It’s the 10th week of my journey to better health. This week, we celebrate three things: Memorial Day, NASCAR and my birthday.

The Successes

As mentioned last week, I spent the past weekend at Dover International Speedway.

I am fortunate enough that I’m not attending just as a fan, but as an employee of the track.

My friend Lynn is Dover’s Social Media Manager. She and I were interns together four years ago and bonded over a love of racing.

So when she realized that she needed help on race weekends, she called me. This was my sixth race weekend as her assistant.

My job is basically to be everywhere, hopping between driver appearances, pit road and events around the track, taking pictures and posting to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

I get to do a lot of amazing things – I drove Dover’s official pace car, shot a t-shirt gun and ate a slice of Richard Petty’s birthday cake (more on that later).

I also walked. A lot. Walking is my preferred method of getting around the speedway. The track is one-mile around so everytime that I walked from the infield media center – home base for the race – to the fan zone, I was walking about a mile each way. I did that multiple times throughout the three days while doing shorter walks and a lot of standing.

It was a great weekend, and I got plenty of exercise, but it was almost impossible for me to quantify it in my Lose It app.

The Challenges

This was a week that presented an array of temptations.

It started with Memorial Day weekend and a Sunday picnic of hamburgers, baked beans, ice cream cake and strawberry pie.

Monday was worse. We had pizza for lunch. And at dinner, there were more hamburgers on the menu, plus potato chips, chocolate zucchini bread and ice cream.

Tuesday was Shady Maple Day (aka my birthday). We went for breakfast, and I was as disciplined as I could possibly be (baked French toast, potatoes and an apple cinnamon pancake), I still couldn’t keep within my calorie limit for the day.

The birthday celebration continued on Wednesday with cannoli dip at work and Rita’s custard after dinner.

My weekend at the races followed. For all of the walking that I did, I did just as much eating. Meals were served buffet style – enchiladas, pulled pork sandwiches and manicotti were among the menu options.

And I couldn’t resist the chocolate chip cookies, Oreos and popcorn that were there for the taking in the Media Center.

Sunday was the best of times and the worst times. I ate a slice of Richard Petty’s birthday cake – a delicious piece of art created by Desserts by Dana – a former winner of TLC’s Cake Boss. This was better than 99 percent of cakes that I have tried. The layers of frosting were the perfect level of sweet. The cake itself was light and airy. It was perfect.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I stopped at McDonald’s on the way home. Not my proudest moment, but if you’ve ever driven between Dover, Delaware and Reading via Routes 41 and 10, you know that there are not a lot of options.

The Results

Current Weight: 173.6
Weekly Weight Loss: -1.4
Weight Loss Since Start: -15.8

I know I did a lot of walking, but even I am shocked by the results. I was going to be happy to just break even. Instead, I was right on pace (given the extra two days before my weigh-in).

The Week Ahead

It’s a return to normalcy this week. No racing. No birthday celebrations. No reason to not make my goals.