The dangers of breaking routine

This weekend was different from most for a few reasons: some family from out of town were visiting, it was a long weekend, and the kids were a little extra rambunctious. I suspect the latter reason was due to the first week of school being last week.

With the "normal" routines thrown off, I found myself eating a lot more - nothing obscene, but a few nacho chips here and there, a glass of wine there. My "daily" weight has jumped up to 155.6 from 150.6 on Friday - a 5lb gain in four days! Of course, I know that I didn't eat over SEVENTEEN THOUSAND extra calories over the weekend, so I'm pretty sure that the extra weight gain isn't body fat but just accumulated water. Salty snacks, while fattening, have a huge side-effect in that they cause your body to retain as much fluid as possible. I fully expect that going back to my usual diet and not having salty snacks will reverse things and drop off the so-called "water weight".

This is the advantage of using a rolling average to look at body weight, rather than the day-to-day fluctuations of the scale. The rolling average of my weight on Friday was 151.0, and today it's 152.1. An increase is still there, but it's a more reasonable 1.1 pounds.

Today I'll be back into the usual routine, and I'm going to make it my goals for the day to eat as little salt as possible. It's always good to spot a weight-gain trend early and stop it before it becomes a long-term trend.