25 hours in, and I've consumed two coffees (with milk), a lemonade, chicken and vegetable broth, edamame soup and a can of Coke. I guess this has turned into a general liquids-only fast. Tomorrow I'm gonna cut the milk in my coffee, and avoid full-sugar fizzy drinks as a base rule. I bought some beetroot & raspberry V8, which I'm thinking of splitting up throughout the day. Hopefully, given sufficient black coffee consumption and 'mother's little helper' I should be able to make it through the day on only one soup this time.

Around dinner time I almost cracked. I was hungry and craving a PB&J. Luckily I didn't. I'm telling myself I can have that PB&J, just not now. This is how it works. You put it off, hour by hour until you've done a week's stint and barely even noticed. Or so you hope.

I... don't know how this is going to affect me. I don't even know if I'll lose weight, that is if I last long enough to see a marked difference. I've read stories of girls online losing 6, 8, 10 pounds in the first three days. I don't think that will happen to me. I'm already technically 1/3 of the way through my projected 72 hours of liquids-only and I don't feel like I'll have lost even a pound today. It's hard to get an accurate reading right now because I'm full of water, and part of me doesn't want to step on the scales in case I see the dreaded 170 flash up at me again.

I want to buy jeans again, and fit into the size I've always worn (10-12 UK). Being 5'9, I would have to get considerately more emaciated to fit into a smaller size than that, so a goal of size 8 feels pretty unrealistic at this point. But maybe I'd fit into 12s after fasting. I don't know. I want my old figure back. I also miss seeing the line of my cheekbones when I look in the mirror. My face seems bloated and puffy to me now, and extraordinarily round. Part of it's reality, part of it's distortion. Also, I have developed pudge on my stomach where there never used to be pudge, even at higher weights like 150 and 160. That, and the weight on my face will probably be the first to go, I am assuming (and hoping).

A major motivation is being able to wear the clothes I idolise on others. A smart black uniform of a t-shirt tucked into cigarette jeans, belted at the waist. Military boots, a long coat. or leather jacket. I long to look fashionable, and more infuriatingly own enough clothes to dress in the way that I wish, but I don't fit most of them, and the ones that I do fit seem to look wrong on my slightly-larger-than-usual frame. I look at skinny girls and think that they waste their potential. If I were a size 8 I'd wear whatever I damn well pleased. I'd walk down the street and feel unstoppable.

Looking (and being) scholarly is a good model for success. The more brainy you look, the more brainy you sound and the harder you'll work (or so is scientifically proven). The true exhibition of discipline. Books under arm, cigarette in mouth, rushing frantically to make a lecture. Reading up on literary theory, writing maniacally any chance you get. This is the model I've idealised for myself for the past year and I am so very desperate to emulate it successfully. I seem to embody some elements but not others, and on a case-by-case basis rather than regularly, routinely. Routine and ritual becomes oh so important when you're trying to shift an accumulated thirty pounds of weight.