Woe is Me! Thanksgiving Ruined Everything!

OP asked us to check back when the scale is back down, so here it is. Apologies in advance for the essay.

In the interests of science (😉), I went back and logged Thanksgiving day, from my notes. I ate surprisingly fewer calories than I thought I might have done based on past experience, estimated 3349 calories (as against a TDEE that day - including the actual 300-ish calorie machine rowing - of probably around 2300-2500). So, that should be good for just under a quarter to a third of a pound fat gain, more or less, in theory.

As a recap from my post above, I was up 1.8 pounds the next day. (For reference, it was 389g carbs and 3999mg salt, and I definitely salted some things at the table but didn't record that.)

This morning, I was down 2 pounds from that day after Thanksgiving peak, and down 0.2 pounds from the day before Thanksgiving. (I admit, that's a bit of a cheat, because I was a slugabed this morning (so likely relatively dehydrated), and ate most of yesterday's food mid-day rather than late. Still, OP asked about the scale, not about reality. 😆)

I my mind, there are a few subtle NSVs in there:

* I ate every single thing I wanted, no mature adult self limitation whatsoever, and still didn't hit the 5000-6000 calorie peaks I've logged on big days in the past.

* The dishes I made (mostly made up, vs. following others' recipes) were surprising lower in calories than I expected, despite including plenty of oils/butter and full fat cheeses and other richness. I expected the buttermilk biscuits (Shirley Corriher's wonderful recipe) to be 300-400 calories each, and they were more like 150 (I ate four!); I expected the rich vegetarian cauliflower mac'n'3-cheese main to come in at much higher than the 150 calories per smallish serving (I ate 4 of those, too); and the individual pumpkin custards with whipped cream were only about 150 for the custard, 50 more for whipped heavy cream topping, when I was thinking 300-400 for those, too (I ate two). The implication that my intuitively-derived indulgent cooking/recipes are *relatively* calorie efficient, compared to my expectations and history.

* Bonus: Exceeded my daily protein goal (though only by 18g), and blew my stretch veggies/fruit goal (10+ servings) out of the water, with about 21 servings. 🤣

This is what the vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner looked like, for reference (first helpings 😉, and most of the biscuits were breakfast 😉).