Last Few Hours

Ladies and Gents... 3 more hours to go and I've officially lived below the line. Thank you to all of you for your support! This day was the hardest of all. I'll be honest, I slept til 11am today because I had such trouble getting out of bed. I went to a one-hour boot camp session last night and yawned through the first half, but felt less cranky after. Nevertheless I paid for it in the morning. I didn't have the calorie intake to support the workout. All day long I meandered about in a state of confusion. These last few days I suddenly remembered clearly last year's experience of going to bed early nights 3 through 5 out of pure exhaustion and to help stop the obsessing over food.

The highlight of the day today was going to pick up Miriam (a young woman in foster care in a quiet town near Pietermaritzburg whom I met through Canadian friend, Nicole Nel), and her Canadian foster parents invited me in for pizza dinner. I was hesitant to say no because I haven't had much of an opportunity to get to know the family since they moved to South Africa in February. I said yes, with the stipulation that I could bring my own dinner (an interesting concoction of the normal spinach and cabbage mush accompanied by oatmeal this time because I could not put another bite of maize meal in my mouth). They happily agreed and we had a lovely night together. One of their sons, Levi, saw me eating my dessert (a boiled egg) and asked his mom if she could make him one too. On this, the last night of the challenge, and my hungriest, I was unwilling to share.

Their daughter Bethany offered me some lovely looking bread that Miriam and her had baked together. Luckily for me I could pack it up to take home for my hardy breakfast planned for tomorrow: Bacon-stuffed boer vors (sausage) with a pile of fruit! Interestingly it is not the chocolates and crips that I was missing on night one that I now crave, but the fresh fruits and vegetables that I can't afford to add to my diet. That and a bit of olive oil on just about anything. Lucky me that I have the ability to end this diet. For many others it will continue on indefinitely...