Last week: 443 lbs.

Start weight: 470 lbs.

Total lost: 24 lbs.

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Something happened at the grocery store last Tuesday that confuses the hell out of me.

I called my wife on the cellphone after leaving the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival Committee meeting, asking her if she wanted anything from the grocery store. She wanted pistachios and no-sugar caramel/chocolate candy.

With the stress of Winter Carnival and day one of deadline at the newspaper, I was hungry. I had eaten two pieces of pizza before the meeting, even had breakfast and lunch, but since I weighed in that morning for the week, the pressure was off and I gave myself permission to eat anything I wanted after the meeting. The stress hit me when I sat in the car to head home. It was an impulse; I had not planned on going to the store.

“I’m being honest,” I told my wife on the phone. “I don’t feel like behaving tonight.”

She didn’t try to stop me.

So I went to Tops with the goal of bingeing. Maybe beer, chocolate, chicken wings, whatever I desired. After all, I would have six days to recover and lose weight before next Tuesday. I rationalized it and felt good about it.

What baffled me about this shopping trip was the food I actually took home. I walked out of Tops with healthy food, no junk, and I didn’t exactly know why.

There was no hand wringing, no pacing up and down the aisles with a guilty conscience, no friends around to sway my decisions. My emotions simply changed from when I walked into the store to when I walked out of the store. The end result had me so perplexed that I literally lost sleep.

My question: Am I training myself to cope with stress eating without knowing it?

My answer: Beats the hell out of me.

My solution was to write about it, tracing every step, emotion and decision. At 3 a.m., I grabbed my smartphone and took notes on the shopping trip memories, fresh and swirling around in my head. I wrote down the food I was going to buy and the food I ended up buying. I wanted to explain, aisle by aisle, how I left Tops with healthy food while shopping for junk food.

My first stop: nuts. I didn’t see pistachios on the shelves, so I picked up cashew pieces. They were on sale — a small consolation for not getting what my wife really wanted.

Then I went up the candy aisle. I was in the mood for chocolate. Raisinets, maybe? No. A large Hershey bar? No. A Giant Chunky candy bar? Yes! I love Chunky, and I was about to put one in my cart. Then I made a mistake: I looked at the label to see how many calories were in it: 570. Damn! I could have had a Chunky, but I didn’t want to pack in 570 calories just for one small dessert. So I put it back and picked up my wife’s Russell Stover no-sugar candy.

Next stop: meats. Heading out of the candy aisle, I turned right to see if there were any leftover chicken wings from the deli. Nope. So I turned left to the hot dogs. I decided I didn’t want all that salt, so I moved on, looking for something already cooked or something I could reheat in the microwave.

I stopped at the barbecue meat in plastic tubs, a favorite of mine. Curly’s shredded pork was 900 calories per 16-ounce container (I would have eaten the entire thing). The Lloyd’s barbecue pork and beef were both 720 calories for a 16-ounce container. It was at that point my mood changed. In the blink of an eye, I decided to make it a game to find something tasty and quick with fewer calories than the pulled pork.

Frozen chicken was next. A bag of Tyson Chicken Nuggets was 2,430 calories, a bag of Tyson Crispy Chicken Strips was 1,520 calories, and a bag of Tyson Buffalo Style Chicken Strips was 2,470 calories. Winner, winner, chicken was clearly not for dinner.

I moved past the French fries and frozen veggies to the door with pizza rolls, a favorite of mine. A 40-count bag of the Totino’s pepperoni pizza rolls was 1,540 calories. In the same cooler, I looked at Farm Rich Mozzarella Sticks (2,340 calories per bag), cream cheese jalapeno poppers (forgot the exact calorie count, but it was too much), Tina’s Beef & Bean Burrito (280 calories each, but too much because I would have eaten three or four) and a six-pack of White Castle cheeseburger sliders (930 calories). No luck there.

I briefly thought about making my own cheeseburgers, but I didn’t want to cook — only reheat — so I moved on.

Passing the MorningStar Farms fake meat door in the freezer section, I reached in to see how many calories were in a four-pack of veggie burgers — just for fun. I picked up a random box: Asian Veggie Patties. At 400 calories a box — 100 calories per patty — I had a clear winner in this silly contest. But they looked delicious, so I bought a box. I had a vision of two veggie burger sandwiches for dinner, each with slices of sweet onion and cheddar cheese and a slathering of mayonnaise.

When I got to the beer cooler, I started to look at the selection. Then I thought about my newest innovation on the Lake Placid Diet: beer night. Every Saturday, I give myself permission to have one drink — a mixed drink, glass of wine or a bottle of beer, as long as it’s a product from the Lake Placid region. While eyeing a six-pack, I told myself, “If I have beer now, I’ll lose my special night.” So instead of ruining beer night, I turned around, literally.

There were pistachios in the middle of the aisle, so I put a bag in the cart before walking to the frozen fruit. I grabbed a bag of berry medley (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries) to have as dessert with plain, nonfat yogurt (already in the fridge) and a drizzle of local honey (in the cupboard). After having this dessert on Saturday night, I found it tastes better than many varieties of ice cream (except my favorite, Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk).

On my way to the nut aisle, where I put back the cashews, I decided against cheese for the veggie burgers. I stopped by the canned veggie aisle to see if they had marinated mushrooms, a low-calorie favorite. They were out. I did pick up a can of artichoke hearts packed in water (135 calories total). Then I thought, “These would be great in a salad.”

After picking up an onion for my veggie burgers, I chose Newman’s Own Lite Caesar Dressing for my salad, passed on a bag of cheese-and-garlic croutons (my nutrition consultant, Wynde, wants me to stay away from gluten), and I checked out.

By the time I left the store, my stress was gone. In fact, I think it may have disappeared as soon as I put the pulled pork back in the cooler and made a game out of finding the lower calorie count.

When I got home, I told my wife about the strange shopping trip and made myself some food: a medium-sized salad with the Newman’s Own dressing and artichoke hearts, leftover spiced couscous, a bowl of yogurt and frozen berries with drizzled honey and two Asian Veggie Burgers (no onion, cheese, mayonnaise or bread) placed on top of the salad. I drank ice water.

As a fat person who takes pride in his ability to overeat, I am embarrassed to say this was my Tuesday evening binge, eaten between 8 and 8:30 p.m. while watching an episode of BBC’s “Sherlock” on Netflix.

If there are any lessons to be gleaned from this shopping trip, they will take some time to sink in. Clearly, I was able to change my mood and emotions and eventually concentrate on healthy eating. I’m still dumbstruck because it was not a conscious decision to change my mind; it happened naturally. Something is working, at least some of the time. I wish I knew what.

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Counting my blessings during a rough patch

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I woke up with a dog sitting on my head. I’m not sure if it was the big dog, Mickie the black lab, or the little dog, Minnie the rat terrier. Talk about getting up on the wrong side of the dog.

“Get off my head,” I said.

It was endearing that one of the dogs wanted to be close to me. I’d just prefer she weren’t that close at 6 in the morning.

“Get off your father’s head,” my wife said from the other room.

Our two shelter dogs love to play on the bed while I’m sneaking in a few extra Zs in the morning, using me as their backstop and jumping board.

“Get off my head!”

I turned over on my back to get up, and the little dog jumped on top of my stomach, sprawled out and began licking my face uncontrollably. The big dog pushed against my left side with her butt as if to say, “Scratch me here, daddy. Scratch me here.”

Dawn and I don’t have children, just these two adorable 7-year-old dogs. I’ve heard some morbidly obese people say they started to lose weight once their child was born, hoping to extend their lives for the sake of the child and to spend more time with him. I can’t say I’m losing weight to stick around longer to play with my dogs, but if I were, these two kids of ours would be worth it.

Dogs can be a great distraction from food and a stress relief. Just laughing at them reduces my blood pressure. Sitting with them on the couch and giving them hugs, instead of raiding the refrigerator, is something I’ve been doing almost every night. It doesn’t always get me away from eating a snack, but I’ve had more successes than failures.

If you look at my stats for the week — a gain of 3 pounds — you may be wondering what the heck happened. Well, I guess I had more failures than successes. It was another stressful week, and even on the great days I fell victim to my sins as an overeater late in the evening. That’s my toughest time of the day.

Confession. While Tuesday was my proudest moment — defeating a binge without really trying — Friday was my most embarrassing. I was riding a high from being given the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival’s Trudeau Award at the Coronation ceremony and decided on the way home that I deserved to celebrate. So instead of driving home to have a small piece of chocolate or some fruit, I stopped at the convenience store and bought the fixins for nachos, a package of four Mallo Cups, and a six-pack of blueberry beer (delicious, by the way). After having the nachos, the Mallo Cups, a Whatchamacallit candy bar I bought a week earlier (for research, I swear), three of those beers and an Ubu ale, I went to bed.

The problem with having leftovers is the temptation to finish them the next day. So I had the rest of the beer — three blueberry lagers and an Ubu ale — while cooking chicken parm for dinner on Saturday. Not only was there extra cheese on top of the chicken, but I cooked mozzarella sticks and spaghetti on the side. And, of course, there were leftovers for Sunday morning.

By Sunday night, I was in better control. By Monday, I was in diet mode again. Tuesday and Wednesday I did fine, but I’ve found it difficult to fit walking into my schedule, and I haven’t made the time to prepare breakfast and lunch, leaving me wide open for the temptation to overeat at night.

This past week, I’ve felt as though the world was crashing down on top of me. I’m off balance. I want the snow to melt so I can go outside and walk without freezing my feet. I need a vacation. There’s no end in sight for all the work I have on my plate. I feel like I’m getting sick. My laptop died a couple days ago — with the only copy of the lecture I’m presenting in a couple weeks at Union College — and I don’t have the money to fix it. Deadlines and bills are piling up. Arguments with my wife don’t help. I’ve got to shovel more snow. And I need to sleep for a few days.

Luckily, I remember to take a deep breath and count my blessings once in a while. When I feel like I’m drowning, I list all the good things happening in my life, and my emotions stabilize, at least for the moment.

I think of my loving wife and family, a successful and rewarding career, dozens of supportive friends and the fact that I’m living the dream here in the best place on Earth: the Adirondack Park.

I even think of a dog sitting on my head when I wake up in the morning. And it makes me smile.