Weeks 19 & 20: The Christmas Mystery

As die-hard Fridge readers may remember, during weeks 17 and 18, my weight each day came in at or lower than the day before. This was good. Well, except, of course, for the pesky glitch where the first day of each week began with a mysterious, overnight, two-pound gain, thus starting the entire cycle over again.

But week 19 was different. It inexplicably began at the essentially same weight as the previous day. Holy cow! Can you believe it? Could this awful sawtooth graph finally be coming to an end?

But the good news didn’t end there, oh no. After weeks and weeks and weeks of getting stuck in the 216-218 range . . .

. . . a second miracle happened: I broke through the 216 barrier. Check it out:

Look at that! I hit 214.5 not once, but twice in a row. And not just any two days, but December 22 and 23. Could this be the year I’d actually lose weight during the heaviest part of the season? The answer, as anyone knows, is a resounding no.

You see: I suspect what happened here is my little victory angered The Santa Claus. And when you anger The Santa Claus, he doesn’t stuff your stockings full of coal. No, he does something much worse. He instead leaves calories all over your house. He leaves them on the kitchen counter. He leaves them in your living room. He leaves them in your sock drawer. I swear, I even woke up one night and found my mouth mysteriously filled with some eighteen odd Lindt truffles; my chest covered in sparkly, orange foil wrappers.

Here’s the damage:

Ah yes, the ever-popular, overnight, three pound gain. And the worst part? I didn’t deserve it. My chocolate joke was just that: a joke. In all reality, my caloric intake for December 22 and 23 came in around 2300 each day. Sure, that’s over my target, but not three damn pounds over target. It’s not like I was eating ten thousand calories a day. Sheesh!

The week after that, I was out of town. I weighed in Sunday and then again Friday. Those weights were exactly the same, so I just filled in all the days between the same:

Until, of course, the very next day, when it (whatever “it” is) all caught up to me:

That uptick (breaking the 220 barrier in the wrong direction) happened on January 1, 2011. Yay, what a way to start the year. At this point, now that I was experiencing that strange vacation emotional combination of frustration and relaxation, I did overeat. I ate a lot of Chex Mix, I tell you. I even threw in a few handfuls of Cheez-Its, which, as Biz noted a couple weeks ago, are nothing against the power of the Chex Mix. But what’s a body to do.

Better luck next year, right?