(Day 2 continued)

 So I ended up having a somewhat "normal" dinner, stir-fried mushrooms, beansprouts and kale with zero-calorie "slim" noodles and 2 packets of Thai green sauce, and Caesar salad. I'm estimating my total for the day ended up around 1,600 calories again.   

According to this website, my "BMR" (aka. the estimated number of calories I burn just from being alive) is 1,687 kcal/day. I've compared with other websites - some say I burn a bit higher (my height is 5'9) but I'm taking 1,687 as the most accurate because it feels accurate. And it explains why I've gained weight, because I have walked around for years assuming my basal metabolic rate was higher - somewhere more in the region of 2,000 calories +. And frequently - in fact, it is the rule not the exception - I am consuming over that figure. Herein lies the problem. This blog is opening my eyes. 

In order to lose a pound of fat per week, I need to drop my calories 500 below my BMR. So it really means 1,100 or less, preferably less, as I have a lot to lose. A lot to lose. I'm not weighing myself for a couple of weeks, I think this is sensible since seeing that shocker the other day. I'm unable to go to the gym right now because of my back, but I am trying to keep my steps up, at least 8,000 a day until I recover from the slipped disc and can go back to my normal regime of 3-4 hours of cardio a week and ~12000 steps a day from walking. I've been signed off work for the next seven days, so there is literally no excuse to not be able to restrict. At work it can get so tiring and I use food to stimulate myself, much like how I use sex and sometimes Ritalin to do the same (during the few weeks of the month I allow myself to take it at full quantity). Currently I don't have my ADD meds, I don't have exercise, and I don't have sex, or binge food. So I'm really on my own with this. It's just me and this restriction diet. 

I'm feeling stretched from that meal. It felt like more than what I'd usually eat but I know it's actually the opposite - that a 1,600-calorie day is actually lower than normal, by my standards.

This has got to change.

More Liza May today. A rare treat to see her two days on the trot. It's nice not going to work and meeting a friend in the park for lunch and a vape, it feels like old times and reminds me of doing this when I was 19 and had no responsibilities. 

I'm watching Factory Girl, trying to get back into that teenage mindset where I idolised Edie Sedgwick and lived and breathed that 60's heroin/speed-chic shit. I wonder if now, at 29, it's just harder to convince myself. Harder to pretend. Harder to fantasise. I've become too much of a realist. I think in order for my weight to change, I have to allow myself to run away with the characters in my head again. I have to allow myself to dream.