Day One: The what

The instructions say you should write stuff down. I don't have a problem with this. I like writing stuff. Especially stuff about myself. What could be more interesting than me? While I am therefore writing this solely for my benefit, and have no expectation that anyone else will read it, I rather like doing it in a public way. Writing as if addressing a complete stranger makes me delve a little further into explanations and meanings. I can't assume that my reader knows what the hell I'm going on about, so I'm more likely to be thorough with my blatherings, which in turn is good for me as it forces me to analyse more carefully.

So what am I doing here? Today is Day One of a new approach to eating. I am not going to call it a diet, because: reasons. Diets are boring, depressing and ultimately futile. The BOOK (the bible of my new approach, of which more later) quotes someone as describing it as a strategy. This I like. Strategy is a good description.

Some definitions of strategy from the oracle that is Wikipedia:

• Strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty.
• "a pattern in a stream of decisions" 
• "strategy is about shaping the future" 
• the human attempt to get to "desirable ends with available means"

So yes, I have goals, I have a high level plan, I have available means and life in general is always uncertain, so I think I'm all there with the strategy.

Starting with the goal then. The goal is to live a life with less pain, less illness, more health, more energy, more happiness. The strategy to achieve that is to lose some weight in a structured way that medical research shows to also give rise to the stated goal.

The plan is to follow The Fast Diet http://thefastdiet.co.uk/. Except I'm not calling it a diet because the word makes me want to stick my head in a bucket of water. So maybe it's the Darkling Plain Fasting Strategy. I'm hoping it doesn't actually need a name because it's just going to be how I live a normal life, from now on.

Before getting into the how of it, I want to cover the why first. Obviously I know why, or I wouldn't be here, but I want to have a record of why I am starting out on this caper so I can refer back to it should the going get rough.