+23.8 (∆ -0.6)

On the way home last night from the Superbowl party, I (wincingly) estimated the number of calories I'd consumed... pizza, Swedish meatballs, a pulled pork sandwich, guacamole, hummus, Doritos, See's candy... around 3000 calories in all. That doesn't sound like a lot when you look at what I ate, but I made an effort to have relatively reduced portions of everything, i.e., instead of having four slices of pizza like I might have had in the past, I only had two... instead of two pulled pork sandwiches, I had only one, I ate more fruit and salad to fill me up, and I absolutely had no alcohol. If there's a five alarm gateway drug to set off uncontrolled eating on Superbowl day, it's alcohol.

Although my calorie budget yesterday was only 1969, I had cunningly worked out that morning so I tacked on 390 extra calories and pushed my lunchtime (with extra cups of coffee) until gametime at 3PM. The end result was, incredibly, that even though I went nearly 800 calories over my daily calorie budget, I still came in under budget for calorie consumption for the week by 410 calories.

I hadn't seen the calorie grand tally until this morning, but last night—expecting a sharp weight gain this morning— I had already decided to go to the gym every day this week. And then, when I stepped on the scale today and saw that I'd actually lost weight despite last night's gastronomic carnage, I thought, "Well, why not go every day this week anyway?"

I've lost a total of 9.2 pounds so far and at this rate, and barring any unforeseen circumstances, I could be at +0 as soon as April 1st. That's not my original goal, however, so I'm sticking to the original August 21st deadline because I expect I'll have to weather a long rough patch of static weight sometime this month or next.