My birthday week is now complete and I did celebrate a bit too much. I had a delicious Mexican lunch with my team at work and they got me a cake. All wonderful. Then, I had a huge birthday dinner that I referred to a s brutal calorie assault. Add to that some pretty heavy drinking and it wasn’t my healthiest choice yet. The next day, I was up 3 pounds, which is clearly temporary water retention and unprocessed food in me because that is not biologically possible.

On the topic of biological mysteries… I had a killer workout on Saturday. I walked/ran over 16,000 steps and 6 miles. I had 2 total hours of exercise. I even extended my running duration even a bit further than I have to-date. I burnt about 5,000 total calories and stayed at my consumption target for the day. In all ways, that should translate to weight lost. But, I was .6 pounds heavier the next morning.

I have thought, up until now, that the big temporary weight gains were related to alcohol intake. I had pretty much convinced myself of that. Then, I ended up drinking on a planned non-drinking day this week (perhaps related to ridiculous levels of work stress) and the next morning I had lost 4 pounds. So, it is becoming clearer to me each day that I really don’t understand my body.

On a positive note, I have hit a new low weight this week even with all of the fluctuations. At one point this week, I was down to 261 pounds. At the same time, I have learned something else new, weight loss impacts the size of your fingers. My wedding ring has started falling off and I have even accidentally flung it across the room because it is so lose. This is a fascinating result of weight loss that I would never have thought possible, though it makes sense once you think about it. But, this also means that I am at my smallest point in at least the nearly 17 years we have been married.

Last week’s stats:
Distance walked/run: 28.4 miles
Total calories burnt: 26,962
Total calories consumed: 14,439
Weight change: 5.1 pounds lost