They say it takes 21 days to break a bad habit.

So far it’s only been fourteen, half the month.

Usually by this time I’m in a set routine and I don’t even feel the fast. Not one tummy grumble all day, but that hasn’t happened this year.

Maybe I’m eating too many refined carbohydrates that don’t tend to stick to my ribs long enough.

I started this Ramadan with bowls of home-cooked large flake oatmeal, and everything was wonderful. No hunger till about five p.m., three and a half hours before I was ready to break my fast.

But today, yes, I admit it, it was hard.

I had halwa for breakfast. Basically it’s semolina cooked with sugar, eggs, milk and almonds. Yes. Maybe that’s what it was.

It gave me lots of energy early on but then when I woke up from my nap, with errands to run it felt like my feet were made of lead.

Problem is, when you’re fasting, you don’t necessarily feel like eating healthy. It gets worse as the month goes on.

All day you think of what you want to eat, but when it actually comes time, your stomach has shrunk and you can only fit so much in.

So you want the yummy stuff!

And that just doesn’t tide you over.

Today’s difficulty might also have had something to do with the fact that I did so much mental work this morning after suhoor. (the pre-dawn meal)

I find with Ramadan, I have to get anything creative done right after suhoor, otherwise I won’t have the energy during the rest of the day.

I finished up the revision of Shame, the novel set in Pakistan, and prepared it to mail to a publisher out west, and that took a LOT of my energy reserves.

I took some of the comments of my agent to heart. About Shame she said she absolutely understood that, “the purpose of this book is to stir things up, to disturb, to cause an internal upheaval in the reader.”

Along with some other of her comments I did a minor revision, not easy when the brain has access to only limited glycogen supplies. The brain seems to be a real needy thing!

No wonder I was dragging my feet later in the day.

Well tomorrow, it’s back to the sequel. I’ve got LOTS of ideas! Had a brainwave the other night.

But right now, it’s off to taraweeh prayers to listen to the melodious intonations of those Libyan reciters. Haven’t gone for a few days and I feel like a lazy beast!

Half the month is gone already! Oh where has it gone???