It's pretty simple. Your body is adapting to what it assumes is a more limited food supply. You only need 1500 calories a day to function. Even when I go off-diet these days, I'm naturally not able to eat anywhere near the volume I used to. Of course, a few days in a row off the diet will kill that fast

In your case, it's also your body adapting to being more fit. Hunger is a survival trait. It's counter-intuitive though if your body has been very active, indicating that you need to be more athletic and mobile. too much food weighs you down. Essentially, when you are non-active, your body wants to put on fat so that you have stored energy for later. When you are active, your body wants to take that stored energy off and use it.

Weirdest thing just now. I've been really suffering today, feeling VERY hungry and VERY tempted. Got home, and, realizing it was nowhere near time for dinner nor for my next allowed snack, I decided to find something totally diet safe to snack on that wouldn't put me over. I tried a garlic clove -- raw and by itself. Now, I did this once years ago when I was absurdly sick as an attempt at a home remedy, and I remember the experience being unbearable. But this time, I ate it, and there was a slight burn, but I generally LIKED the taste (I love garlic in things). A few minutes later I felt terrible abdominal pain for about a minute or so, but, when it subsided, my hunger was GONE. Completely GONE.

I may have stumbled upon something awesome here. My body seems better aligned to appreciate vegetables as snacks now, and garlic is really doing the trick for me right now.

Day 17 in reflection:

This week has been far harder than the rest of the diet, and today was the hardest of all. Nothing was satisfying, I was extremely hungry and, worse yet, I had absolutely no energy. When I came home, I just collapsed in bed for a while.

After cheating (gasp!) on a serving of sour patch kids, I decided that, rather than simply binging, I needed to change the plan. My diet has been extremely spartan and consistent up until now, and it was time to relax that a bit. As a result, I changed up dinner, taking a break from my soy/cumin chicken to going shopping and buying supplies to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on non-enriched wheat bread (which will now be my lunches at school; no more stew after yesterday!). That wasn't quite enough for me, so I toasted a third piece of bread and put a slice of cheese on it. That hit the spot. The entire thing came out to less calories than my normal dinner, but the higher carb and sugar levels were very welcome. Both still remain safely below recommended daily intake levels.\

So today wasn't as healthy as my previous regiment, but it's absolutely what I needed and is STILL very good for me. Better to relax the terms of the diet intelligently than outright rebel.

Successes: Adapted my diet methodically when it was no longer working for me and still came out with great numbers all around for today.

Struggles: Things got way easier after the new dinner. However, awesome as that garlic clove was for a snack earlier today, it is FAR less awesome on the other end of the digestive tract. This officially hurts more than yesterday's minor food poisoning.

Failures/cheats: 1 serving of Sour Patch Kids. Most artificial sugar I've ingested in the last 17 days, but no sugar high and crash. 1 serving didn't do too much damage.



All in all: A. I cheated a little, but I think I handled my crisis well and came out with a new solution that will serve me well and enable me to continue strong with this diet. This easily could have been the day I fell off the wagon.

I don't consider today a loss.

I will be once school ends next week.