The night I came home from my five-day drill, my wife took me out for a nice dinner. This dinner was the stand-in for our anniversary which is in less than a week, so we decided to go ahead and allow foods and drinks we usually avoid: bread, alcohol, and sugar. I wondered what the net effect on my weight would be the next day, but the actual result was unexpected.

I ended up losing a pound.

Let’s back up a bit. I started the dinner with some bread and butter. One slice of bread was where I limited myself at first, because I didn’t want to fill up too soon. Afterward, I had a salad that had a nice vinaigrette with bacon and egg on spinach, after which we had some escargot that was served with some puff pastry. I ate not only three of those, but also dipped some bread into the melted butter and garlic. For the main course, I had a filet with asparagus, Brussels sprouts, and sauteed mushrooms. As I filled up prior to the main course, I ate about half of it and took the rest home for the following day’s dinner. We then decided to have some dessert which was Bananas Foster.

As for drinks, I had two martinis and finished the meal with a glass of 5-puttonyos Tokaji.

I fully expected to be up 2-3 lbs as per usual, but this time, I was down a pound. I don’t know how or why, but I didn’t swell or hold water like I thought I would. What did end up happening, though, was that I felt hot through the night and woke up a few times sweating. It seems that my body was having a hard time metabolizing all that sugar and was causing my body to heat up. I was able to sleep in the next day, though, which I think possibly either accounts for or at least contributed to the weight loss.