With a pocket full of quarters, I confidently slam another into the coin slot. THIS is the time I'm going to take The Fast to the next level!

When I last wrote, I had finished up six days of fasting and neared closer to the end of its seventh when I broke it. It happened in the context of a special day of celebration and a strong urge to move on to the next phase of my regimen. Looking back, I hate that I did, as it takes a lot to build the critical mass necessary to initiate a complex fast. But, after the initial days of hunger, those are the kinds of temptations I face: from the juju of a jelly doughnut to the siren call of a distant Google Calendar.

There will be a few changes this time—moving beyond a week for example! I have a shipment of green rooibos and yerba mate that I will be adding to the starting lineup as I abandon the generic "herbal" label—not that I will abandon them entirely, as I tend to sneak some into green/black teas, but I'm not running solo on spearmint.

I also want to include FitBit integration, though it will likely not involve real-time data, but a daily dump. There was a time when it could easily be fed into Google Sheets, but somewhere along the way its authentication broke—from what I read anyway for I haven't tried what others have failed, simply because I tend to not hit my head over with a tack hammer—I'm not saying I haven't or that I won't....sometimes we gotta dig deep in that tool chest to grab that hammer and slam it down with unholy vigor.