Last week, I made some new commitments to myself, in hopes that with renewed effort, I might revisit the low I hit last November within the next month or two; after all, my weight has drifted up as high as 17 pounds over that amount, and I haven’t had much luck in taming that beast. I admit my efforts have been halfhearted, and while I think it’s folly to hope for something to spur my brain into action, I got it anyway.

This morning, I am now 1.8 pounds above my low, and the lowest weight I’ve been since before Christmas.

To what do I owe this incredible success in quick and efficient weight loss? Not to renewed efforts, exercise, or laser focus, my friends. Nope.

Not an advisable diet plan.

I owe it all to a lovely bout of viral gastroenteritis.

You know… the stomach flu.

I made myself a lot of promises on Friday; about 1 am on Monday, those promises were dashed. I’ll save you the details, but anyone who’s had the stomach flu knows that any thought of diet or exercise is just foolishness. In a case of truly bad timing, my last meal before this commenced was an especially spicy chili verde.

It was Tuesday before I took hesitant nibbles of anything, and it occurred to me, then, that there might be a good side to this, after all. While Tuesday’s fare was off diet (saltines! More saltines!), I slid back into clean eating and recording everything that goes in my mouth. In short, this helped me get back on track with two items that needed to be checked off the list before I could have any success getting this weight back off.

While I would never recommend using the stomach flu as a dieting device, this was more about turning something negative, that could have derailed me just when I’d truly decided to dig deep again, into something that worked in my favor. Not only is it nice to see that number on the scale going downward, again, but my joints feel better and my clothes fit differently. I’m a couple steps closer to doing what I need to do to be successful.

Sometimes, opportunities for success come in the oddest of ways.