the pangs of hunger. 

As a further example, we chopped this single power bar thing into tiny slices, 17 in total which were each the size of a cashew. 8.5 tiny chocolate flavoured nuggets for each person. I could have eaten the 17 in one mouthful with room for an additional Oreo, but to swallow it whole like that would give me one, 10 second bit of pseudo enjoyment. In splitting down into little pieces, I was able to chew on 8.5 separate things.

Breakfast, in all its muted glory.

And chew I did. I chewed every one of those little nuggets about 50 times. I didn't even have to swallow. They just turned into a paste which absorbed straight into my tongue. That, along with my half mug of strawberry water was breakfast for the day and, ya know, I was cool with that. Not nearly as hungry as I thought I'd be.

In fact, today as a whole was not as hard as anticipated - nothing like day 2 where I had a crushing headache and felt like a slug.

There are some tricks to this which I've quickly  learned and can offer to anyone thinking of doing something like it:

1. Drink LOTS of water. A gut full of water gives a quasi sense of fullness. It won't get you by all day, but it helps fill in the gap.

2. When tired of water, try tea. I've been drinking about 5-6 cups of peppermint tea per day. I could piss a candy cane right now.

3. When you're really hurting, try a black coffee. Not only is it an appetite suppressant, but it gives you a bit of a boost and if, like me, you don't drink coffee, it makes you downright wired. Like, Charlie Sheen on  pay-day wired. My poor parents - I called them on Skype right after a coffee today and talked AT them for 30 minutes, as if I'd just gotten back from the moon with stories to tell.

4. MOST IMPORTANT: Stay busy. You know that thing about "idle hands/tools of the devil". Well, its definitely true with an appetite, or at least one like mine. Miss Meathead and I decided to distract ourselves by painting our hallway - no shit. And it worked! Aaaand the hallway turned out nice, thanks for asking.

The rest of day was not too bad actually. I did not expect to have acclimatised by the 3rd day, but here I am. That said, there are 7 days to go and I'm really not sure what to expect. Calm before the storm? Dunno. I miss food terribly, but must admit that I'm now kinda curious to see where this goes.

Till tomorrow,

Peace,

Meathead.