I could eat a scabby cat

Day 5 and 110.5 kilos

Forget the anger of yesterday morning - there is no more anger. No, it's been replaced by hunger. Not just any hunger mind you. This hunger comes from my toes. It consumes me. Despite my resolve I cannot get food out of my head.

After spending the morning - working and smouldering - I took a break and lay down on the bed at lunchtime. One hour later I awoke feeling peckish. I drank some water but the hunger just seemed to grow. To take my mind off it and because exercise, whilst I'm doing it at least, seems to take away the hunger, I decided to take a walk. I walked at a normal pace for about one hour. On that walk I saw a cat and my immediate thought was "I wonder what that would taste like in a slow cooked stew - lots of garlic, some good stock, a bit of wine." Which is perfectly rational of course.

To get cold water from the fridge, I must now run a tantalising gauntlet, because neither my wife nor our housemate are dieting. The fridge is full of steaks, minced beef, smoked salmon, eggs, fruit, roast chicken, cheeses and all manner of goodness. Man - it's hard! I'm hungry and it's a physical thing. We all know what it feels like when we're hungry - the stomach starts to churn and bubble and the messages sent to the brain are clear "FEED ME!". Well multiply that by 5 and you'll understand how I feel - my stomach is aching with its yearning for food.

Now I know that some of you are probably thinking "You tool - what do you expect? You've eaten nothing for four days." Well that's true but this is a re-run - I've done this before and I can assure you that last time at the end of day 3, things were plain sailing from thereon in. Well not this time - this time I'm being seriously tested.

The other thing on my mind is the drop overnight of 2 kilos. I know that I'm doing this to see fast results, amongst other things, but I'm officially freaked out. That's a dramatic weight loss even in this scenario. I was thinking that during the first 3 days I'll see big drops mostly through water loss and then it'll calm down to about one to one half of a kilo each day. I was not expecting things to speed up. The plan is to get myself to 90 kilos and then exercise and eat carefully to get down to 83 kilos - At this rate I'll be quitting the fast at day 30! As a result I have decided not to exercise today and see what happens.

Other physical effects are that I have  a fairly repulsive chemical taste in my mouth and my right knee feels inflamed but that could have been the walk yesterday. I don't feel tired nor do I lack energy and the headaches seem to have stopped.

If I could get rid of this sensation of ravenous hunger - life would be much easier. But for now I have to endure images of roast beef and horseradish, poached salmon and hollandaise or strawberry cheesecake popping into my mind every 5 seconds. Oh delicious agony!